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It was cold and rainy in Paris, France this week but there was high energy and excitement around the SAP Paris Labs as partners from all over the world attended a 2-day workshop on the up coming new BusinessObjects release, BI 2025.
While we have all been getting comfortable with the new User Interface and all the new features in BI 4.3, SAP has been busily working away on the next major release of BusinessObjects.
The general release will be available in mid-March.
Unlike its predecessors, BI 2025, will not have Service Pack updates, just Fix Packs and it is planned to be fully supported for 3 years with an additional year of Customer Specific Maintenance (Emergency and security patches only). BI 2027 will follow BI 2025.
There are many new features and a lot of new functionality in BI 2025 and much to get excited about.
Firstly, there is a whole set of new UI5 components added to Web Intelligence. These include many new charts, graphs, selectors and a scrollable table (yay – at last!). You can use these new components with the existing Webi components for building reports and dashboards but you also have the option of using just the new components for a very exciting leap forward in functionality – offline interactive reports and dashboards.
When you create a Webi output with these new components, it will have a new format known as WIDX and you will be able to embed an existing virtual data set with the WIDX to create a ZIP file output that can be distributed to an external location (network share, FTP site etc) where the recipient can then use and interact with that Webi output and data set without logging in to Webi and being connected to the Webi server.
No additional BO licensing is required for these offline users and this could be a really useful way to distribute offline interactive Webi content to people outside of your organization.
Currently WIDX is a proprietary format and does not support export to PDF or Excel but still has a lot of potential.
Another nice new feature in BI 2025 is a new capability with Tool Tips where you can now configure a new chart, graph or report to appear in the tool tip as you hover over the parts of an existing graph, chart or table.
There have also been further enhancements to the new Data Tab feature which is getting a lot of praise from users of BI 4.3 SP4. In Bi 2025, two further joins (Right Join and Right Join with intersection) have been added to the existing data join combos. A formula editor has also been added in the transform drop down and you can create your own variables.
Yet another cool feature is the ability to create widgets on the BI Launchpad of existing components from your Webi reports or dashboards. They will appear in a new section on your Launchpad and then can be updated from the original report as well as provide you the option to go directly to that report or dashboard from the widget. This reminds me of the old desktop widgets in BusinessObjects which I know some people really loved because they have gauges and charts giving them a pulse on critical information they want to track.
There are further changes to the UI to both accommodate the new features and improve job flows.
There is also a new version of Crystal Reports, CR 2025, delivered with BI 2025 .
There is a lot more in BI 2025 and you will be hearing about it all in the coming months and different features and topics will be included in future SpeakBO webinars as well as at IBIS 2025 where you will have the opportunity to test drive it hands-on and try it out for yourself.
Lots to look forward to as BusinessObjects continues to evolve and shine.
