Using a BI Workspace (formerly known as Dashboard Builder), which is part of the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform to organize your dashboards, allows users to customize the look and feel of how dashboards are accessed. In addition, administrators can control access to each navigational layout. When we house dashboards in a BI Workspace, users don't have to navigate through numerous folders in order to reach their desired dashboard, but instead use web page style links to access their dashboard.
In our example, we will set up a BI Workspace, which will contain links to three dashboards.
Make sure you have your dashboards created and saved on the SAP BI Platform. Refer to the previous recipe, Publishing to SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, to learn how to do this. In our example, we use three dashboards, as shown in the following screenshot:
- Log in to BI Launchpad and choose BI Workspace from the Applications menu.
- Select Template from the Layout drop-down box. From the Predefined templates drop-down box that now appears, select 2 Rows.
- In the Module Library on the left, click on the Public Modules icon (third option). Here you can browse the BI documents on the BI Platform. Drag and drop your dashboards into the two sections.
- Now click the + Add a new tab button and give the new tab a name.
- Drag the third dashboard into the section.
- Click on the Save button, give your BI Workspace a name, and save it on the BI Platform.
- Click on the Exit Edit Mode button on the upper-right side of the screen. This is how the BI Workspace will look to users:
As you can see, when we set up a BI Workspace, it is easier to access the dashboards rather than clicking through a bunch of folders. You can think of a BI Workspace as a container that holds a set of dashboards.
There are some more neat things that you can accomplish with BI Workspaces.
In the General section of the Preferences menu of BI Launchpad, we can define how the Home tab for BI Launchpad should look. We can set a BI Workspace as the home tab with the following steps. So, when the user logs in to BI Launchpad, they will instantly see the BI Workspace.
- Go to the Preferences menu of BI Launchpad and select the General tab.
- Deselect Use Default Settings.
- Select the Home tab radio option, select Select Home tab, and then click on the Browse Home Tab button. Now select your BI Workspace and adjust the title text.
- Click on Save & Close to finish.
- Log in to BI Launchpad again and you'll see the BI Workspace pop up right away!
BI Workspaces not only support dashboards but other BI documents such as Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence Reports, and even websites!
A BI Workspace has the option to set up communication between the different documents. This allows the passing of values between documents that are placed on the same tab in a BI Workspace. For example, a selection made in a dashboard can lead to a change of data in a Web Intelligence document.
This feature lies outside the scope of this book, but you can check the BI Workspaces user guide by SAP for more information.
Note
You can find the BI Workspaces User Guide at http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/boexir4/en/xi4_bi_workspace_user_en.pdf.