Transcript Troubleshooting Your Domino HTTP Server Crashes and Hangs
What's new with SAP NetWeaver recommendations
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BI Broadcasting: Features, functions, and usage
Dr. Bjarne Berg Lenoir-Rhyne College
© 2006 Wellesley Information Services. All rights reserved.
What We’ll Cover
• Overview • The Broadcast Wizard • Advanced options for BI Broadcaster • Managing BI Broadcaster • How to make it work in practice • Wrap up
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What Is BI Information Broadcasting?
• It’s a standard part of SAP BW 3.5 and higher. It lets you send “reports”,
i.e., Bex queries, Workbooks & Web Applications
• Email addresses,
BW users, BW roles
• SAP Enterprise
Portal Knowledge Management folders
• SAP Enterprise
Portal Collaboration Rooms
Note You can also define and deploy iViews based on the resulting KM / Collaboration documents
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What Is BI Information Broadcasting? (cont.) Broadcasts can be configured to run:
Once only
On a schedule basis (every day, week, month)
During specific timeslots defined by the administrator
Or any time (if you allow)
When an event occurs i.e. when an “exception” occurs,
As part of a process chain You tell the system whether to send:
A link to regenerate the query, etc. based on live data, or
A standalone (pre-calculated) version of the item
There are several format and compression options
Key concept: Push Vs. Pull.
Broadcasting is a Push tool
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Why Is Broadcasting So Valuable?
Reduces the time users spend looking for information
Improves the like likelihood that users will use your BI data
Expands the reach of BI data to non-BW users as well!
Makes BW data available for users on the go
Lets you link your BW and Portal systems together!
Users can collaborate, integrate BW content with other enterprise and Web content, etc.!
Note
“Casual” users, non-BW users, travelling users, and executives are all prime candidates for broadcasted reports!
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Different Needs and Tools The information needs of the user communities are different KPI & Scorecard
Formatted • Simple • Easy to view • Limited nav • Aggregates
Flat Reporting
• Formatted • Print • Form based • Static • Predictable access
OLAP Reporting
• Drill Down • Slice and Dice • Analyse • Data Mining • Search and discover 6
New Broadcaster features of BI 2004s New Object Types You can broadcast BEx query views and formatted reports (“reports”) in addition to Web applications, queries and workbooks. Reports are a new BEx object type developed within the new BEx Report Designer tool.
New Output Formats New output formats are based on the distribution type you select. But, you now can broadcast web documents as PDF files.
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New Broadcaster features of BI 2004s New Distribution Types You can broadcast to any printer using Adobe’s PDF, Printer Common Language (psl) or Post Script (ps). (hint: Set up the printers under tools
CCMS
print). You to broadcast user-specific information based on attributes in the master data attributes using a distribution list in BI (bursting of emails). The information can be controlled by the system so that users only see data related to them.
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New Broadcaster features of BI 2004s Exception broadcasting is now available in the Broadcaster. Create the exceptions in the query designer and select distribution type in the broadcaster. You can also use additional distributions types (subordinate) and create rules for when the exception report is “monitored”/executed. Exceptions can be based on single events or levels of any performance measure.
You can use multiple distribution type to create a setting that broadcasts many channels (i.e. the printer and the portal).
To manage all alerts and workflow tasks from a single location, an alert is integrated with the portal’s universal worklist the “central alert framework” of NW application server.
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New Broadcaster features of BI 2004s To increase the performance of key queries, you can fill the OLAP Cache, or the MDX Cache. This is useful if you have large numbers of users accessing a query, or you have a query that accesses a high volume of data.
The Fill Precalculation Store distribution type allows you to precalculate Web templates, and the Precalculate Value Set option you to fill pre-calculated value set variables with values for characteristic values. The pre-calculated value sets are then available as variable values in BEx queries.
The old Reporting Agent in BW 3.x could pre-calculate the data of a template and access it through the URL . It could not broadcast queries, workbooks or web templates by email or to KM folders.
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Why is Broadcasting so all encompassing?
BW is an integrated decision support system with a high degree of flexibility.
Therefore the broadcaster has to function for a variety of purposes and for a diverse audience.
Today, broadcaster supports everything for portals, PDAs, alerts and email to caching and Knowledge Management.
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What We’ll Cover
• Overview • The Broadcast Wizard • Advanced options for BI Broadcaster • Managing BI Broadcaster • How to make it work in practice • Wrap up
NEW
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The Broadcast Wizard - ad hoc scheduling NEW You can access the Broadcast Wizard from the context menu in a query The Broadcast wizard is a tool for end users to distribute queries, and workbooks to single individuals or larger audiences through email, printers or the enterprise portal
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Choose an Output Format NEW I.e. HTML file We can use this option to send a single HTML file (standard static web page). This is an easy way to send webpages that can be used by handheld devices (i.e. Blackberry or PocketPCs), and also by custom web applications.
The report is a snapshot vs. "live" data
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Choose an Output Format NEW Query output can be now broadcasted in Excel format (XML for MS Office) without using Pre-calculation server. (Available as of SP8). The XML documents can be read by any parser engine that supports this format and can be used for customized web development efforts.
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Choose an Output Format (cont.) NEW HTML as Separate MIME Files This option results in a set of individual files for each web item in your report. The benefit of this standard web format option is that it optimizes reuse of objects, as images are cached in the browser after being accessed for the first time.
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Choose an Output Format (cont.) NEW
The recipient may not see the same as what you believe you sent him, since the data may have been refreshed
Online links back to current Data password to see the content, but can see the latest data).
since you sent the broadcast.
The link back to the on-line source (requires recipients to log on with a username and a This is the most secure method for protecting the access to your date. However, the recipient must have on-line access back to your system, have a username and password.
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Choose an Output Format (cont.) NEW
The output format determines how many steps the wizard has. I.e. PDF has 6 steps, while "on-line links" has 5.
The use of PDF as a publishing and Broadcasting option is new in NetWeaver 2004s. It does not exist in BW version 3.x. To make it work PDF broadcast Adobe Document Service (ADS) should be configured on the Java Stack
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Choose an Output Format (cont.) NEW PROS: file size much smaller CONS: Not as easy to use as you have to unzip the file & need licensing for the unzip program Zipping the files reduces size of the distribution files and help network traffic: 1. It is very good for MIME files, which tends to be many and relative large.
2. Not a good option for handhelds (requires unzipping, and several read steps) 3. Normally not needed for single HTML files unless the report is very long 4. Reduces network traffic and the size of the mail in the mailboxes.
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Identify Recipients and Enter a Message NEW Enter one or more email addresses, a subject, and body. The 'importance' level will flag the email for delivery to your recipient.
Click Continue to save and schedule the broadcast to execute later…
OR
Click Execute to execute the broadcast once only, during the next available processing window and exit...
Adding comments in the 'contents' area will make the query much more understandable to your recipient…
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Define A Name For the “Broadcast Setting” NEW
• This is the name under which your settings are stored • If you want to execute this broadcast more than once, with these
settings, you can save the settings.
• You can retrieve the settings later.
Tip Define groups of settings for reports you send repeatedly (i.e., weekly status reports, month-end financial reports, etc.)
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Tell the System When to Schedule the Broadcast NEW We can schedule the job to run every time the infocube is changed (the process chain has run) We can limit the users to when they can schedule jobs to avoid stress on the system. We can provide multiple pre defined times when they can schedule the reports.
We can also allow the users to create their own scheduling times (Only authorized users see this) Setting up pre-defined 'windows' of time is a developer's job.
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What We’ll Cover
• Overview • The Broadcast Wizard • Advanced options for BI Broadcaster • Managing BI Broadcaster • How to make it work in practice • Wrap up
NEW
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The BI Broadcaster BI Broadcaster is another way you can access tools to broadcast queries, workbooks and web apps. It is typically given to the powerusers or developers, since it have more options and requires slightly more skills.
You can get to the BI Broadcaster through WAD and Query Designer The 2004s Web Application Designer The New 2004s Query Designer
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Regular Scheduling by PowerUsers using BI Broadcaster Through the regular BI Broadcaster more advanced users or developers can broadcast content to specific BW users, roles, email addresses or email groups and set language. You can also make the broadcast user specific.
The output formats are the same as in the wizard.
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Power Users using BI Broadcaster You can determine the broadcast based on pre-defined selections, or you can use a control query to determine the characteristics values to be included in the Broadcast.
Standard template for broadcasting can be set from SAP Reference IMG Customizing Implementation Guide
SAP Business Intelligence
Reporting-Relevant Settings
SAP NetWeaver
BEx Web
Set Standard Web Templates.
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Determining the recipient of Bursted Broadcasts These fields are used for determination of the recipients in bursting of reports. Bursting is defined as the mass broadcasts with user specific views based on some values. In this example, we are bursting emails based on the company code and sending specific mailings based on each receiver's country (the email address has to be stored in NW).
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BI Broadcaster - Exception Reporting NEW If a certain exception has occurred, or if a certain level has been reached, you can make the broadcaster send you an exception report.
First you have to define the exceptions for the query and make the exception 'active'.
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BI Broadcaster - Exception Reporting Under the tab, "General Precalculation", the power users can use the defined exceptions to broadcast when exceptions occur. This means that the broadcast will only be sent when the selected trigger point occurs.
It is important to note, that only those exceptions defined in the query can be used in the broadcast settings here..
Key concept: Don't spend time monitoring 'business as usual' activities, only get alerted when exceptions occur And don't search for exceptions, send them automatically to you.
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Power Users using BI Broadcaster If you pre-calculate the queries, you can allow the recipient to navigate the reports by the characteristics you select. The more items you include, the larger the size of the broadcast items. This is not a 'big-deal' if you are mailing to a few of users, but for thousands of users daily, you should select these items carefully.
The benefit of the Filter Navigation tab is that you can select which items you want to enable, without having to create new queries.
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Why Broadcast to the Portal vs. Email?
• More powerful
Users can comment, rate, and discuss the broadcasted assets
You can place the assets in iViews on cockpits/dashboards
You can integrate the assets with other Portal content!
Portal users without a BW user id can now access BW content
Broadcasted assets are included in TREX searches
• More user friendly
Users can subscribe/unsubscribe themselves!
• Easier, more flexible administration
You can leverage the Portal’s access control lists/capabilities
No email address lists to maintain - users sub/unsubscribe
Avoids the email glut, and the BW/network performance hit!
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Broadcasting to the Portal - options The Broadcast options are similar to the email distribution. You have several choices: 1 - Deploy via KM “Favorites” 4 - Deploy via the “BW Showcase” role 2 - Deploy via a KM Folder 5 - Deploy via a custom iViews that you define 3 - Deploy Via Collaboration You can broadcast the content to the portal at fixed intervals and have the content instantly available through independent web pages. You can also broadcast to the portal through links back to your system There is a demo role available in SAP Enterprise Portal version 6.0. You can use this role for your publishing to the portal or enhance it anyway you like . The role is available under com.sap.ip.bi.business_explorer_showcase
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What We’ll Cover
• Overview • The Broadcast Wizard • Advanced options for BI Broadcaster • Managing BI Broadcaster • How to make it work in practice • Wrap up
NEW
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Security
Controlling who can schedule ad-hoc, or through the BI Broadcaster is a critical maintenance issue. You can control the user's ability to schedule the reports, through the authorization object S_RS_BCS (the administrator still uses the standard S_RS_ADMWB object).
You also have new broadcast settings for the RSADMWBOBJ field. These settings include: Maintain/Delete (23), Display (03) and Execute/Schedule (16).
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New Broadcaster Administrator Interface in NW2004s News: With SAP NetWeaver 2004s, there is a new transaction RSRD_ADMIN (or rsa1 > Administration -> Broadcasting), where you can manage BI Broadcaster
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New Broadcaster Administrator Interface in NW2004s Broadcast Types Distribution Types Output Formats
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Monitoring Schedules in Broadcaster Administrator NEW The Broadcast Administrator allows you to monitor and see who is scheduling what, and if sometimes are more heavily utilized than others (i.e. 7-8 am).
- This is a great tool to help balancing stress on the system.
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Reorganizing Bookmarks with Broadcaster Administrator This feature can be used for reorganizing and deleting bookmark IDs and view IDs that were created for Information Broadcasting by the system and are no longer needed.
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Managing Broadcast Logs RSRD_LOG - This displays all logs for BI Broadcaster settings. Logs are only written for scheduled settings and not for settings executed directly. You can also use RSBCSRE03 to delete email logs created by broadcaster In large BW systems with many users and frequent broadcasts, the logs can be really big and should be deleted periodically
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Managing Broadcast - Execute and Debug Using transaction RSRD_START, you can execute (and therefore debug for test purposes) any settings. Make sure that the indicator for executing settings online is activated.
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Process chains and Timepoints You can also assign broadcast event to process chains. First you create a variant with and assign it to the infocube. The event in the process chain will trigger the broadcast event.
Creating timepoints Background jobs can be created (transaction SM36) to schedule any jobs starting with the text "TP_BROADCASTING_". This is to allow users to broadcast at certain time points. Under SM36 start the condition, select the date and time when the job starts, select the periodic flag and define it as hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or other.
Timepoints controls when end users can schedule broadcasts. This is used to avoid heavy scheduling during data loads or times when many users are accessing the systems.
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Creating Timepoints Creating timepoints Background jobs can be created (transaction SM36) to schedule any jobs starting with the text "TP_BROADCASTING_".
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Creating Timepoints You can create 'empty' periodic jobs, that queries are later associated with I.e. through the wizard.
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You can also create jobs to run after other jobs or defined events Linking a job to another job, can create set of events that allows the scheduler to build complex broadcast rules that may be hard to maintain (and understand) The best approach is to create timepoints (periodic broadcasts), as the default broadcasting option for users to leverage.
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Jobs can also be created using the job creation wizard
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Reporting Agent is Dying – Don’t Use it!!
IMPORTANT: “Old Reporting Agent scenarios still run in NetWeaver 2004s. However, the Reporting Agent will not be developed any further and is removed from the 2004s Workbench. You can now only reach the Reporting Agent using transaction code REPORTING_AGENT”
– SAP 46
Workbook pre-calculation - what do you need?
Use transaction RSPRECADMIN in the BW administrator workbench to get to the pre-calculation settings. 1. MS-Office XP (or .net framework version 1.1 or higher) 2. MS-Excel-2000 (or higher) 3. SAP BW workbook pre-calculation services.
Note: servers with this installed will be visible under the transaction 'RSPRECADMIN' and you can also perform server load balancing.
4. GUI v. 6.20/6.40 with Bex
This is not needed for standard broadcasting of web queries or web applications, only for workbooks.
Again: Query output can also be broadcasted in Excel format (XML for MS Office) without using Pre-calculation server. (Available as of SP8).
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What We’ll Cover
• Overview • The Broadcast Wizard • Advanced options for BI Broadcaster • Managing BI Broadcaster • How to make it work in practice • Wrap up
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Deciding Who Should Be Allowed to Do What - Governing Council
• There are many options and decisions to be made on who should be able to access all the
Broadcast features. A good approach to decide how gets access and also when to create any timepoints is to create a Governing Council of a few managers and developers Email Portal Regular users
Power users - /
Authors Developers
BW Admins
Bex Wizard
BI Broadcaster Process Chains - / -
-
One-time
Schedule using pre-set timepoints
Free schedule - /
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Spam filters and server blockers Users that create a high volume of emails may be automatically blocked by spam filters in the browsers and mail servers. You will have to make sure that the internal email system have flagged you as a valid email broadcaster.
Review regularly that mail systems such as Yahoo, Google, AOL, Microsoft and others have not flagged all your emails as spam.
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Management of Timepoints Be careful to not add all your broadcasts to the end of process chains. Large systems with hundreds of infocubes may be 'bogged down' with lengthy process chains that slows down the whole load processing.
Good timepoints may be 6-8 am when the load jobs are finished and before a large numbers of users accesses the system. Another good time may be at the end of weekly, or monthly loads on the weekend (i.e. Saturday or Sunday mornings).
The key is to balance the times when jobs can be executed. If this is not carefully, all users tends to schedule their broadcast between 7 and 9 am each morning.
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Avoiding Volumes of Junk Users have a tendency to schedule queries for distribution and never disable the schedule after it has started to run. This creates mountains of junk that few actually use.
Users who don't want a broadcast tends to simply delete it, or automatically removes the email. So, how do you know if anyone reads the broadcasts?
A periodic review of scheduled broadcasts should be performed by the developers to see if there are any candidates for deletion.
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How to stop Volumes of Junk - Monitoring Broadcasts A process to review and control internal "spam-kings' has to be established.
Use the transaction codes 'SCOT' and 'SOST' to monitored SMTP mails.
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Push Vs. Pull - Change in Mentality Users have a to change their mentality to stop reviewing everything that is 'business as usual'. The Push mentality requires that users plan for what is important to them and set up fixed sets of reports that are used to manage the business.
In general the push approach reduces the time users spend looking for information and provides them with more time to examine data that really matter to them.
You should carefully consider using the BI Broadcaster for the core reporting that is done through any handheld computer devise. This will simplify the security setup and also increase the speed of any report (will be viewed on the device instead of accessing back to the source system through limited bandwidth).
Casual users and executives are prime candidates for broadcasted reports
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KPI and exception reporting A major challenge in setting up the BI Broadcaster for exception reporting is the definition of what an exception is.
This is setup in the query and used by the broadcaster.
If the query does not define the exception the way that a user wants it, it is not available to broadcast as an exception.
Exception reporting require that a query is executed and 'evaluated' to see if it should be broadcasted. This overhead can be substantial if you have a high number of users 'monitoring' different queries
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What We’ll Cover
• Overview • The Broadcast Wizard • Advanced options for BI Broadcaster • Managing BI Broadcaster • How to make it work in practice • Wrap up
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7 points to take home 1. Do not schedule all your broadcasts after a process chain has completed. It is tempting but may slow down nightly data loads.
2. Control the times users can run reports to avoid too high stress on the system.
3. Segment the broadcast tools based on the user roles and level of training.
4. Monitor the logs carefully and make sure that "spam-kings" are controlled.
5. Do not give free scheduling to a high number of users.
6. Be aware that spam filters may catch many of your broadcasts.
7. If you are not on NW 2004s seriously consider an upgrade and stop using the Reporting Agent.
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Resources
Dr. Bjarne Berg’s resource site http://csc-studentweb.lrc.edu/swp/Berg/BB_index_main.htm
Broadcaster at International Paper, ASUG 2006 – Dr. Berg & Joyce Butler
http://csc-studentweb.lrc.edu/swp/Berg/Articles/ASUG-2006-v6.ppt
BeX Broadcaster including BI 7.0 new features – Dr. Berg & Filip Lemmens
http://csc-studentweb.lrc.edu/swp/Berg/Articles/Portals_2006_Broadcaster_v19.ppt
SAP BeX Broadcaster - How to make it work in practice – Dr. Berg
http://csc-studentweb.lrc.edu/swp/Berg/articles/broadcaster_v15.ppt
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Your Turn!
Questions?
Dr. Bjarne Berg Director of BI, MyITGroup Ltd. [email protected]
http://csc-studentweb.lrc.edu/swp/Berg/BB_index_main.htm
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