Webinar Archives: Adding Value to Xcelsius Applications in Xcelsius 2008

In this Webinar Katryn Cheng, a Sales Consultant from Business Objects, an SAP company describes and demonstrates how Xcelsius 2008 can be used to add value to the existing business applications. She also explains how You can add more value to your applications by adding interaction between your dashboards and your application by using Xcelsius capabilities such as Flash Variables and FS Commands.

The Webinar assumes that you are already familiar with Xcelsius and also web application concepts such as Webservers, HTML concepts etc.

The runtime is 81mins and its a WebEx based Presentation and Narration style webinar. Click on Playback button below to launch the webinar.

Xcelsius 2008 Maps and their Respective Regions

Faroe, Laos, Liechtenstein (I can’t even pronounce this one) . Don’t get confused, these are some of the names of the countries i came across when i started writing about “Xcelsius 2008 map component”. I’ve never heard them before. One of the major additions to Xcelsius 2008 is the expansion of Map component in terms of number of countries and their respective regions. Earlier versions of Xcelsius had just 8 maps to play with, however the 2008 version has 92 (93 in SP1, Canada by Province). Thanks to Xcelsius, now i know a lot of countries. There are a total of 14 Continent Maps. 78 Country Maps and 1 State Map. Click on the Tabs above to view the lists. Thanks to Dallas Marks for listing them out.

There is an Excel spreadsheet with all the Map names and their respective regions breakdown on Business Objects, an SAP company website. You can download the file here. I’m sure this file will be very helpful when developing dashboards with maps. However i thought a SWF version of the same will be more visually attractive and gives a better idea to the user about all the maps in Xcelsius 2008. I built this using Xcelsius 2008 SP1, so you will find the latest addition to the List, “Canada by Province” Map. Download the source files at the end of the Post.

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Refresh, Open, and Pass variables to Web Intelligence from Xcelsius

In this post – Jim Brogden, a BI Consultant from Daugherty Business Solutions explains how to Refresh, Open and Pass variables to Web Intelligence from Xcelsius in a BusinessObjects 3.x environment.

The “OpenDocument” syntax has changed in XI 3.0 and 3.1 for linking to BOE report objects.  The architecture in XI R2 had previously required a URL similar to the following:

XI R2 URL:

http://ATL-Daugherty:7027/businessobjects/enterprise115/desktoplaunch/jsp/openAnalytic.jsp?DocumentName=Company+Info&RepositoryType=C&RepositoryName=CompanyInfo&DocumentExt=wid&mode=full&nbPrompts=1&State=GA

XI 3.x no longer goes through desktoplaunch or uses openAnalytic.jsp to link to an object.  Instead, openDocument.jsp is used – similar to the following:

Example XI 3.x URL:

http://ATL-Daugherty:7027/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.jsp?sPath=%5bDocument%5d&sType=wid&sRefresh=Y&sDocName=Company+Data&mode=full&nbPrompts=1&lsSYear=

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The future of Interactive Dashboards!

WOW! I want one! Just tell me where to buy? Is this the future of Interactive Dashboards?

These were the questions that popped up in my mind when I saw CNN correspondent John King picking and poking at a giant LCD touchscreen with the CNN electoral map on it. The interaction was so smooth that I couldn’t believe my eyes for a second. What in the world is that? is what I said to myself. They call it the CNN Magic Wall. Is this the future of Interactive Information Dashboards?

Washington Post Writes:

Standing in front of an oversize monitor, King began poking, touching and waving at the screen like an over-caffeinated traffic cop. Each movement set in motion a series of zooming maps and flying pie charts, which King was then able to position around the screen at will.

Watch the Video.

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“The InfoObject plugin “CrystalEnterprise.XCelsius” is not installed properly”

You receive the error “The InfoObject plugin “CrystalEnterprise.Xcelsius” is not installed properly” when trying to publish an Xcelsius doc to the Business Objects Enterprise Server.

You will get this error when the Web Services are not installed.

Install the appropriate web services from the following location: