Introduction
Are you new to SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI)? Or are you looking for a fast and easy way to find the answer to you BI questions? Then this guide is for you.
New to SAP BI
What is BI?
These tutorials have been developed to help you get started using Business Intelligence products. New content is added as it becomes available, so check this site for updates.
Where to download BI products?
You can download SAP BI product’s Support Packages and Patches here.
https://support.sap.com/software.html
Where are BI-related documents?
The Analytics Knowledge Center lets you search for files related to a specific product, or a specific release, or a combination of product and release. Multiple languages versions are available.
What is Service Market Place (SMP)? – One Support Launchpad?
The Service Market Place (SMP) hosts the Support Portal, Help Portal and other useful content.
The One Support Launchpad is also available.
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/
What is the Support Portal? – One Support Launchpad
Here you can
- search for SAP Notes, Knowledge Base Articles;
- request a license key;
- create incidents and check your inbox;
- read SAP Spotlight News, etc.
The One Support Launchpad is also available.
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/
How to get a license key for a BI product?
You can request a license key or get a temporary license key here: https://support.sap.com/keys-systems-installations/keys.html
For problems when requesting or creating a license key, you can create an incident using component XX-SER-LIKEY-BOJ.
Self-service
What is the BI Platform Support tool?
The BI Platform Support Tool is a Java-based utility used by support engineers, consultants, and BI administrators. It simplifies the process of reporting on the landscape configuration, performing root cause analysis, and delivering performance optimization and go-live services.
Please always remember to provide this information to SAP Support when you create an incident.
http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/x/5oMCFQ
Where to find Product Available Matrix (PAM)?
Product Availability Matrix:
https://apps.support.sap.com/sap/support/pam
The following KBA contains links to all the PAM documents for BI Products.
2183884 - Master KBA: Supported Platforms Guide / Product Availability Matrix (PAM) document links
Where is the SAP BI Forum?
The BI Forum contains useful blogs, answers to questions from other customers, and useful localized documents.
When you have a question about BI products, this is the best place to start.
http://scn.sap.com/community/business-intelligence
How to troubleshoot on my own?
Would you rather try to solve an issue on your own, rather than creating an incident?
With ‘Troubleshooting by Scenario,’ you can.
This allows you to follow exactly the same steps and methodology that a SAP support engineer or developer would follow to isolate the issue.
http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/x/A4ZjFg
How to size your system to improve performance?
Sizing means determining the hardware requirements of an SAP solution, such as network bandwidth, physical memory, CPU power, and I/O capacity.
http://www.service.sap.com/sizing
1570271 - How to find Sizing information for SAP Business Objects Products
SAP’s Sizing Guide provides recommendations and best practices to help with deploying and scaling the various services in SAP BusinessObjects BI 4. Also included are information and details about the sizing tests and the methodology used to create the various sizing tools and documents in support of BI 4.
https://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-33126
What would you do when you meet a third-party product error?
Apache Tomcat, a free open-source third-party web application server, is not an SAP product.
SAP recommends you contact a qualified third-party vendor or consultant for problems such as performance tuning, OutOfMemory issues, or not being able to start or stop Apache Tomcat.
2280098 - Does Apache Tomcat belongs to Product Support scope?
The other third-party products used by BI are also supported as the similar way.
Where to check SAP BI Product’s Support Package and Patch schedule?
Here you will find the information on the Maintenance Strategy and Schedule for BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1 and BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.x. While please be aware that the information contained in this schedule is subject to change. SAP BusinessObjects does not guarantee the availability of a delivery on the specified date.
The delivery frequency of a product version may change during its lifecycle.
2144559 - Maintenance/Forward Fit Strategy and Schedule for BOE XI3.1 and BI4.x
How to handle the security vulnerabilities?
When a third-party tool such as WebInspect or AppScan has been pointed at a deployment of an SAP Business Objects product, (XI R2, XI 3.1, BI 4.x etc) and the resulting report shows a number of security vulnerabilities (such as Cross Site Scripting), you could refer to the following SAP KBA to see the responsibilities of SAP engineers and the customer.
Where to submit a product enhancement request?
To request a new feature or product enhancement, SAP has defined a new process and a new tool that is now available to customers called Idea Place. Idea Place allows customers to log Enhancement Requests themselves and work more directly with our technology and Development group.
1515837 - How To: Enhancement Request Process - "Idea Place"
Creating an incident
How to use chat with BI Support in real time?
SAP is now offering chat support for specific product components. For these, you can always use chat to contact SAP Support in real time.
2213344 - How to start a chat with SAP Support [video]
What is the SAP Customer Interaction Center’s hotline number?
560499 - Customer Interaction Center: Hotline Numbers & E-mail Addresses
What’s the difference between Support and Consulting?
When you have a consulting request, you can use SCN BI forum or consulting service.
83020 - What is consulting - What is support?
What’s the criteria for Very High priority incident?
An incident should be categorized with the priority "very high" if the problem has very serious consequences for normal business processes or IT processes related to core business processes. Urgent work cannot be performed. This is generally caused by the following circumstances.
- A productive system is completely down.
- The imminent system go-live or upgrade of a production system can't be completed.
- The customer's core business processes are seriously affected.
- And for each circumstance a workaround is not available.
67739 - Priority of problem incidents
How many questions can I ask in one incident?
There should only be one question per incident. This ensures that you get speedy assistance for each problem you may be having. Different questions can be addressed separately by different engineers specialized in different areas.
50048 - Several queries in an incident
Why do SAP Support engineers ask how to reproduce an issue?
SAP Support engineers need to reproduce the errors in order to be able to find a solution. This is the only way to find out what is happening in the code.
9 - Error cannot be reproduced: No solution
If the issue cannot be reproduced, you may find out some information on the SAP SCN Forum.
http://scn.sap.com/community/business-intelligence
How to do a remote screen-share session with SAP Support?
SAP Support uses Citrix GoToAssist to perform remote sessions with customers.
2026090 - How to install and configure Citrix GoToAssist from the SAP Service Marketplace [video]
How to perform a remote support?
There are many remote support types according to different situation, such as HTTP connection, WTS connection, BW specific connection. Your system needs to be configured according to the notes below to benefit from remote support.
592085 - Set up the HTTP Connect service
605795 - Windows Terminal Server connection in remote support
2254845 - SAP NI Connection replaces "BW RFC" and "BW GUI" Connection
In the event of a problem, you can create an incident using component XX-SER-NET. Our engineers from the Network team will help you.