Using Microsoft Excel in BO Dashboards


Benefits from using Microsoft Excel in designing SAP BO Dashboards 4.0


Should you continue to use Microsoft Excel also in BO Dashoboard 4.0?
Apart from Microsoft Excel having a wide reach among business users and being easy to use, there are three main benefits that Microsoft Excel provides when embedded inside the Dashboards designer:

A Data Model.
You can enter highly aggregated data directly into the spreadsheet and visualize it, so there is no need for a database. You can also pull in highly aggregated data from external sources, including SAP Business Warehouse (BW), SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) universes, XML and simple Web services.
A Calculation Engine.
In addition to Microsoft Excel having a very familiar and flexible formula language, it also provides a calculation engine.
An Eventing Model.
When a cell changes, we get a “data change” event. This is a very simple model, but we leverage it for more than just calculations.

You can either start with a blank spreadsheet inside the Dashboards designer or you can import an existing spreadsheet.

See Also:

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 - Spreadsheets

BO Dashboards 4.0 Supported Excel functions

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