Special 2 -Part Session: Part 1: SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards Best Practices: Lessons to Design...

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Special 2-Part Session: Part 1: SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards Best Practices: Lessons to Design and Deploy Interactive Dashboards

Dr. Bjarne BergCOMERIT

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In This Session …

• In this two-part session we will look at how you can make your dashboards a success

• Get best practice rules for branding, layout, and dashboard templates

• Learn how to get the right dashboard requirements and how to use Rapid Application Development (RAD)

• Explore the best items to deploy on mobile platforms• Step through many practical demos of well-designed dashboards

for finance, sales, purchasing, what-if analysis, BPC reporting, variance analysis, and more

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What We’ll Cover …

• Introduction• Use of different templates for different purposes• Picking the right dashboard methodology• Mobilizing your dashboards• Dashboard deployment options• Wrap-up

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Intro and Background

• In this special 2-part session, we will explore SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, not SAP Design Studio

• Distinction SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards is intended for business-

driven or BI self-service dashboards SAP Design Studio is intended for “professionally authored or

power/IT-built dashboards” (Source: Adam Binnie, Global VP SAP, ASUG News 2012)

This is Part 1 of a 2-part session. For more information, attend the Special 2-part session: Part 2: SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards best practices: Top 20 factors that affect your dashboard usability, integration, and performance session.

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Creating Dashboard StandardsA dashboard template should be developed that standardizes the font, colors, button

locations, navigations, and tabs. Spend serious time on this, it should become the global standard for all your dashboards.

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Divide and Get PerformanceDrill-down options

Link to Details WebI reports

Split your dashboards into logical units. This keeps the result set for each query small and also decreases the load time for each dashboard.

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Build Several Dashboards for Each Functional Area

• Avoid trying to create a single dashboard for each functional area

• You will normally need 3-5 dashboards for areas such as accounts receivables, accounts payables, purchasing, sales orders, invoices, shipping, etc.

• Build 2 to 5 WebI reports for more details and link them to the dashboards so that navigation is easy for end users

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Formatted Dashboard Example

• Dashboards can also be highly formatted and static with little user interaction

• In this dashboard we included some KPIs and only the balance sheet for an organization, instead of using Crystal Reports for this sort of work

Not all dashboards have a high degree of navigation and images. For finance dashboards, presenting the numbers

in a meaningful way may be more important.

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Senior Management — Graphical Dashboards• Dashboards for the senior

management should be very graphically oriented

• Consider using logos and images instead of text for this purpose

• Navigation should be very simple

• For senior managers, the ability to interact with the data (what-if), and see performance numbers relative to plan, budgets, and prior years are critical functionalities

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Operational Dashboards

• Dashboards can be operational

• This dashboard focuses on billing disputes and is used to monitor closing of cases

• The users of this dashboard are clerks in the billing office, not executives

Some dashboards are operational in nature and give a summary of the key metrics and new cases as they occur. Such dashboards

works best when data is refreshed often or real-time.

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A Real-World Example• This project is for travel expense analysis

• The color codes communicate changes, year over year

• Graphs can be displayed in many ways

• Navigation can be done and can get new query result sets

This dashboard is based only on BW query and BICS connector; the cube is in SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator and

the dashboard therefore loads in less than 12 seconds

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A Real-World Example (cont.)

• Dashboards are most useful when compared to something

• This dashboard is relative to a budget

• Notice that all graphs can be displayed in many ways and that color coding is consistent across the dashboards

Make sure layout, buttons, and colors are consistently used

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• This dashboard groups six different categories and over 30 lines into an easily readable table using a few lines and mostly colors

• Too many lines and incorrect use of “bold” makes dashboards very hard to read Don’t cram too much into a single dashboard. Plan

on multiple dashboards for each business area.

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• Changes over time are typically tracked in the dashboards

• Don’t just present numbers, plan on only showing changes I.e., in amounts

and percentages

In this dashboard, the graphs are sometimes hard to read, sofilter selections were added. Use these carefully, since they are slow

and make Flash files large.

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Sharing Your Work Products — Web Services

• Dashboards are most useful when shared with others

• Power users can create great departmental dashboards that can be shared inside smaller organizational units

In this dashboard, the data is merged with Google maps and external news feeds. This makes the dashboard much more interactive and interesting.

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Live Demo: Six Types of Interactive Dashboards

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BI Self-Service — A Concept Enabled by SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0

• A new perspective is the idea that users can do much of their own “development” work

• The Launch Pad is intended to make this easier. Users can: Use multiple tabs to work on

several documents at the same time

Search for what they are looking for and filter results

The idea is to have a single launch item for all reports and analysis. Many call this a “report center.”

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Step 1 – Provide a self-service option to select a group of any of the many key figures available from a BEx query.

Step 3 – Self-service option to select any range of dates or selections. The dashboard is designed to limit 13 characteristic key figures though.

Step 2 – Self-service to select any characteristic to filter on. Can select multiple characteristics to filter on, i.e., Month, Plant, Material Group, etc.

Dynamic Dashboard Option for Power Users

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Step 4 – Select available key figures to display on chart

The Measures Can Now Be Selected to Be Displayed

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Step 5 – Select available key figures to display on the chart

Step 6 – Update the key figures to add more key figures

The Next Step Is Just to Refresh the Display

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Step 7 – Add “Revenue” to selected key figures

Step 8 – Move “SNP

Forecast (MT)” to the

top of the list for a higher

priority

Click update

Adding More Measures to the Display and Rearranging Them

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Step 9 – Notice “SNP Forecast (MT)” moved to the top and now has numbers on the chart

Step 10 – “Revenue” is now a selectable option

The Output

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Step 11 – Select “Xref,” a custom characteristic to describe a material

hierarchyStep 12 – Select “MESH” and

click Apply

Controlling Characteristics

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Key Figures Are Now Filtered Based on the Selection

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Step 14 – Enter name and save, and this become your personal self-

service dashboard view!

Step 13 – Save this view as “Mesh and Mes Dashboard”Saving a Personalized View

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The “Waterfall Methodologies” Are Not Good for Dashboards• The System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) methodologies, such as

ASAP, are known collectively as “waterfall methodologies”• They give a false sense of clear-cut stages and do not address

substantial functionality changes during development It is hard to fix missing functionality during integration testing

The waterfall

• Project Plan, Estimating

• Design Strategies, Scope Definition

• Documentation, Issues Db

• Workshop Agenda

• Questionnaires

• End-User Procedures

• Test Plans

• Technical Procedures

• Made Easy guidebooks (printout, data transfer, system administration…)

Fill in the BlankVersus

Start from Scratch

Fill in the BlankVersus

Start from Scratch

Examples for Accelerators:

The challenge with ASAP is that users don’t know what they want until they see it …

Source: SAP

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The ASAP Methodology Overview

Create Functional specs

Peer Review

Complete?

Complete?

Peer Review

Complete?

Complete?Structured

walkthrough

Approved?

Configuration

Unit Testing

Integration Testing

System Testing

Structured walkthrough

Approved?

No

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Create Technical specs

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Get a group of five to seven people for a brainstorming session

Draw the solution, knowing that it may look somewhat different once developed

Focus on the use of space, graphs, navigation, available data, and the purpose of the dashboards

Do not design fixed format “reports”

Where Do You Start — First Alternative

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Building a Mockup in Excel

• If you can make a “mockup” in Excel, users can see what it may look like in SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius)

Users can now see what it may look like

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Prototyping the Dashboard Requirements• Once the brainstorming is completed, you can create data in Excel and

prototype the solution in SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards

It may be time consuming to get the requirements right

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Interactive development

Dashboard Accelerator Approach — Agile, JAD, and RAD• A Dashboard Accelerator is a group of bought or pre-developed dashboards, to

help companies develop their dashboards faster following a Rapid Application Development (RAD), JAD, or Agile methodology

No functional specs are written and the development time for a subject area can be as

little as 4-10 weeks depending on back-end enhancements required and scope

Orientation meeting - High-level scope

agreement

Demo accelerator dashboards in

scope

Request enhancements and

new features

Make enhancements

Show dashboard in weekly UAT

sessions

Performance enhancements

backend & frontend

Unit test

System test

Integration test Go-Live

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Framework for Picking a Dashboard Methodology

Joint Application Design(JAD)

Rapid Application Development(RAD)

Extreme Programming(EP)

System development Life-Cycle based methodologies

(SDLC)

Impact of FailureLow High

Low

High

Time to Delivery

When to Select Different Methodologies

I.e. Scrum and Agile

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The Gray Areas of Dashboard Methodologies

• While presented as clearly delineated areas of selection, there are, in fact, several dimensions when multiple methodologies can be employed I.e., when time to delivery is moderate or when the impact of failure is moderate

Joint Application Design(JAD)

Rapid Application Development(RAD)

Extreme Programming(EP)

System development Life-Cycle based methodologies

(SDLC)

Impact of FailureLow High

Low

High

Time to Delivery

When to Select Different Methodologies

The framework is intended to illustrate the differences

among the appropriateness of each methodology

This decision is clearer in the extreme. However, in reality there may be “gray zones”

where more than one answer may be correct

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Supported HTML5 Objects for Mobile Dashboards

SP05 also uses a new mobile-only preview mode. This shows dashboards as they will appear on the iPad before you deploy them.

• In Service Pack 5 for SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, there is currently some support for a number of mobile dashboard elements. These are the most commonly utilized elements.

• This means that many of your current dashboards can be converted to mobile with minimal effort.

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Mobile — Some HTML5 Limitations as of SP05

The trick is to use the features supported today and find workarounds for those currently not available

• Some items to note about SP05 The exclusion of some mobile elements, such as a prompt selector There are no calendar controls, and HTML text for labels is not

supported Connections in the data manager is only available in the pre-query

panel, and only the “NOVA” theme is supported on mobile devices There is no support for the prompt selector for hierarchies in SP05,

nor are “reset” and “save scenario” available• Another major component that is not currently available in SP05 is

spreadsheet tables, making tables harder to make However, SAP supports the use of the URL button in mobile

dashboards, so we are making progress

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Conversion of Dashboards to Mobile

• When converting, the new “Mobile Compatibility” tab displays suggestions and warnings for optimizing dashboard components for mobile deployment

Warnings, as shown in this picture, simply mean that there are better ways of doing this. The dashboard still works. Error messages mean

that it will not work and needs some redesign.

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Using the Right Fonts for Mobile Dashboards

SAP has communicated that in the long run, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and SAP Design Studio will start sharing more objects and

be on the same framework (source: Eamon Ida, http://tinyurl.com/ckw4cof)

Mobile-specific text fonts are marked with “iOS 5+” to show which fonts will work best on your dashboard

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The Strategic Dashboard Release Plan• The strategic dashboard plan should clearly map out the vision for

the next 24-36 months

Make sure you add the “phase-2” timeline for all areas, plan for enhancements, and communicate this early to all users

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Freight costs dashboardCost analysis dashboardProfitability dashboardProduct profitability dashboardPhase -2 enhancementsBilling overview dashboardBilling analysis dashboardBilling errors dashboardPhase -2 enhancementsOrder dashboardOrder trend dashboardPhase -2 enhancementsAR overview dashboardPast due dashboardAging dashboardPhase -2 enhancementsAP aging dashboardDiscounts taken dashboardTravel expense dashboardPhase -2 enhancements

...!

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Create a Dashboard Deployment Diagram• The dashboard deployment diagram provides an overview of who has

access to each dashboard. It is not a security role design (yet).

You should also provide a similar diagram that shows who can grant access to the dashboards. These are called “dashboard owners.”

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The Business Readiness Dashboard Checklist

The purpose of the business readiness dashboard checklist is to make sure that a project is not merely an afterthought with little visibility, zero real sponsorship, and has a lack of communication, support, training, and organizational commitment

There are reasons why many dashboard projects fail

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Create an Online Help System for Your Dashboards • Online help should be available for each dashboard

• The online help system should explain: How numbers are calculated How to read graphs What functionality is

embedded

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Another Example of Online Help for Dashboards

In this example we have a help dashboard with one display for each

graph, panel, and major functionality

Online help is especially useful for complex dashboards with many panels

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Accessing My Dashboards in a Meaningful Way

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BI Workspaces and Modules• BI Workspaces allow you to link many SAP BI tools in the same area, without

the need to jump between them. In this workspace, we have 3 dashboards, 1 WebI report, 1 Analysis report, and 1 Crystal Report running at the same time.

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BI Workspaces and Modules (cont.)We can also link the objects (WebI, Crystal Reports) in a workspace together and pass variables and navigation between some of them

This alleviates some of the task of opening and running the workspace every day

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We can use modules to make the objects more interesting and add comments to them

You can access modules from the “my application” area

There are two types of modules: Text modules Compound modules

Modules

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Using the Text module, we can add our comments and update them whenever we like

There are two options:• Regular text• HTML (this allows

you to use HTML tags to format your text

The Text Module

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Using the Compound module we display many modules together, this includes text, dashboards, WebI reports, Crystal Reports, and Analysis for OLAP

The development of compound modules are so simple that anyone with MS Word or PowerPoint skills can do learn it in less than five minutes!

The Compound Module

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Demo: BI Workspace and Modules

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Who Gets to Do What?

• The major decision for an SAP BI-driven enterprise is to determine who gets access to each tool

• There is often a temptation for the IT community of wanting to keep the tools under their domain – That is a mistake

• The IT community should actively work with the power and casual users to improve human capabilities and thereby teach them to become more productive employees

Chinese Proverb

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What Tool to Select

• All SAP tools have core strengths This is a subjective summary

End user

Power User Author

IT Developer Graphing Navigation

External data

External web

services SimplicityOLAP (basic) Mobile

Ad-Hoc querying

Web Application Designer

Design Studio

Xcelsius

Visual Composer

Web Intelligence

Development Capabilities Long-term

StrategyTool

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Where to Find More Information

• Ray Li and Evan DeLodder, Creating Dashboards with SAP BusinessObjects (2nd Edition) (SAP PRESS, 2012). ISBN-10: 1592294103

• David Lai and Xavier Hacking, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook (Packt Publishing, 2011). ISBN: 1849681783

• SDN Community for BI Dashboard design http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-dashboards

• Anita Yuen, “SAP User Interface Guidelines for Crystal Dashboard Design” (SAP Collaboration Workspace, 2011). https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/docs/DOC-142813

• Blair Wheadon, “SAP Crystal Dashboard Design 2011 and Presentation Design 2011 Samples” (SCN, 2011). www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/40245c5e-767d-2e10-e4b2-

c779cf05d753

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7 Key Points to Take Home

• Getting the right requirements requires prototyping and interactive sessions with end users

• Plan on many dashboards and don’t force too much information into a single design

• Build different layouts for casual users, executives, and power users• Link WebI reports to the dashboards and keep the detailed

information in those reports• The SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0x platform should be the preferred

choice to deploy your dashboards• Avoid certain components of the tool and stay with “default”

templates for simplified design (i.e., NOVA)• Plan your dashboard deployment as a larger initiative of BI self-

service for your organization

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Your Turn!

How to contact me:Dr. Bjarne Berg

[email protected]

Please remember to complete your session evaluation

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Disclaimer

SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, SAP NetWeaver®, Duet®, PartnerEdge, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Wellesley Information Services is neither owned nor controlled by SAP.

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