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Utilizing Business Objects Enterprise Server for Report Automation
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by Eric Landes
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Introduction

As developers, we do much of the custom development ourselves.  Whenever there are ways to do any of these tasks using existing modules or software, it can help speed development time. 

In working with Crystal Reports, I have recently been introduced to Business Objects Enterprise Server XI.  Enterprise Server provides Business Intelligence developers with a portal for their business intelligence content.  This server can make a developers life easy, by easily automating some Business Intelligence tasks you might try and do by coding yourself.

In this article we will go through 2 basic parts of the Enterprise Server that can assist Developers in basic development tasks.  Enterprise Server is a large enterprise applications with a lot of different functionality included.  In this article we will look at scheduling reports to be sent to other users.  Also, we will look at the InfoView application that provides an interface to your reports repository for end users.

System Requirements

This article uses Business Objects Enterprise Server XI and SQL Server 2000, Crystal Reports XI.   

Using Central Management Console to Schedule Reports

So you have a report developed in Crystal Reports that needs to be distributed to 10 associates in your company weekly.  This part of the Enterprise Server is for you.  There are a few ways that this can be done.  Using InfoView, the associates could view the reports themselves using that web site.  This is a pull method and usually it is easier to push the report to these folks.  So let us send an email every week to our end users.

First, we need to get your report into Enterprise server.  To do this in a drag and drop manner, you will simply log onto your server.  This assumes that you have already installed Business Objects Enterprise Server.  We will upload a document using the administrative tools.  As an administrator you can set it up so other users can upload reports and other documents to the Enterprise Server as well. 

To upload, you need to have access to the Central Management Console.  See figure 1 to see what this looks like.

Figure 1

 

In the CMC make sure to create a folder where you want to view your reports.  Using the Folders you can organize where your content is to reside.  For instance, if you organize through departments, you might make your folders hierarchical by department.  Take care in deciding on this setting.  Figure 2 shows an example of how the folders will appear to an end user utilizing InfoView. 

Figure 2

 

When creating your folders, you can assign rights, create keywords for searching, create subfolders within the folder, and add objects to the folder.  When editing folder properties, the administrator can also limit how many instances of an object are allowed on the server.  This can help administrators in keeping the size of your instance of Business Objects under control.

To add a report to your folder, just use the New Object button to upload the report to the server.  Besides reports you can upload object packages, Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint, Rich Text files, Text files, programs or hyperlinks.  There is also a place to change the folder name and you can opt to place this in the object repository.

Once you upload that object, you can add some more functionality to the report using the administration module.  For instance, you can schedule the report to run.  As you can see with Figure 3, the scheduling module allows you to specify a destination (email, file, or inbox).  You can also use the notification option to put in place audit trails for these scheduled jobs.  There is also a place to specify the format of the report when it is sent.  Most formats your expect from Crystal are available here.  Using the Schedule for option, you can specify users available in Enterprise Server for this report.

Figure 3

 

In this module you can also set different rights for this report.  You can also see a history of the scheduled objects here.  The history tab shows all instances of the report and whether server successfully sent them.  By clicking on a successful send, you can view that instance of the report (good for snapshots).  You an also resend that instance of the report if needed from this screen.

As you can see this part of the administration of Business Objects is robust with much you can do with it.  We will now explore the Interface to the end user using InfoView

Using InfoView

For end users, InfoView is the Interface to Business Objects Portal.  This web based interface allows you to specify what reports, etc. the end users can view.  After a user logs into InfoView, they get that interface you saw in Figure 2.  This interface gives the user access to Folders and the Business Objects Inbox.  That inbox can be used as a destination in schedules as you might recall from the earlier section. 

Besides the folders set up by administrators, the person using InfoView has a favorite's option.  Using this option under My Folders to allow them to add frequently used reports or other documents to quickly get to them. 

From the main page, you can also add folders under your favorites.  This allows end users to have reports uploaded to the enterprise server.  In my experience I am not sure how many end-users would have Crystal Reports to upload to the server.  However, they can also upload spreadsheets which might be useful to schedule.  Depending on the end users rights, they might be able to create a new public folder for others to view.  This would be helpful for sharing BI documents across the enterprise.

Also, from this main view the end user can create their own dashboard using the reports available, using my InvoView button.  See Figure 4 for an example of this.  By using the simple layouts set up here, end-users can create content that is useful for them from a central repository of Business Intelligence objects.  Simply click on a frames "Define Content" link and the end user can select objects that are available to them.

Figure 4

From this page the user can also send the object to others.  This can be done via email to a file share, FTP or to the InfoView inbox.  A search box is also available.  This search box is searching on the categories that are specified when the object is initially uploaded. 

Summary

This interface gives a lot of options out of the box for your business intelligence documents.  If you are using Crystal Reports as your reporting engine, the Enterprise Server can save some development time for creating some repetitive tasks like emailing reports on schedule.  InfoView can be used to save time for displaying your business intelligence documents to your end-users.  Hopefully, this article can help save you from that tedious coding allowing you to work on some more interesting projects.  Happy coding!


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