Reporting With Business Objects InfoView 6'1

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Reporting With Business Objects InfoView 6.1
Presented by Elvira Gutkin and Galina
Zimenkova. We work in Health Plus Business
Objects ITS Team. June 2004
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Topics to be covered in this presentation

• What is Business Objects InfoView?
• What can be done in InfoView?
• Customizing My InfoView page
• Overview of Report/Document areas
• Accessing Corporate Documents
• Running/refreshing reports
• Saving and exporting to different formats
• Sending Business Objects Documents/reports
• Accessing Personal Documents, Inbox Documents
• Questions/Answers, training exercises

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Business Objects provides a powerful set of
reporting and analytic tools for accessing data
from different sources, formatting it, and
delivering in an easy and user-friendly manner.
It is the easiest tool on the market for ad hoc
reporting that enables you to generate your
reports in a variety of formats Excel, Word,
text files, PDF, etc., print or distribute them
via e-mail or web.
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What is Business Objects InfoView?

• InfoView is a reporting portal that collects and
  consolidates our companys business information
  and provides a way to build complex reports with
  a minimal knowledge of underlying data.
• Definition for portal NOUN 1. A doorway,
  entrance, or gate, especially one that is large
  and imposing. 2. An entrance or a means of
  entrance the local library, a portal of
  knowledge. 3. A website considered as an entry
  point to other websites, often by being or
  providing access to a search engine.
• InfoView is a centralized storage for all Health
  Plus reports (Facets, Member System, Medecision,
  Customer Focus and other applications).

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• Infoview is your personal gateway to your
  companys corporate information.
• It allows you to access reports/documents
  generated from your corporate data storage. It
  makes business reporting easy for users of all
  skill levels.

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What can you do in InfoView?
You can use InfoView to view, manage, distribute
Business Objects documents/reports. You can have
reports with charts, complex calculations and
save your reports in a variety of formats. A
Business Objects report is called a document, it
can contain more than one report in itself.
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How to get into InfoView?
In order to log into InfoView, follow these steps

• Start Internet Explorer
• Type URL address into the address bar
  http//sanjose85/wijsp/
• Login Page will be displayed
• Click Login button
• The Login screen will be presented
• Enter your User Name and Password, click OK.
• To create a shortcut on your desktop for
  easier access to your InfoView page. In Internet
  Explorer, go to
• File Send Shortcut to Desktop. Or you can
  access InfoView page easily by adding it to your
  Favorites menu in Internet Explorer.

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Logging Into InfoView

• You need the following information from ITS your
  Business Objects User Name and Password.
• The URL that you need to enter in Internet
  Explorer
• http//sanjose85/wijsp/

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Business Objects InfoView Login Page
After clicking Login button, the following page
will be presented.
Enter your User Name and password here
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InfoView Home Page and Page Layout

• InfoView pages have 2 parts
• The InfoView Toolbar with links to other pages
  and Online Help
• The page contents with links to Document/Reports
  Lists, and the links to the other important pages
  in InfoView.

InfoView Toolbar
Page Contents
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The InfoView Toolbar contains

• Home is the main page of InfoView, it gives you
  direct access depending on your rights to
• Corporate Documents
• Personal Documents
• Inbox
• Scheduled Documents (for those who have
  permissions)
• My InfoView displays data from a variety of
  sources in a single web page.
• For example, you can add a link to Corporate
  Documents (whole area or a particular functional
  area Enrollment), a link to Inbox, to Personal
  Documents, etc. This way, you will have access to
  all your important areas in one place with a
  click of a button.

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My InfoView Page
From the My InfoView welcome page, you can divide
your browser window into several panes. You can
display up to 3 panes at once to includeYour
Inbox documents list - displays the documents you
have received from other users in your inboxYour
Corporate Documents page displays the documents
in the Corporate Documents page that you have the
rights to view.Your Personal Documents Page
displays the documents in your Personal Documents
Page.
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Customizing My InfoView
You can access My InfoView by clicking My
InfoView button in InfoView Toolbar or by
selecting My InfoView as your default start page
in your user Options page.
Example of My InfoView page without customization
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Customized My InfoView Page Sample
You can have all the necessary links in one
place, convenient and easily accessible.
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Working with Portlets
What is a Portlet? A portlet is a section of
the browser page. In My InfoView you can set
aside a section of the browser page to display a
portlet of your choice. To add a new portlet to
My InfoView, click Options icon. Display Tab will
open.
Click Add a Portlet to My InfoView
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Adding a portlet
The Add Portlet page appears
Click Create, My InfoView opens with the Welcome
to My InfoView portlet showing. To return to the
Display Tab without adding the portlet, click
Cancel.
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Using My InfoView page, you can create your own
personalized page that will be tailored for your
specific needs. It will include all the
necessary links that you use on a regular,
day-to-day basis links to your Personal
documents/reports, to your Inbox, to any category
of reports/documents that you have a right to
use. If you are not satisfied, you can always
click Delete portlet (x) sign to remove this
portlet. You can also change the position of the
portlet, using Move portlet navigation buttons.
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What can I do with My InfoView?

• Choose My InfoView as your default start page
  (click Options icon on InfoView Toolbar, click
  Display Tab, select your default Start Page from
  the Options.)

You can resize the left pane of My InfoView here.
Recommended way
If you want to make My InfoView your starting Web
page, open Internet Explorer, go to Tools
Internet options, General Tab Home page. Enter
page address and click OK.
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• The Options Page is where you define all InfoView
  settings.
• Available Tabs are
• Display List View Password About

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List Tab
Enables you to specify how often you want to
refresh the list of reports available to you and
set the default category.
If you keep default, Corporate Documents page is
refreshed with the same frequency as the InfoView
server.
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• View Tab enables you to select the format in
  which you want to view Business Objects Reports.
  Select Enhanced Document Format for better
  viewing results.

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• Password tab
• This tab is displayed if you have the right to
  change your password.
• It is highly recommended that you change your
  password on the first login according to Health
  Plus security rules and HIPAA regulations. We
  also suggest that you periodically change your
  password, for example, every 3 months or so.

Type in your current password
Type in a NEW password
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Password Rule

• There are some very simple rules you should FORCE
  yourself to adhere to
• Do NOT use real words (like your family name, for
  example)
• Use a mix of alphanumeric characters
  (0-9,a-z)
• Use a mixture of upper and lower case alpha
  characters (a-z,A-Z)
• Use at least 6-8 characters

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• Logging out of InfoView
• You log out of InfoView by clicking the Logout
  button in InfoView toolbar.
• If you leave InfoView inactive longer than the
  maximum time period defined by system
  administrator (60 min), your session is closed
  automatically and you must login again.

IMPORTANT! When you have finished using InfoView,
logout of the product instead of just closing
your Internet Explorer browser. This will end
your session properly and will not drain Web
Servers resources. It is possible that your
login will be rejected by Business Objects
server, if you dont end your session properly.
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Overview of document areas

• The Corporate Documents page is a catalog of all
  the documents that you are allowed to access in
  the corporate repository, the centralized
  Business Objects storage and distribution
  mechanism that manages reports, user information
  and document exchange.
• The Personal Documents page lists the documents
  you have saved for your own personal use. Within
  this page, the Inbox stores the documents that
  other users have sent you.

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What are categories?
Prod is live data, as of current moment

• Categories are a way of organizing documents for
  easier access.
• By creating categories that are relevant to your
  business, you create filing system for your
  documents/reports.

Snapshot of MemberPro data
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• Categories of Corporate Documents have the
  following structure
• Health Plus is the root category.
• Next level is Application (e.g. Facets,
  Medecision, MemberPro,
• Customer Focus, etc.).
• Next is the level of environment
• MemberPro
• Production,
• Test

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Corporate Categories (Continued)

• Next level Functional Area inside the
  application -.
• Application, Billing, Enrollment,
  Management, Premium, Etc.
• Under each Functional Area (Application, Billing,
  Enrollment) Health Plus Documents/Reports are
  published by developers.

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Health Plus Report Development Stages

• A Business Objects Report Request containing
  detailed specifications for the report must be
  submitted to ITS Department
• ( you can find the report request forms and
  instructions on the Health Plus Intranet
  http//intranet/cps/rde/xchg/intranet/hs.xsl/4781_
  ENG_HTML.html ).
• 2. After the report is designed, created and
  tested by ITS, it will be placed/published to
  Test category for testing and reviewing by users
  who requested the report. (For other
  applications, Customer Focus, etc. it will be
  Customer Focus Test category, etc.)
• 3. Once the report is approved by the requesting
  party, it will be published by ITS to the
  Production category Production.

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A detailed Business Objects Report Request is
submitted to ITS Dept.
Report is created and tested by ITS developers,
published to Facets Test category under a
specific Functional Area for reviewing by users
who requested this report.
Report goes back to Testing
Is Report Approved?
No
Yes
Once the report is approved by the requesting
party, it will be published by ITS developers to
Production category, under a specific functional
area (for example, Enrollment or Billing).
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Break Time
These are the activities that you might want to
engage in during the break
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How To Access Documents from Corporate Documents
Page
From Home Page, click Corporate
Documents. Corporate Documents page appears. On
the left pane Categories select the Category
that you need, select Functional Area, the
reports/documents in this area will be listed.
Click the title of the document, it will either
open directly or, if this document has prompts,
you are prompted to enter or select values before
you can view the report.
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Viewing and Refreshing Documents
When you select a document/report from the
Corporate Documents list, the document is opened
with the refreshed data. All HP reports are set
up to refresh on open. If the report/document
contains a prompt, you will be asked to enter the
selection criteria for your report in this
prompt. After you provide the criteria, the
report is refreshed and displayed with the latest
data. If your report is already open, and you
want to refresh it you can do so manually by
clicking Refresh button.
This report has not been printed yet.
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Prompts
Prompts display a question or a list of values
each time you refresh the report data in a
document. You answer the prompt by typing or
selecting specific values. Only the data that
corresponds to those values is returned. When
there is no data satisfying the provided
criteria, you will get a message No Data To
Fetch.
Type in starting date of the range
After entering parameters, click Run Query button
Type in Ending date following the format in
parenthesis
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How to print a Business Objects Document/Report?
1. Open the document/report 2. In the upper left
corner, you will see a printer icon, click it to
Print.
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Printing Reports from InfoView
3. After clicking the Print button, you will see
the following screen.
4. Select the necessary printing options, number
of copies, click Print button.
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Page Setup
NOTE You dont need to do it with the reports
that you retrieve from Corporate Documents.
You can change Page Setup/Layout by clicking the
Page Setup button in the upper left corner. Paper
size, orientation and margins can be set here.
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What can you do while viewing your Business
Objects Report?
While viewing a report, you can navigate through
the report/document using either the toolbar in
the upper left corner of the report or you can
right-click on the report area and the following
menu will be presented.
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Continued
You can navigate to the specific page in a report
by clicking Go To Page icon in the upper left
corner. Go To Page dialog appears, enter the page
number and click OK. The report will display the
necessary page. You can also navigate to the
beginning and end of the report and to the next
and previous pages by clicking Begin, End, Next
and Previous icons on the report toolbar.
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Navigating through the Business Objects
Document/Report
If you click Show/Hide Section Tree icon in the
upper left corner, you will see the Section tree
of the document/report that you have open.
Report
This is a useful feature when you have several
reports inside the document OR if you have
sections or groupings in the report. Using this
section tree, you can easily navigate between the
individual reports OR different sections of
individual reports.
Section
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Your Personal Documents Page

• The Personal Documents link takes you to the
  list of documents/reports you have saved for your
  own personal use.
• These can be documents that you have created,
  Corporate Documents of which you have saved a
  personal copy or documents that were sent to you
  by other users that you have saved on your
  computer.
• Personal Documents page is your personal file
  storage space, located locally on your computer.

Personal Documents Page without Personal
Categories
Personal Documents Page with Personal Categories
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Inbox documents
Inbox documents/reports can be found under
Personal Documents section. These are the
documents that were sent to you by other users.
Click Inbox link.
If users let their Inbox documents accumulate
without retrieving them, valuable server space is
lost to this uncollected mail. Performance
will degrade as a result of users not retrieving
their Inbox documents! Once you retrieved the
report, save it locally or delete.
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Inbox Continued

• Unread documents are indicated by a closed
  envelope icon. Click the document name to
  navigate to the report.
• You can view your list of reports/documents in
  your Inbox in 2 modes View List and View
  Details.
• View Details mode enables you to see the
  properties of the document/report.
• You can delete the document from Inbox in both
  modes.

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Accessing new documents in your Inbox
From the Home page, click Personal Documents.
If you have documents waiting in your Inbox, the
Inbox link changes to an envelope with a red
star.
If you have no new mail waiting, the icon looks
like this
NOTE The icon doesnt change to indicate that
you have received a new document in your Inbox
while you are logged in. To see any documents
that you receive while you are logged in, you
MUST refresh the Inbox. Always delete the
documents that you have read from your Inbox and
save them locally as a personal document if you
want to keep them! DO NOT KEEP THEM IN YOUR INBOX.
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Saving documents In InfoView
You can save any document/report as a personal
document. When you save a personal document, you
make a COPY of this document and store it in your
Personal Documents page. You can save ANY
document that you have rights to read. It will
appear under Personal Documents page after that.

• To save as personal document
• Open the document that you want to save.
• Click Save. The Save options page appears.
• Click Save as a personal document.

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Saving documents (continued)
1. Enter the documents name. By default, the
documents current name is displayed. If you
want to change it, do so in the text box.
2. Select the personal category or categories to
which you want to save this document. You might
want to create this personal category before
saving the report OR during the saving process by
clicking Categories hyperlink. 3. Choose whether
or not to overwrite documents with the same name,
using Overwrite option. If you choose Overwrite
option, the report with the same name will be
overwritten. 4. Click OK.
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Steps to create/add Personal Documents Category

• You alone have a right to create, edit, delete
  and use your personal categories. To create a
  personal category
• From the Home Page, click Personal Documents.
• Click Manage Documents icon.
• Personal categories list opens

Type the name of a new category in the text field
and click Create.
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Saving to my computer
You can save the documents of all types to your
computer. The formats that you have available
are original Business Objects document, PDF
format, and MS Excel. Steps 1. Open the
report you want to save.
2. Click Save button in the upper left corner.
Save options page appears. Select the format you
want. Click Save to my computer. 3. File Download
dialog appears. Click Save button.
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Saving to my computer (continued)
Save As dialog box appears. By default, it
displays the first 11 characters of the name of
the report and the extension of the selected file
type. NOTE Rename your report or the name will
be truncated!
Here you can rename your report to exclude the
prefixes, for example, Outstanding Checks.xls and
save it to the location on your computer. Default
location My Documents.
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Saving to my computer (continued)
After you renamed your report and clicked Save
button. You will be presented with the following
screen. Click Close button.
Save options page will open. Click Close. You
will return to the report view. To close the
report, click on X button in the upper right
corner of the report viewer. Once the report is
closed, you will return to your default start
page.
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Deleting Documents in InfoView
1. Select the check box of the document(s) that
you want to delete.
2. Click this icon to delete the document(s) you
selected.
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Sending Documents
You can send a Business Objects Document/Report
to individual(s) or group(s) of Business Objects
users. To send a document, open the document,
click Send
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Sending Documents (cont.)
The Send page appears.
Complete the necessary information in the Main
Tab. In Document Name text box change the name
of the document that you want to send. Select
Refresh options Manually or Scheduled Refresh.
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Click User Tab to select the user(s) or group
that you want to send this document/report
to. Select HP_DOC_DOMAIN Domain. This is the
domain to be used for sending your reports to
other InfoView users. TIP Select user(s) by
either typing the exact user name of that person
OR you can enter in Search Filter text box to
get the list of all the users/groups available to
you.
s
Add the selected user(s) to the list box on the
right side. Click OK. A confirmation message
appears if you have sent your document/report
successfully. Click Close.
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Searching for your Business Objects
reports/documents
InfoView manages a large number of
reports/documents. To make it easy to find the
document/report, you can use Search functionality
that is available on Home page.
If you know the name of the report or a part of
this name, enter it and click Search button.
Example If you only remember a part of the
reports name, enter the word that you remember
into the text box and click Search.
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Advanced Search
You also can search for report by its name or
part of the name, by Senders Name, Keywords the
report contains and document date. Just enter
your criteria and click OK.
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Scheduled Refresh
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Scheduled Refresh Steps
Broadcast Agent will automatically refresh this
document at the specified frequency and time and
then will send it to the user(s) selected on
Users Tab.
Report Name rule not more than 14 characters, no
special characters.
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Scheduling Documents with Prompts
Rename the report so it adheres to the standard
not longer than 14 char, no special characters!

• To schedule documents with prompts
• Schedule your document following the steps
  described above.
• On the Scheduled Refresh page, click Set BCA
  Prompt.
• The Prompts page appears. Specify the value(s)
  you want to use with the document. Click Run
  Query.

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Viewing your list of scheduled documents

• If you have appropriate rights, a Scheduled
  Documents List appears on the Home Page.
• From your InfoView Home page, click Scheduled
  Documents. Your list of documents appears with
  their status.

Click here to view your list of scheduled
documents
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Tasks in the Pending Jobs List

• Running
• Retrying
• Delayed
• Suspended
• From here you can
• Filter the documents to display only pending jobs
  or all jobs, or failed jobs.
• Delete scheduled documents from the list.

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Training Exercises

• Log into InfoView using your user name and
  password
• Navigate to the Functional Area that is of
  interest to you on a daily basis. Example, people
  from Finance should navigate to Accounting area.
• Add this functional area to My InfoView page.
• Customize My InfoView page to include your
  favorite functional areas of Corporate Documents
  (e.g. Claims, UM, etc.), your Personal Documents
  page, your Inbox documents.
• Create a Personal Category related to your daily
  reporting needs. Example, a user from Finance
  might add a personal category Outstanding
  checks. Save any relevant report to your newly
  created personal category. Tip you wont see
  this new category under Personal Documents until
  you save at least 1 report to it.
• Resulting My InfoView page should contain
  Corporate documents from the area of your
  interest, Personal documents, and Inbox
  documents. Practice moving your portlets around
  the page for better accessibility .

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Exercises Part 1
Important! 7. Setting your InfoView options. on
a Display Tab - set your Default Start Page and
default skin
Skins are sets of images and styles that alter
the interfaces colors, fonts, graphics and icons.

• On a List Tab
• specify that you want to refresh the Corporate
  Documents list every visit to Corporate
  documents.
• Specify that you want to refresh your Inbox
  documents every visit to Inbox.
• You can also select your default category for
  Corporate documents here.

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Exercises Part 2
On a View Tab -select a view format for Business
Objects Documents Enhanced Document Format
(recommended). Apply the settings that you have
selected by clicking Apply button, you will get a
confirmation message Options saved. Click Close
to return to the Home Page. On a Password
Tab -change your current password to a real one
according to the rules discussed during the
training. 8. Working with reports. Navigate to
any report, open it and save it as a personal
document. While saving, create a special Personal
Category for it and save this report to the newly
added category. Next, save the same report to
your computer locally as an Excel file, to My
Documents folder. Dont forget to rename it
(delete the prefixes), otherwise the name will be
truncated.
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Exercises Part 3
Next, save the same report to your computer
locally as Adobe PDF file to My Documents folder.
Go to Windows Explorer, locate the newly saved
PDF file with your report, open it in Adobe and
e-mail it (as an attachment) to 1 user from your
department. 9. Sending reports to group(s) and
individual(s). Open any report/document in the
functional area of your interest, send it using
HP_DOC_DOMAIN to 1 user in your own department.
Wait for the confirmation message. Pay
attention at the size of the report that you are
sending. Be careful to select individual user(s)
not group(s) when sending your report.
REMEMBER When sending, after you selected the
document and the user(s), click either Apply or
OK, not both. Then close this screen after you
receive the confirmation message that the
document has been sent.
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The End
Need to know more? You can always e-mail or call
ITS Business Objects Team with questions
regarding Business Objects Reporting
issues Elvira Gutkin ext. 6730, Galina Zimenkova
ext. 7324.