Dashboards can be saved to the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform. The platform hosts the dashboards so that users can easily access them through the BI Launchpad (formerly known as InfoView) or via the SAP BusinessObjects BI Mobile app for mobile dashboards (see the recipe Going mobile later in this chapter). Also, administrators can control the dashboard's security on the platform.
When we export a dashboard to the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, we store it in the repository. From there, we can control accessibility to the dashboard and make sure that we have one source of of the actual dashboard instead of sending out multiple dashboards through e-mail and possibly getting mixed up with what is the latest version. When we log in to BI Launchpad it also passes the login token to the dashboard, so we don't have to enter our credentials again when connecting to SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform data. This is important because we don't have to manually create and pass any additional tokens once we have logged in.
SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards supports saving a dashboard offline at runtime. This means that a user can create an offline snapshot of the dashboard that contains data retrieved at the time of saving and store that copy on their local machine. When doing this, all external data connections are disabled and connectivity-related components, such as the Connection Refresh Button, are also disabled.
Enabling offline dashboards is easy. Go to File | Document Properties and select the Allow This Dashboard to be Used Offline option.
To save the dashboard while running it, right-click anywhere on the background of the dashboard and click Save Current Copy of Dashboard to Local Disk.