Converting Desktop Intelligence Considerations

Do I need to convert my DESKI documents as soon as possible?

Unfortunately there is no straight answer to this question, as it is depending on several factors and choises that are to be made.

Factors that are impacting your decision are most probably:

• The amount of rework required
• The total number of Desktop Intelligence documents
• Upgrade to BI4.0 OR BI4.1
• Use of VBA Makro's within the existing Desktop Intelligence documents
• Having insight in the usage of Desktop Intelligence documents

The document will provide you with answers on most of these factors, to allow you to plan your conversion process fitting your timelines.

Will DESKI be back in BI4.x?

NO, there will be no future release within the SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite that contains the Desktop Intelligence Client or Server components.

The End-Of-Life for Desktop Intelligence has been announced and can be found via: End-of-Life of Desktop Intelligence

Until when will Desktop Intelligence be supported?

Desktop Intelligence will be supported via the maintenance cycles of BusinessObjects Enterprise XI3.1.

The End of Mainstream Maintenance for BusinessObjects XI3.1 is on December 31st 2015.

The End of Priority One Support for BusinessObjects XI3.1 is on December 31st 2017.

I heard something about DCP / Desktop Intelligence Compatibility Pack.. What is this?

The Desktop Intelligence Compatibility Pack is a solution to enalbe a easier path to upgrade your existing XI platform into the new BI4.x platform. DCP enables the upgrade of Desktop Intelligence reports into the CMS of SAP BusinessObjects BI4.1 (not 4.0)

More details around DeskI Compatability Pack can be found here: DeskI is not back... but here is something that will help you to move to BI 4

How will SAP facilitate me in executing my conversion?

SAP ships the Report Conversion Tool with the Client Installation of the BI4.1 Suite. This tool supports you in the conversion from Desktop Intelligence into Web Intelligence. More details on the how to can be found later in this article.

Can I convert my Desktop intelligence documents to Crystal Reports?

No, Web Intelligence is the natural successor of Desktop Intelligence and based on the same principles for building reports. Crystal Reports has a complete different reporting foundation and more directed to Operational Reporting and Pixel Perfect Reporting capabilities. The Report Conversion Tool therefore only facilitates a conversion into Web Intelligence. If you really want to replace some or all reports from Desktop Intelligence into Crystal Reports, you will have to rebuild them from scratch.

How can I gain insight in the required effort before starting the conversion?

You can gain the required effort by reading this document.

What to I need to consider when planning my conversion?

Considations for planning can be found later in this document.

Are there documents available that help me planning the conversion?

Besides this document, you can find guidelines of planning the report conversion in the default user guides of SAP BusinessObjects BI4.0 as available on http://help.sap.com/bobi

Are there differences in the Calculation Engine between Desktop Intelligence and Web Intelligence?

Yes there are differences. The first and most important difference is the way formula's are constructed within Web Intelligence. Although the logi has not been changed, the construction of the formula has been changed. This means that your report developers do have to get used to a different way of building their formula's.

Besides the construction of the formula, there will be differences in the way how formula's are calculated. Further down in this document you can find more details around the changes in the calculation engine

Reasons to Convert

There are different reasons why you would decide to undertake a project to convert their Desktop Intelligence content to Web Intelligence. The benefits of these projects to move to Web Intelligence can be measured in several ways:

• Reduced total cost of ownership (license price, maintenance cost, …)
• Reduced deployment time, resulting in a shorter time to market
• Business user empowerment through the ease of use and the large feature set
• Support for a more cost-beneficial architecture than Desktop Intelligence
• End-of-Life of Desktop Intelligence

The office End-of-Life announcement can be found by this link

Planning the report conversion

Before starting the report conversion from Desktop Intelligence into Web Intelligence is is recommended to plan the activity.

A typical report conversion project exists out of the following phases:

Planning: Considerations

Before converting reports the following considerations have to be made:

• Assessment / Audit of current report use
• Gathering requirements
• Time and deadlines
• Resources required (IT/Hardware)
• Revoking Desktop Intelligence rights
• Training & Education
• Backup

This document will provide you with the steps for the report conversion planning and execution including best practices and sample conversions

Planning: Questions you have to ask yourself before starting the conversion

The planning will start with a list of questions that you have to ask yourself to enable you in getting the insight of the scope, impact, time and resources that are related to the report conversion project

The following questions have to be considered:

• Do you have enough information about the possibilities of Web Intelligence?
• How many people are impacted?
  • How will they be informed?
  • How can they get support?
    
• Have you considered moving your Desktop Intelligence deployment to Web Intelligence?
  if not, please explain?
  if Yes, describe the level of involvement and roles of the users involved in the project to move from Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence
  • IT / Development
  • BI Project Owners
  • Report Authors
  • BI Analysts
  • Business End-Users
  • External Resources
    
• Do you have information about your current Desktop Intelligence deployment:
  • Can you categorize the existing document into critical, useful, redundant, etc?
  • Who is using the information?
  • Do you use the following features within your current Desktop Intelligence deployment:
    • Personal Data Providers
    • VBA scripts
    • Free Hand SQL
      
• Do you have a global plan for sourcing the conversion to Web Intelligence?
• Do you have a training plan?
• What is the status / timing for your conversion from Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence?

Challenges that you may have encountered:

• You have previously investigated the conversion, but considered not to move any content to Web Intelligence due to planning, process or resourcing issues
• You have previously investigated the conversion, but due to missing features in Web Intelligence you never started the conversion
• You have started the conversion, but many or some Desktop Intelligence reports remain

Planning : Step-by-Step

For planning the conversion of your Desktop Intelligence deployment in Web Intelligence a number of steps can be follow to enable a successful en non-disruptive conversion process.

1. Get the list of documents from the various business departments along with their priorities
2. Set Full Client documents as the source and migrate these with the Upgrade Management Tool of SAP BusinessObjects BI4.x
3. Run the conversion using the Report Conversion Tool of SAP BusinessObjects BI4.x
4. Review the conversion results and review the log files if required
5. Estimate the level of rework for each document. Set categories as: no rework / some rework / a lot of rework / to be recreated / to be dropped
6. Handle the rework
7. Involve business owners for validation
8. Finish document list for each department and deliver packages to the conversion/migration team

Check list for Report Conversion

1. Review the current BusinessObjects environment
   Review appropriate migration path(s) for the conversion (BusinessObjects 5.x, 6.x, XIR2, XI3.x etc)
   
   - Newer systems have a direct upgrade path (XIR2 & XI3.x)
   - Older systems may require extra steps (BO5.x & 6.x)
   
2. Identify the impact on users
   - Identify most used and important reports
   - Identify pain points
   - Validate if Web Intelligence can address these
   
   Desktop Intelligence is End-Of-Life
   - Assess the impact of reducing then stopping the usage of Desktop Intelligence
   - Conversion of reports is available, but might require rework
   
3. Features
   Gather information on Desktop Intelligence features commonly used (Free Hand SQL, grouping, VBA etc)
   - Some features may be included already in BI4.0
   - The Web Intelligence reporting engine of BI4.0 has been enriched with many new features to support the report conversion and closing the feature gap
   - Some features may have been deprecated or replaced
   
   A full overview of feature comparison between Desktop Intelligence & Web Intelligence features please review the article: SAP Community Network Wiki - Business Intelligence (BusinessObjects) - Conversion from Desktop In...
   This article provides a comparison between the features of both products . It also provides an overview of features that cannot be converted including potential workarounds
   
4. Content Inventory and Clean-up
   It is strongly recommended to do at least some clean up of the reports before upgrading and converting them to Web Intelligence
   
   Should you migrate all Desktop Intelligence reports content or are you taking the opportunity for some clean-up activities?
   Identify unused reports for archiving
   
5. User Acceptance and Validation
   Utilize Report Conversion Tool (if possible upfront) to pre-assess the level of rework required.
   
   Based on the pre-assessment the following activities can be trigger to provide a smooth conversion:
   - Detailed overview of rework can result in a better estimation for issues, complexity, budget, resources, time frames and success factor
   - When impacted by depreciated / changed features or conversion issues, workarounds van be defined upfront and implemented consistently by early communication
   - Gain early insight if report can be converted or should be rebuild due to high number or complex conversion challenges, by this reducing the total effort
   - Easy categorization of documents and potential early insight if it will be
   
6. User Training
   Plan classroom trainings / e-learning and provide links to SAP SCN articles or forums that can support the participants in the conversion to be more successful.
   
   Discuss required/needed training and/or support with users

Auditing current Desktop Intelligence Utilization

To enable a solid understanding in the usage of your current Desktop Intelligence deployment by users or automated process like scheduling or publications, it is strongly recommended to enable the Auditing engine for a longer period upfront the actual conversion to collect realistic usage.

The auditing engine is capable of recording a large set of events that are taking place on the Desktop Intelligence content within your deployment.

Enabling Auditing

To enable auditing for Desktop Intelligence within an XI3.x environment the following steps can be executed (for XIR2 the steps are as good as equal)

1. logon to the CMC using an account with sufficient rights to edit application and auditing properties
2. Within the CMC naveigate to Applications -> Desktop Intelligence
3. On the Desktop Intelligence application, do a right mouse click to get to context menu and select "Audit Events"
   
4. Within the Auditing Settings ensure you have enabled (selected)
   - Auditing Status (to enable Auditing)
   - All auditable items available
   
5. After setting the Audit properties of the Desktop Intelligence save and close the Audit Settings
6. Within the CMC navigate to Servers -> Adaptive Processing Server. Do a right mouse click to get to context menu and select "Audit Events"
   
   Ensure "Auditing is Enabled" is ticked
   
   The Adaptive Processing Server configuration enables the Client Auditing Proxy to collect the auditing results from locally installed Desktop Intelligence clients
   
7. If you have more than one Adaptive Processing Server, you have to apply these settings for each and every one.
8. In CMC -> Servers -> Adaptive Processing Server > Properties, you should see :
   

Using Auditing Data

Once Auditing data is collected, the data can be retrieved via the shipped universe. The universe can be leveraged by the BusinessObjects Client tools like Desktop intelligence and Web Intelligence.

Within the Client Tool, select the "Activity" Universe:

Build the report containing the data you would like to use for collecting the Desktop Intelligence usage

Within BI4.0 there is no shipment of a default Audit Universe and Reports. If you are in need of a sample auditing universe and reports, please look into the document found by the url below.

Sample Auditing Universe and Reports for SAP BusinessObjects 4.0

Report Conversion Tool

The Report Conversion Tool (RCT) is available within the SAP BusinessObjects Client installation and enables you to convert existing Desktop Intelligence Document into Web Intelligence.

Report Conversion Tool support you in :

1. Gain insight in the conversion success rate
2. Gain insight in the parts that might require rework (via the audting option)
3. Run a report comparison for successfully converted documents
4. Convert Desktop Intelligence reports from the source system as Web Intelligence Reports to the target system (source and target can be the same deplending on the version)

Gain insight in the conversion successrate

Using the Report Conversion Tool, youcan gain isight in the success rate of your conversion batch.

Reports that are processed by the RCT can be catagorized into three available outputs:

• Fully Converted
  The source report can be fully converted into a WebIntelligence format. A full conversion does not automatically mean that there is a 100% conversion, manual rework might still be required

• Partially Converted
  The source report can be partially converted into a WebIntelligence format. A partial conversion odes mean that manula rework is required.

• Not Converted
  The source report cannot be converted. The main reasons for this will be the use of features from Deski that are not (yet) in Web Intelligence.

Gain insight in the parts that might require rework

While running the Report Conversion, it is possible to record the audit trace for later usage. The audit trace will enable you to gain insight in the components of the document that will required rework. The audit trail stores by document, by layout component the potential rework items.

The RCT audit trail will be stored in a special table located in the default AUDIT database schema and leveraging the connection settings as stored within the CMS. By default a universe and document is provided.

If you are running the report conversion tool incrementally it is recommended to enter a comment, allowing you to easily extract the results of a single run.

Unless you really want to remove all existing data in the table from previous runs, the setting "Keep previous rows in the audit table" is recommended.

Once the Audit data of the report conversion is saved within the Audit Database, the default universe and report as provided during the installation of the platform can provide you insight in the results.

For Partially Converted Reports, the exact error for de individual object is provided including the cause why the error is triggered. In some case workaround will be provided. Using the audit trail, you can easiliy gain upfront details on the potential amount of rework and share this with the respective content owners.

Run a report comparison for successfully converted documents

For the reports that have been converted successfully by the Report Conversion Tool, a comprison of the results can be executed. The Report Compare feature allows you the evaluate the results of the data enclosed in the report. Due to changes in the calculation engine, it is possible that results of local variables and formula's return different values. The Report Comparison feature will provid insight in this. the further analyze additional work to correct the formula's.

To compare the execution of data within the report (between original and converted version), please select the option "Compare fully converted documents"

In the next steps within the Report Conversion Tool, the comparison will enable you te gain insight in the potential changes in your data.

Convert Desktop Intelligence reports and Publish them as Web Intelligence Reports

As the final step within the Report Conversion Tool you can publish the created Web Intelligence reports to the target BI4.x Server. By default the RCT will publish the reports in the same folder as the original folder, however, you have the option to change the target folder to any folder accessible with your user account.

Report Conversion in XI3.x or BI4.x?

During your upgrade from XI3.x into BI4.0 and conversion from Desktop Intelligence in Web Intelligence there are two paths available for the conversion.

1. Use the Report Conversion Tool from XI3.x and upgrade the XI3.x Web Intelligence reports into BI4.0
2. Use the Report Conversion Tool from BI.40

Both path has their (dis-)advantages, however the path with the highest success rate and a potential lower amount of manual rework will be to use the Report Conversion Tool from BI4.0. The main reason for this is, that compared to XI3.x, BI4.x Web Intelligence has a number features build in which are often used in Desktop Intelligence and have been lacking in the XI3.x engine.

A full overview of feature comparison between Desktop Intelligence & Web Intelligence features please review the article: SAP Community Network Wiki - Business Intelligence (BusinessObjects) - Conversion from Desktop In...

When using the BI40 Report Conversion Tool, it is important to start the conversion with running the Upgrade Manager Tool. Upgrade Manager Tool will ensure that the universes used by the Desktop Intelligence reports are being upgraded into BI40. When running the Report Conversion Tool of BI4.0 and not having the universe upgraded, will fail the conversion!

The Upgrade Management Tool for BI4.0 is enriched with the Desktop Intelligence Plug-In. At the end of the upgrade process the results screen will record the number of excluded objects and a warning that Desktop Intelligence reports were not updated.

Best Practices and Tips

Planned for version 3

Sample Conversions

Planned for version 2

Reference Pages

Desktop Intelligence End of Life Announcement

SAP Community Network Wiki - Business Intelligence (BusinessObjects) - Conversion from Desktop In...

DeskI is not back... but here is something that will help you to move to BI 4

Version History