SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP3 is now available !

GregBotticchio · ‎12-07-2022

We are excited to announce the release of the 3rd Service Package for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3!

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 is definitely the place to go!

As SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 reaches the end of mainstream maintenance by the end of this year (2022), with the Priority1 support ending in 2024, we warmly encourage our customers to take advantage of this release to adopt BI 4.3. Upgrading from previous versions is simple, it can be considered an update, and with SP03 you get the best feature set of all available versions.

This release is a bit special. Not only it allows us to deliver a whole set of new features in the DATA domain, but we also continue to further integrate SAP BusinessObjects into the new world of cloud platforms, and to focus on a better productivity & usability by delivering your most urgent improvement requests.

The complete list of innovations and enhancements is impressive.

Let us uncover what you can expect from this release!

Focus Innovation Areas for Web Intelligence

Like for the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP02, three key areas of focus and emphasis make up the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP03 release.

The first one, and main focus area for this release, offers a complete set of functionalities enabling data modeling, and is composed of three capabilities:

The “Data Preview Mode”: it is not a new feature as it used to exist into the WebI Rich Client (WRC) BI 4.2 but was previously named the “Data Manager”. It allows you to consult your query result. By integrating this capability directly into the BI 4.3 SP03, we have taken the opportunity to enhance the concept. Not only will you be able to preview your queries, objects to gain confidence in your data, but you will also be able to navigate into your data by using Facets, in order to display the unique occurrence of your objects, and to cross them with any measures.

“Prepare and Transform your Data”: the second capability is directly linked to the first one, as, while consulting and exploring your data in the preview mode, you have now the possibility to transform them in one click. By doing so, you will immediately enrich and transform your data stored into the WebI microcube, without the need to create additional variables.

The “Combine Flows of Data”: finally, we have drastically enhanced the capability to synchronize your queries. You can combine your flows by using three operators. “Append”, “Left join” and “Right join” are now supported, and more will be added in the future. By doing so, you will generate a virtual cube with only the objects that matter from a report designer perspective. The original queries and objects will be automatically hidden to your end users.

Then, with the second focus area, we are pushing again the integration capabilities of BOBJ. In the previous SP02, we gave the ability to access your data and files stored in your corporate Google Drive from the SAP BusinessObjects platform. With the SP03, we are adding the possibility to do the same but with Microsoft OneDrive: you can now use your data and files stored in this drive to create Web Intelligence documents, but also to automatically push information into this drive thanks to the BI Platform Scheduler.

In addition of that, to push furthermore the integration capabilities, the ODATA feature exposed in the previous SP02 has been enriched. We propose a new entry point in the ODATA URL that will let you access directly the list of entities (report elements and cubes) composing a WebI document.

Finally, the last area of improvement concerns the end users. To help them, many improvements have been made in the Web Intelligence interface to make it more comfortable and effective when used every day.

To facilitate report creation and to help the designers, we offer “guides”, “lasso selection”, “block anchor” to easily move and position report elements, than can use now the "pixel measure" (pixel perfect). Expressiveness of your Reporting has also been improved thanks to new “icons” and “trellis chart”.

Lastly, the consumer has not been forgotten as he gains the ability to sort and rank report elements at the view time, and also a new “Prompt Manager” that will help him to sort different prompts from several queries, and to get instructions describing these prompts, with a new support for the “Global BI Variants” (sharable). Consumers will also benefit from an optimized Web Intelligence interface for their Mobile use cases (smartphone).

Many more improvements are waiting for you. This represents a small subset of the new innovations which are part of the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP03. To know more and get all the details, we encourage you to have a look at the following complementary blog:

What's new in SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence and Semantic Layer 4.3 SP03?

Enterprise Readiness and Crystal Reports

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is the most trusted Business Intelligence Platform and continues to provide much needed innovations and enhancements, based on what customer eco system is expecting.

The key capabilities and features where BI Platform differentiate and stands out are as following: Best platform to achieve "one version of truth" with its Centrally Managed repository. Security Rights to maintain the information access and implement organization level governing policies. Industry best Scheduling and Publication capabilities to deliver Business Intelligence content. In built capabilities to monitor and optimize the BI Landscape as and when needed. Open for plug and play with its vast support for SDK in multiple flavors. These are few things, out of many such capabilities.

As part of the maintenance, this is the next Support Package release for the SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite for the last major release BI 4.3. This release, SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP03, brings another set of customer requested enhancements, tremendous innovations along with important security features, like it was done with the previous Support Pack SAP BusinessObjects  BI 4.3 SP02 release.

In BI 4.3 SP03 as in previous releases mainly focused on Innovations, User Experience, Enterprise Readiness. Pinning feature and Folder path for document lists was and now will support to bring great leap in end user productivity. Merging BIP Restful Webservices with BOE Web application is a strategic move towards the long-term deployment expectations especially in complex deployment scenarios. Major security enhancements also got place in this release like the support for HSTS and enhancing the Password Criteria. To extend the origins of our integration story, Microsoft OneDrive support has been included.

All the details are explained in the following blogs:

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP03: What's new in the BI Platform?

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP03: HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP03: BI Launchpad Enhancements

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP03: Microsoft OneDrive Support

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP03: BIP Restful Web Services (BIPRWS) Web Application deployment simpli...

SAP Crystal Reports 2020 SP03 brings also another set of great enhancements to continue the innovative momentum goring across SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 Suite of products. "Fiorified" viewer for Crystal Reports in BI Launch Pad is delivered in this release along with other enhancements like "Export to Microsoft Drive & Google Drive".

For more details on the list of improvements and details about them, see the following blog:

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP03: what's new in Crystal Reports?

Notable Elements still available

Need4Viz freemium:

Link for registration.

This Freemium offering is still available with the release of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP03.

Our partner Need4viz continue to propose, free of charge, 7 graphic components of their catalog, for a limited time.

The advantage of this freemium offer, coupled with Web Intelligence, is that it transforms WebI into an Ad-Hoc Query – interactive reporting and dashboarding – data visualization and data exploration tool.

No need to use anything else: you will be able to respond to any BI use cases of your end-users. And that with your favorite reporting tool, for an immediate return on investment.

WIIISDOM freemium:

Link for registration.

While many customers are moving from BI 4.2 to BI 4.3 to benefit from the most recent SAP innovations, they must be able to upgrade, regularly, with zero risk and at a low cost.

All while making sure everything moves across to the new environment successfully.

To help our customers achieving this challenge, our partner WIIISDOM propose to get access to their 360Suite product, for free, and bulk test your WebI reports before and after your move (limited number of comparisons).

Interested by more Information?

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 SP03 is an important milestone in our journey, but certainly not the end of the road as we still have plenty of ideas to further improve our solution and embrace your future use cases.

Also, don’t miss the next version of the SAP Analytics BI Statement of Direction, where we disclose how we foresee the evolution of BusinessObjects portfolio and detail our investment areas.

In the latest version, we announced the future release of SAP BusinessObjects, under the code name “SAP BusinessObjects BI 2024”. In the next update planned for Q2 2023, we will detail two long awaited things :

- The name of this future release

- The themes and objectives of this one

We know that many companies are moving all or part of their BI landscape to the cloud, and we are committed to supporting you during this journey.

Several options are available, including our pure SaaS solution, SAP Analytics Cloud, and a managed cloud version of SAP BusinessObjects: SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise managed cloud edition.

And of course, you can use a combination of the different solutions and choose the pace at which you move your workflows to the cloud. One last comment here: in any case, you always have the choice to keep your data on premise since we offer live connectivity from all our BI solutions to your favorite data sources, including BusinessObjects universes and Web Intelligence documents.

Help Us to Better Help You

If you reach this section, thank you for taking the time to read the “What’s new in SAP BusinessObjects BI4.3 SP03?”.

Please, spend few additional minutes and share your thoughts by commenting this blog. We are eager to continue to better understand the SAP BusinessObjects BI world you work in today, and how SAP Analytics Cloud might help meet our customer BI needs and objectives in the future.