New Functionality in SAP BI BusinessObjects 4.0 Feature Pack 3

November 21, 2011 | SAP News | Clare Plaisance | 1 Comment

Feature Pack 3 will offer improvements in Business Objects Explorer, better mobile integration and more.

SAP BI BusinessObjects 4.0 Feature Pack 3, due to enter ramp-up in early 2012 and be released in the first half of 2012, will fill in the gaps and fix the bugs in the 4.0 release and will offer new functionality originally planned for a larger, later 4.1 release. Feature Pack 3 will be able to be installed on an existing deployment of SAP BI BusinessObjects 4.0 without a major upgrade. Read on for more details on the new features that will be available.

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer

Feature Pack 3 will include a number of updates to SAP BusinessObjects Explorer. Exploration Views, a new feature, allows for users to create floating analytics panels and arrange them on the screen for customized viewing. Users will be able to share these exploration views with other web and mobile users.

The new version of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer will include geographical visualizations via a new semantic type for geographic dimensions. Users will be able to view data plotted on maps with colors or bubbles. A new semantic type for time dimensions will allow for improved visualization and navigation of time-based information as well. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer in Feature Pack 3 will also include guided searches including spell-checking, alternative search term suggestions and an improved scoring algorithm.

StreamWork Integration

Feature Pack 3 will include integration between SAP StreamWork and SAP BI BusinessObjects for improved collaboration. Users will be able to send BI documents to StreamWork from within BI.

See a video preview of StreamWork integration here.

HANA Support

SAP BI 4.0 included support for SAP HANA as database via ODBC. Feature Pack 3will add support for SAP HANA as a central management server (CMS) and auditing database to be used with BI BusinessObjects.

Mobile Capabilities

Feature Pack 3 will include integration with the Sybase Unwired platform and with Afaria, adding mobile device management features to the BI Business Objects mobile applications.

The new version will offer improved platform support, adding BlackBerry Playbook and Android to the devices supported, although support for Symbian and Windows Mobile will be deprecated. Touch support for BlackBerry will also be added. The iPad version of Explorer will be able to access and analyze data offline and the user experience of the SAP BusinessObjects apps on the iPad will be improved.

Data Services

Since the Business Intelligence Platform will be updated in Feature Pack 3, updates to SAP BusinessObjects Data Services and SAP BusinessObjects Information Steward will also be included. SAP BusinessObjects Data Services 4.1 (including SAP BusinessObjects Data Integrator 4.1, SAP BusinessObjects Data Quality Management 4.1, and SAP BusinessObjects Data Quality Management SDK 4.1) and SAP BusinessObjects Information Steward 4.1 will be part of Feature Pack 3. In the new versions, the user interface for Data Services loads into HANA and other systems will be simplified, more regions and languages will be supported for global data quality and text analytics coverage, and support of multi source BI universe metadata will be improved.