SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center - Current Prototypes

The SAP BusinessObjects innovation center brings you some new software prototypes based on concepts and ideas we've heard from our customers, partners, and internal teams. We may or may not include them into our future products, so please download them and give them a try. Let us know what you like, what you don't like, and what else you'd like to see from us. Send your comments directly to the innovation center.

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The Historic Audit Analysis Prototype allows you to create periodic historic reports in-memory without the need for a data warehouse. Users simply create a standard BusinessObjects query against a live data source, and then using the tool, they can generate reports for any point in the past. Historic Audit Analysis does this by unlocking the information stored in database change logs to rebuild historic state. This liberates users from having to create data warehouses, and it allows on-demand historical reporting in a way that is not currently supported.
 Learn more about Historic Audit Analysis Prototype

XBCML Widgets gives every SAP enterprise application written using the Web Dynpro programming model the opportunity to work as a rich-client enterprise widget, presented through the SAP Business Objects BI widgets framework. Each widget is as enterprise-ready as the SAP application backing it, and each can provide customers with added value for their investment in SAP business applications by making them easier to access and use.

 Learn more about XBCML Widgets

Segment your information into logical groups for better understanding of your information assets. Build these segments based on your existing SAP BusinessObjects universes. This prototype is a plug-in to the information design tool that allows you to create these "sets" , static or dynamic - all in the information design tool query panel.

  Learn more about Semantic layer based sets

Text to image is a prototype for building an image repository using Yahoo Image Search services and then making this content available for consumption by SAP BusinessObjects BI tools. Within minutes you will be able to transform entire lists of values into a set of images directly usable in your reports.

  Learn more about Text to image

Social Network Analyzer aggregates existing enterprise data, using business intelligence techniques, to help you find entities/people based on multiple criteria, understand their relationships, connect with them and get up-to-date statistics on your organization. The purpose of this technology is to deliver an environment where people can easily and quickly analyze corporate network relationships and find the information they are looking for in their daily jobs.

 Learn more about Social Network Analyzer

With the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer with Excel Navigation prototype, you can visually explore and analyze your Excel spreadsheets. You can use this to explore financial data, catalogs, customer lists, music libraries, and many other types of data. Simply upload your Excel spreadsheet, and you'll be able to look at your data in a complete new way leveraging SAP BusinessObjects Explorer XI 3.1 installed in your company intranet.

 Learn more about Explorer with Excel Navigation

SAP BusinessObjects now provides a new connection type to SAP ERP systems that extends Web Intelligence's popular ad hoc query and reporting capabilities to SAP operational systems. Companies can now get better business intelligence from important transactional and operational data stored in SAP ERP that, in turn, extend the reach of BI to more users.

 Learn more on Web Intelligence Reporting for SAP ERP

The BI panel prototype provides Microsoft Outlook users with quick, easy access to business intelligence information right from within their Outlook environment. BI panel suggests useful reports based on the context of the email that the user is working with. Ultimately, this means that users have the trusted information they need at their fingertips when communicating with colleagues, customers and partners over email; all without ever having to leave the familiar Outlook environment that they are accustomed to.

Learn more about BI panel

With Explorer in the cloud you can visually explore and analyze your Excel spreadsheets. Use Explorer in the cloud with financial data, catalogs, customer lists, music libraries, and many other types of data. Simply upload your Excel file, and you'll be looking at your data in a whole new way.
Explorer in the cloud comes also with a set of API to help you mashing any data with Explorer .

Learn more about Explorer in the cloud

Extension points prototype that deepen customization capabilities for Reporting and Analysis workflows. This release supports the entire chain of ad-hoc workflows: from Query to Analysis to Reporting. Extension points are also applicable now to the Web Intelligence Rich Client released with BusinessObjects XI 3.1

  Learn more about Web Intelligence Extension Points

Metrics catalog prototype allows the publication of metrics stored in OLAP as a web service. Users without prior knowledge of the OLAP cube structure can then consume the data and build dashboards easily. Metrics catalog comes with an Xcelsius "Metrics catalog" component to consume the catalog.
Learn more about Metrics catalog

The report commenting prototype is easy-to-use and provides annotation functionality to the BusinessObjects XI platform. It behaves like an extra layer on top of the current BusinessObjects XI report viewer and keeps all the functionalities of the original viewer including its appearance. The report commenting prototype runs on top of the existing viewer transparently, allowing users to add comments to different types of objects from the BusinessObjects XI platform and manage comments among different users. Not only users can share reporting and analytic information but their feedback and discussions as well.

 Learn more about Comment it

The catalog browser for the iPhone allows you to remotely access your favorite business intelligence (BI) content from the Apple iPhone. Now, no matter where you are, you can browse, search and display the same BI content you work with every day on your desktop (Crystal Reports , Web Intelligence and Desktop Intelligence documents). The catalog browser also allows you to maintain a list of favorite documents, so that all the information you need is always at your fingertips.

Learn more on Catalog browser

The Xcelsius publishing plugin allows multiple recipients to receive an Xcelsius dashboard that has been personalized so that it that contains only data that is relevant to a specific user.

 Learn more about Xcelsius publishing plugin

Xcelsius web 2.0 components add-on helps customize Xcelsius dashboards and visualizations with some emerging web2.0 visualizations. This components add-on is a set of typical visualization Web 2.0 as well as Web 2.0 data source.

Learn more about Xcelsius web 2.0 components add-on

The text to query prototype helps business users get insight from a text by offering chart suggestions to illustrate it. The goal is to be able to capture underlying analysis intentions in order to produce the most adapted suggestions and representations. This way, end-users can get data illustrations directly while reading their emails or writing a PowerPoint presentation.

Learn more about Text to query

Visual prompts enables quick and easy design of rich prompt interfaces for Web Intelligence. With visual prompt, you can replace the standard list of values interface with a custom flash interface, for example maps for country selection or image selectors.

Learn more about Visual prompts

The take action prototype helps align business intelligence (BI) with operational systems. With take action, business users can leverage BI context to securely interact with their enterprise business processes. Take action is a framework for hosting service-oriented actions and delivering web services targeted to business users. With this new release, a non-developer IT user has the ability to design database actions as well as SAP Remote ABAP function actions. Then we make it easier for the business user to integrate the actions in business intelligence content. For example, Web Intelligence with Web Intelligence action form provides an easy way to attach an action to Web Intelligence reports using point and click metaphor.

 Learn more about take action

The linear view prototype is an interactive visualization that provides an efficient way to find documents in BusinessObjects XI 3.1 InfoView portal. While normal search results are displaying a maximum of 5 to 10 results, linear view can visualize many more documents by displaying a second analysis axis. This is a great way to improve user experience in document search.

Learn more about Linear view

BusinessObjects enterprise monitoring add-on will guide you through implementing a monitoring solution for your BusinessObjects Enterprise deployment which can integrate with your corporate monitoring solution or allow you to build a monitoring solution from the beginning. With the monitoring add-on you can spend more time preparing, and optimizing the BusinessObjects system for better availability and performance thus increasing your business users' satisfaction.

  Learn more about Monitoring Add-on for BusinessObjects

The Event-Driven Business Intelligence prototype lets you extract competitive advantage from the "enterprise event cloud". Based on an event-driven architecture, it enables you you to build a dashboard that tracks events as they happen in order to minimize data latency: the delay between when the event happens and when your business users are notified.

 Learn about Event-Driven Business Intelligence

Exploration trees give you the big and small picture of your business in a single glance, while allowing you to analyze up, down, and across your information. With exploration trees, you can do a deep analysis of your data while keeping the high level context, quickly and in a visual way.

 Learn more about exploration trees

BI widgets on AIR is a prototype of an Adobe Air Rich Internet Application that delivers personalized business intelligence (BI) information for everyone. With BI widgets users can quickly and easily search and access BI content, create personal dashboards on their desktop, and integrate BI content into other Windows applications using drag and drop.

Learn more about BI Widgets on AIR

BI sense provides a very easy and intuitive way to enhance web applications with contextual business intelligence (BI) content. Wouldn't it be great to get the most relevant BI content automatically displayed when navigating a web page?

Learn more about BI sense

Data accelerator enables SAP BusinessObjects universe designers to speed up their universe query performance and leverage their database server power via the use of aggregate tables.

Learn more about Data accelerator

Intelligent Search for Google Desktop extends Google Desktop to "go the extra mile" - helping you find documents faster and locate hidden information that would otherwise be overlooked. Search results are automatically grouped, enabling users to preview document content, navigate through documents and filter their result sets by key mentions: people, companies, places, concepts, and other relevant information contained within the full text of results sets and documents.

  Learn more about Intelligent search for Google Desktop

Content rating allows users to rate and share their opinions on published business intelligence (BI) content in a collaborative manner. It also enables to define and manage document validation. Content rating is fully integrated with BusinessObjects XI Release 2 BI portal and provides a new way of enriching existing BI content with valuable context.

Learn more about content rating

BI annotator allows business intelligence (BI) users to relate and combine text data to business dimensions in a database/datawarehouse. Both text and structured data are exposed to business users via a single Business Objects semantic layer (or universe) and directly consumed by BusinessObjects XI R2 reports.

Learn more about BI annotator

Data feed as a universe allows business intelligence (BI) users to retrieve and combine data from RSS feeds and web services (including query as a web service) with data warehouse and other internal BI information. External data are exposed to business users through semantic layer universes in BusinessObjects XI R2. Other examples of external data include CSV files and Excel files.

Learn more about data feed as a universe

Combine web application resources like Yahoo! Maps, Google Maps and/or new types of visualizations into your business intelligence (BI) content. This component allows developers to create BI 'templates' that allow ordinary business users to use mashup visualizations just like any other Web Intelligence chart. BusinessObjects Masher includes an extended set of chart types and pre-built access to Google Map views.

  Learn more about BusinessObjects masher