Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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An Up-To-Date Guide to
SAP NetWeaver BEx _________________________________
Broadcasting: Features, _________________________________
Functions, and What’s _________________________________
Really Required to Make It _________________________________
Work in Your Organization
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Dr. Bjarne Berg _________________________________
MyITgroup
© 2007 Wellesley Information Services. All rights reserved.
Image: SAP AG
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What Can BEx Information Broadcasting Do?
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• Broadcasts can be configured to run: _________________________________
A single time
On a scheduled basis (every day, week, month, e.g.) _________________________________
During specific timeslots defined by the administrator _________________________________
Or any time (if you allow)
When an event occurs; i.e., when an “exception” occurs
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As part of a process chain _________________________________
• You tell the system:
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What to send
f A link to regenerate the query, etc., based on live data, or _________________________________
f A standalone (precalculated) version of the item
How to send it
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f There are several format and compression options _________________________________
Key concept: push vs. pull — Broadcasting is a push tool
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SAP NetWeaver 7.0: New Object Types and Output Formats
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• New object types _________________________________
You can broadcast BEx query views and
formatted reports in addition to Web _________________________________
applications, queries, and workbooks.
Reports are a new BEx object type
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developed within the new BEx Report _________________________________
Designer tool.
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• New output formats
New output formats are based on the _________________________________
distribution type you select. You now can
broadcast Web documents as PDF files.
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SAP NetWeaver 7.0: Query Performance
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• To increase the performance of key queries, _________________________________
you can fill the OLAP Cache or the MDX
(multi-dimensional expressions) Cache. _________________________________
This is useful if you have large numbers of
users accessing a query, or you have a _________________________________
query that accesses a high volume of data. _________________________________
• The Fill Precalculation Store distribution
type allows you to precalculate Web _________________________________
templates, and the Precalculate Value Set
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option allows you to fill precalculated value
set variables with values for characteristic _________________________________
values. The precalculated value sets are
then available as variable values in _________________________________
BEx queries.
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The Reporting Agent in SAP BW 3.x could precalculate the data of a
template and access it through the URL. It could not broadcast queries,
workbooks, or Web templates by email or to KM folders. 12
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• Zipping files reduces the size and improves network traffic: _________________________________
It is very good for sets of MIME files, which are relatively large _________________________________
Not a good option for handhelds (requires unzipping and several
read steps) _________________________________
Normally not needed for single HTML files unless the report is very
long _________________________________
Reduces network traffic and the size of the mail in the mailboxes
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Pros: file size much smaller; Cons: not as easy to use, since you have to unzip
the file and need to license the unzip program 20
Identify Recipients and Enter a Message
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Enter one or more email
addresses, a subject, and
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body.
The importance level flags the
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email for delivery to your
recipient. _________________________________
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Click on Continue to save
and schedule the broadcast _________________________________
to execute later.
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OR
Click on Execute to execute _________________________________
the broadcast once only,
during the next available
processing window, and exit.
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• This is the name under which you store your settings _________________________________
• If you want to execute this broadcast more than once with _________________________________
these settings you can save them
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• You can retrieve the settings later
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Define groups of settings for reports you send repeatedly (e.g.,
Tip weekly status reports, month-end financial reports, etc.) 22
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BEx Broadcaster
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• Business typically gives access to this tool to the power
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users or developers only, since it has more options and
requires slightly more skill _________________________________
• Access via Web Application Designer (Web AD) or Query
Designer _________________________________
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SAP NetWeaver 7.0 Web AD SAP NetWeaver 7.0 Query Designer
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Regular Scheduling by Power Users Using BEx Broadcaster
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Bursting Broadcasts
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If selected,
everyone gets _________________________________
the same
broadcast _________________________________
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Here we can _________________________________
make the The Country manager stored here is
broadcasts Master Data and the attribute for the _________________________________
contain only country manager contains the email
address where we are sending the
data that is Broadcast
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relevant to
each specific _________________________________
user _________________________________
On the conference CD I have included detailed, step-by-step
descriptions and scenarios on how to set up bursting 28
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Options for Broadcasting to the Portal
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• The broadcast options are similar to the email distribution. You have
several choices: _________________________________
1 - Deploy via KM Favorites 4 - Deploy via the BW showcase role _________________________________
2 - Deploy via a KM folder 5 - Deploy via custom iViews
3 - Deploy via Collaboration Rooms _________________________________
• You can broadcast
the content to the _________________________________
portal at fixed
intervals and have _________________________________
the content instantly
available through _________________________________
independent Web
pages. You can also _________________________________
broadcast to the
portal through links _________________________________
back to your system.
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Great There is a demo role available since SAP Enterprise Portal 6.0. You can use this role
for your publishing to the portal or enhance it any way you like. The portal role is
Feature
available under com.sap.ip.bi.business_explorer_showcase 33
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New Broadcasting Administration Interface in SAP NetWeaver 7.0
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News: With SAP NetWeaver 7.0, there is a new transaction RSRD_ADMIN (or RSA1
AdministrationBroadcasting) where you can manage BEx Broadcaster 36
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Reorganize Bookmarks with Broadcasting Administration
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• Reorganize and delete bookmark _________________________________
IDs and view IDs that the system
created for Information _________________________________
Broadcasting but no longer needs _________________________________
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Create Time Points (cont.)
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You can create _________________________________
empty periodic
jobs that the _________________________________
Broadcasting _________________________________
Wizard will later
associate with _________________________________
queries _________________________________
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Decide Who Should Be Allowed to Do What: Governance Council
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• There are many options and decisions to make about who should be
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able to access all the broadcast features. A good approach to decide
who gets access and also when to create any time points, is to create a _________________________________
governance council of a few managers and developers.
Regular Power BW _________________________________
users users Authors Developers Admins
Email
☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ _________________________________
Target
BEx Broadcaster
- -/☺ ☺ ☺ ☺
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Process chains
- - - ☺ ☺
One-time _________________________________
☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺
Scheduling
Schedule using
preset time points ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺
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Free schedule - -/☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ 51
• Another good time may be at the end of weekly or monthly loads _________________________________
on the weekend (i.e., Saturday or Sunday mornings). _________________________________
The key is to balance the times when users can execute jobs. If you do not carefully
manage this, users tend to schedule their broadcasts between 7 and 9 am. 53
Avoid Volumes of Junk
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• Users tend to schedule queries for distribution and never _________________________________
disable the schedule after it has started to run. This creates
mountains of junk that few actually use. _________________________________
• Users who don’t want _________________________________
a broadcast tend to
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simply delete it, or
automatically remove _________________________________
the email. So, how
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do you know if
anyone reads the _________________________________
broadcasts?
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Best Developers should perform a periodic review of scheduled broadcasts to see if
Practice there are any candidates for deletion
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Resources
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• Dr. Bjarne Berg’s resource site _________________________________
http://csc-studentweb.lrc.edu/swp/Berg/
BB_index_main.htm _________________________________
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• Dr. Bjarne Berg and Joyce Butler,
“BEx Broadcaster at International Paper” _________________________________
(ASUG, 2006) _________________________________
http://csc-studentweb.lrc.edu/swp/Berg/
Articles/ASUG-2006-v6.ppt _________________________________
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Resources (cont.)
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• BEx Broadcaster including BI 7.0 new _________________________________
features – Dr. Berg and Filip Lemmens
http://csc-studentweb.lrc.edu/swp/Berg/ _________________________________
Articles/Portals_2006_Broadcaster_v19.ppt
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7 Key Points to Take Home
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• Do not schedule all your broadcasts after a process chain has _________________________________
completed: It may slow down nightly data loads
• Control the times users can run reports to avoid high stress _________________________________
on the system
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• Segment the broadcast tools based on the user roles and
level of training _________________________________
• Monitor the logs carefully and make sure that you control _________________________________
spam kings
• Do not give free scheduling to a high number of users _________________________________
• Be aware that spam filters may catch many of your _________________________________
broadcasts
• If you are not on SAP NetWeaver 7.0, seriously consider an _________________________________
upgrade and stop using Reporting Agent _________________________________
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Your Turn!
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Notes:
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