With SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Service Pack 5, a big new feature was introduced: mobile dashboards. This feature enables the creation of HTML5-compatible dashboards that can be viewed on mobile devices such as the iPad. Instead of using the mouse pointer to interact with the dashboard, the user can now tap, touch, drag, and pinch to control the dashboard.
In this recipe, we will create a mobile dashboard and have a look at all the requirements and the supported and the unsupported options of this feature.
To work with mobile dashboards, we need to meet the following requirements:
- SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Service Pack 5 or higher
- SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.0 Service Pack 5 or higher, with mobile server deployed
- SAP BusinessObjects Mobile app for iOS or Android
In this recipe, we will use a simple dashboard with some charts but without any connections.
- First, we want to preview the dashboard to see how it would look in a mobile format. In the menu toolbar, go to File | Preview | Mobile (Fit to Screen) or use the button in the standard toolbar.
- We can now check the look and interactions of the mobile dashboard. Click on a bar or a point on any chart to see how the mouseover values are displayed.
- Leave the preview mode. Next, we are going to save our dashboard to the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform. In the menu toolbar, go to File | Save To Platform | Mobile Only. Log in to the platform and select the location where you want to save the dashboard. Click the Save button to finish.
- Grab your iPad or other mobile device and fire up the SAP BusinessObjects Mobile app. Log in to your SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform. You will see the dashboard that we just saved pop up on top.
- Click on the View button to start the dashboard.
Mobile dashboards are not exported to an SWF file, but to an HTML5-compatible object. We need the SAP BusinessObjects Mobile app to run the dashboard from the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform.
There are some neat features that can be accomplished with mobile dashboards as well as some limitations that we will talk about now.
Unfortunately, not all components and connections are supported with mobile dashboards. When we use such a component it will simply be excluded from the mobile dashboard and the connection will obviously not work. To check whether we are using an unsupported item, we can use the Mobile Compatibility panel.
This panel lists all the components and connections that are used and notes if they are supported, unsupported, or have several unsupported features. In the following example, we can see that the Tree Map and Play Selector components aren't supported. The Combo Box has a few unsupported features. Connection 1, which is a SAP BW connection created with the Data Manager, is also not supported. We can also see that a recommendation is given for the canvas sizing so that it matches the iPad screen format.
The following connection types are supported in mobile dashboards:
- All connections created with the Query Browser
- Web service query (Data Manager)
- Flash Variables (Data Manager)
- External Interface Connection
Also, only the Nova theme is supported and you have to make sure that you only use fonts with (iOS5+) appended.
A nice feature of the SAP BusinessObjects Mobile app is that it not only lets us view the dashboard, but also allows us to make annotations to it and share it through e-mail and SAP StreamWork.
- In the upper-right corner of the screen, click on the settings button to enable the option bar.
- Click on Annotate. Here you can add lines and text, crop sections, and even add a voice memo to the dashboard.
- Click on Done. Now two new buttons will appear: Email and StreamWork. By clicking on one of these buttons, you can share a print of the dashboard, including the annotations you just made.
