InfoSol We're passionate about inspired business intelligence
As I present and demo BusinessObjects to customers and at BO User Group Meetings around the world, I am always surprised that so many people have never used, and sometimes never even heard, of some of its best features.
So, here is my quick list of the top 3 under-utilized features in BusinessObjects that could both take your productivity up a few notches and save your organization a lot of money.
1. Data Tab Mode in Web Intelligence
This super cool new functionality came along in BI 4.3 SP3 but was fully delivered in BI 4.3 SP4 and further enhanced in BI 2025. Basically, it is a new option that allows a report developer to profile, transform and combine data all inside of Web Intelligence. You can profile your different data sources to see distincts and nulls in your data and then perform transforms on the columns. This now includes using a formula editor in BI 2025 and creation of variables.
In addition, you can combine multiple data sources together specifying the type of join and keys you want to join on. Once you have transformed and combined your data, you can produce new reports or dashboards against it or save it as Excel for reuse.
This video explores the new joining enhancements in BI2025’s Data Mode
2. Web Intelligence as a Data Source
This feature has been around for a while (all 4.x releases and BI 2025) and when it first came out it was positioned to help more casual users to create reports themselves. However, today, with consumption-based databases in the cloud, it has taken on a whole new significance. It allows you to put a universe on top of a Webi report so that you can create child reports from this master report. This often simplifies report creation for the user as the master report will have less objects than the universe it was created from and usually limited to a subject matter area.
In Bi 4.3 SP4, a new feature was added that allows the child reports to be automatically refreshed when the master report is refreshed. This means that only the master report needs to refresh against the original data source and if that happens to be a consumption-based repository like Snowflake, you can save a lot of money in consumption fees using this feature.
3. Custom Elements
This feature has also been around for all the 4.x releases. It allows you to bring in a third-party component and utilize it in your Web Intelligence reports. While SAP has added a lot of new components (UI5 library) to Web Intelligence in BI 2025, these are mostly graphs, charts and enhanced tables. However, BusinessObjects partner companies, like InfoSol, have developed the ability to create functional no-code apps that can do “What If?” scenarios, write back to databases and AI that can be utilized inside of Webi using Custom Elements.
This means that you can do write back and AI in Web Intelligence today in Bi 4.3 and BI 2025. Here is a short YouTube video showing an example.
There are so many more BusinessObjects features I could talk about so I might make this a series if I get positive feedback.
I know many BusinessObjects customers co-exist with Power BI and Tableau and tend to use these tools for Business Intelligence relegating BusinessObjects to operational reporting but these features can really enhance your operational reporting and take it to a whole new level.
We will be showcasing all these features and more along with BI 2025 and BI 2027 at this year’s IBIS 2026 – the 3-day “Everything BusinessObjects” Conference. This year’s conference will have hands-on sessions and includes 2 additional days of free hands-on, instructor-led virtual training. So that’s another way you can save a boat load of time and money.
