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Publishing a dashboard

Former Member
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Hello all,

Happy new year!

I am currently working on the final version of my dashboard using design studio and I have 2 questions:

1) How did you manage the space of the dashboard? Meaning, how did you plan for it to be on a canvas 8 x 11 or something smaller? I fear that when it gets published, it will be too big for the space it gets published too so I want to make sure I stay within a limited space.

2) Does anyone know some best practices when it comes to publishing a dashboard? Can it be published on the BOBJ portal or another way using HTML? Can it be done using PPT or another Microsoft Office tool? I've read many different answers but none seem to be repeating so I don't know where I can find a single source of truth for publishing a dashboard.

Thanks so much,

Nikki

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

TammyPowlas
Active Contributor
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Week three of BI Clients on HANA covers some of this - https://open.sap.com/courses/bifour2/

Week 5 has some practical ideas too on Mobile best practices

This Kindle book is over a year old and covers 1.2 but is still very good for tips and design and at a good price Amazon.com: Mastering SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio with SAP NetWeaver BW eBook: Ingo Hilgefort:... by

Answers (4)

Answers (4)

Former Member
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Hi Nikki,

I've just come across this post and thought I could add to your question 1 discussion.

Apart from all the best practices that are out there, from experience, I've found it beneficial to use your web browsers developer tools to emulate different resolutions and thus see what your dashboard looks like on multiple different devices and relevant resolutions. (WARNING: The emulation is not always correct. So it is merely to get a feel for what it looks like and how your page real estate is being used. If you emulate a different device, like an iPad for example, some functionality may not work as expected.)

Regards,

Matt

Former Member
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Hi Nikki,

On Q1.

There are three properties (height, width, margins) which specify the position and size of the components in design studio application.

All you have to do is to keep one of these three dynamic for each axis (set to auto). i.e for the width of a component, set one of the width , left margin or right margin to auto, and for height, set one of the top margin, bottom margin or the height to auto. The components will itself adjust to reduced window size.

e.g for crosstab properties

If you set the height and width of the crosstab to fixed values, one property of each axis is set to auto.

Top margin = 60

Left margin = 120

Bottom margin = auto

Right margin = auto

Width = 600

Height = 400

mike_howles4
Active Contributor
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1) How did you manage the space of the dashboard? Meaning, how did you plan for it to be on a canvas 8 x 11 or something smaller? I fear that when it gets published, it will be too big for the space it gets published too so I want to make sure I stay within a limited space.

Dashboards/BI Applications many times are interactive so while thinking about it in terms of width/height of a canvas is good, many times we will have tab panels or dynamically visible pieces that are not always visible all the time, which is the case with nearly any application.  Paying attention to screen real estate is important and Tammy has already mentioned Stephen Few's guidelines and I'd agree with nearly all of them.  Also avoid useless wastes of space with gauge-type components and Pie Charts whenever possible.  Sometimes your users will insist on it and you will lose the battle but the battles you win will earn you more space


2) Does anyone know some best practices when it comes to publishing a dashboard? Can it be published on the BOBJ portal or another way using HTML? Can it be done using PPT or another Microsoft Office tool? I've read many different answers but none seem to be repeating so I don't know where I can find a single source of truth for publishing a dashboard.

This is covered in the product documentation, but the deployments that are supported are either on the SAP BusinessObjects Platform, SAP Netweaver BW Platform (BI Java Portal), and HANA.  Each deployment has different caveats such as Mobile support and other limitations so depending on which is important will drive the best option.  The details are covered in the PAM on SAP's support site.  EDIT: Definitely visit the link Tammy gave, it will help you locate this information quicker if you are not familiar with charting course through SAP's Support Site.

Former Member
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Hi Michael,

Thank you for your prompt response. Like I just mentioned to Tammy, I just wanted to see if people had any tips and tricks with Design Studio specifically, to make sure I don't get something out of proportion or something too small when it is published.

Thanks again for the pointers - much appreciated!!

TammyPowlas
Active Contributor
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Nikki:

On question 1, I don't think anything beats Stephen Few's guidelines for dashboarding (for any tool, not just Design Studio) Perceptual Edge

Question 2:

For deployment options, see Karol's post for Design Studio 1.4

You can publish to BW, BI platform, HANA, etc. per Karol's blog.  It depends on your use case. 

You can export to Excel since DS 1.2

Right now it doesn't go to PPT; you can use the application print functionality

Former Member
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Thank you so much Tammy.

The link to Perceptual Edge is really helpful - thanks again. I was looking for something a little more concrete to Design Studio. I have read many papers and watched many videos so I am familiar with the concepts of how to set up Dashboards, the dos and donts, and the guidelines presented in his articles. I was hoping to get more insight on the tool itself. I am very familiar with Dashboard Design and I found it easy to play around with canvas size. Since I have never published a Dashboard from Design Studio, I don't know what to expect as the sizing.

Regardless, thanks again for your continuous help!