Introduction
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Suite includes an integration with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform 4.2 SP7. When implemented, your company can:
- run all standard and custom Crystal Reports through Suite using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform.
- use the Analysis Center powered by SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform in the Suite to create ad-hoc reports and queries.
Contact your Mitratech Account Manager for information concerning the licensing of BusinessObjects. Two components exist in Suite’s integration with BusinessObjects:
- the BusinessObjects server
- the boxir4 Web application provided with Suite
Both of these components require the installation of the BusinessObjects software onto the local network environment.
Because the Suite is fully integrated with the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, security is carried over from the eCounsel or Secretariat application into all report templates and Analysis Center reports. Therefore, matter Logical Group, private matter, and database access security is obeyed for eCounsel and WorldView security and database access security is obeyed for Secretariat.
Crystal Reports
The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is the server-side engine that powers Crystal Reports templates, which are run through the eCounsel and Secretariat applications. All standard reports for the Suite are provided in Crystal Reports 10.
Analysis Center
Analysis Center is BusinessObject’s Web-based (DHTML) query and analysis tool that provides you with a simple WYSIWYG report creation environment and easy-to-use interface. Analysis Center gives you the ability to drill down into data and the ability to customize reports without programming. The Analysis Center interface is based on the creation of universes, BusinessObjects’ semantic layer that allows the designer to organize data using business language rather than data language, thus reducing the complexity for the business user.
Universes
When you purchase Analysis Center to be used with Suite, Mitratech provides a standard universe, which maps the data in your database to an easy-to-use interface within Analysis Center to make exploring data simple. When you create an ad-hoc query in Analysis Center, you are connecting to the universe and running the query against the database. In effect, you can analyze data and create reports using the objects in a universe without seeing, or having to know anything about, the underlying data structures in the database.
When creating a query, the universe contains the following elements:
- Objects – Retrieves the data that is the basis for analysis in a report (such as entity names, matter names).
- Classes – Objects are grouped into folders called classes. Each class also can contain one or more subclasses. The role of classes is to organize the objects into logical groups. When you create queries on the universe, classes help you to find the objects that represent the information that you want to use in a query.
- Subclasses – Contain objects that are a further subcategory of the objects in the upper level of the class.
In order to use Analysis Center within Suite, the universe must reside on the BusinessObjects server. A BusinessObjects client installation, called Universe Design Tool, is required to export a universe(s) to the BusinessObjects server. The BusinessObjects client installation files are located on the BusinessObjects installation media provided to you by Mitratech.
Queries
A query is one or more statements that request data from a database. A request can be simple (for example, which entities are billing entities), or more complicated (for example, which matters have costs of more than $10,000).
If the data is available, then the requested data is returned in the form of a table that contains rows and columns. If no data is currently available for an object, the table rows and columns appear empty.
BusinessObjects Licensing
Licensing of BusinessObjects is strictly enforced according to SAP regulations when running BusinessObjects Crystal Reports and Analysis Center reports within Suite. When configuring BusinessObjects in Suite Manager, Mitratech recommends using a named license for the administrator license that runs all standard BusinessObjects reports from within the Reports module of eCounsel or Secretariat. All other licenses may be named or concurrent depending on your needs, but will need to be purchased separately and should account for the total number of Suite users who may run reports. When running an Analysis Center report published to the Reports module, the administrator license and a user (either named or concurrent) license are used to run the report.
For example, if your deployment of eCounsel includes two report developers and 100 users, your licensing model could include three named licenses (one for the administrator and two for the report developers) and 10 concurrent licenses (may need to be increased if usage is exceeded). Mitratech recommends performing an analysis of concurrent report use to determine the number of licenses that should be purchased.
When running BusinessObjects Crystal Report or Analysis Center reports in eCounsel or Secretariat, concurrent licenses are not released until the session timeout in BusinessObjects is reached or the user logs out of eCounsel or Secretariat. Note that closing the browser without logging out will continue to consume the concurrent license. See Configuring Session Timeout Values for more information on setting the session timeout in BusinessObjects.
Before You Begin
Integrating the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform with Suite is a multi-step process that includes the following:
Step 1: Installing or upgrading Suite. See the Suite Installation Guide for more information.
Step 2: Creating additional database objects to provide the security layer for the reporting solution. This step is comprised of a schema for stored procedures, security tables, and views, and an additional database user that BusinessObjects uses to access these views. Scripts and instructions will be provided to your database administrator to run against your existing Suite database.
Step 3: Installing or upgrading BusinessObjects Business Platform 4.2 SP 7. See Installing BusinessObjects.
Step 4: Creating a root BusinessObjects directory that will be used to store all Suite standard and Analysis Center reports.
Step 5: Configuring users and groups in BusinessObjects for running reports and creating ad-hoc reports using Analysis Center. Additional information is included to update Suite user accounts with the applicable BusinessObjects user accounts/passwords for Analysis Center. See Configuring BusinessObjects.
Step 6: Importing eCounsel/Secretariat universes, configure the universe(s) for use with Suite, and then exporting to the BusinessObjects server. See Configuring Universes.
Step 7: Configuring Suite for the BusinessObjects integration, importing standard reports, configuring access to Analysis Center for Suite users, and setting preferences in eCounsel/Secretariat to use a BusinessObjects user account to run reports. See Configuring Suite.
Using this Guide
This guide uses the following typefaces and special symbol conventions:
- A bold font designates a button, menu, dialog box, or tab within Suite.
- An italic font designates a checkbox or option.
- File paths and directories are formatted like this. For example: c:\My Documents.
- The names of pages, dialog boxes, and menu options are capitalized when they appear in text. Additionally, the word “tab” is often used to denote an area (a panel) within a module. In these instances, the word will be capitalized as well, as in the Base Info tab.
- Text that appears in italic within angled brackets (such as <Server>) is called a placeholder representing information you must supply.
- References to keys on the keyboard are indicated in brackets, such as <CTRL>.
- A icon points to tips and generally helpful information.
- A icon alerts you to particularly important information that may have a significant impact on the setup and usage of Suite.
- The symbol marks features that are premium and may require a separate installation and/or a registration key code.