1. Dr. Bjarne Berg Lenoir-Rhyne College
Distributing Reports With SAP Information Broadcaster: Do’s, Don’ts, and Real-world Lessons
Dr. Bjarne Berg
Lenoir-Rhyne College

2. What We’ll Cover Overview The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
A look at new Broadcasting features in the next release
Wrap up

3. What Is BEx Information Broadcasting?
It’s a standard part of SAP BW 3.5 and higher. It lets you send “reports”, i.e., Bex queries, Workbooks & Web Applications
addresses, BW users, BW roles
SAP Enterprise Portal Knowledge Management folders
SAP Enterprise Portal Collaboration Rooms
You can also define and deploy iViews based on the resulting KM / Collaboration documents

4. What Is BEx Information Broadcasting? (cont.)
Broadcasts can be configured to run:
Once only
On a schedule basis (every day, week, month)
During specific timeslots defined by the administrator
Or any time (if you allow)
When an event occurs i.e. when an “exception” occurs,
As part of a process chain
You tell the system whether to send:
A link to regenerate the query, etc. based on live data, or
A standalone (pre-calculated) version of the item
There are several format and compression options
Key concept: Push Vs. Pull.
Broadcasting is a Push tool

5. Why Is Broadcasting So Valuable?
Reduces the time users spend looking for information
Improves the like likelihood that users will use your BI data
Expands the reach of BI data to non-BW users as well!
Makes BW data available for users on the go
Lets you link your BW and Portal systems together!
Users can collaborate, integrate BW content with
other enterprise and Web content, etc.!
“Casual” users, non-BW users, travelling users,
and executives are all prime candidates for
broadcasted reports!

6. Different Needs and Tools
The information needs of the user communities are different
Flat Reporting
Formatted
Print
Form based
Static
Predictable access
OLAP Reporting
Drill Down
Slice and Dice
Analyse
Data Mining
Search and discover
KPI & Scorecard Formatted
Simple
Easy to view
Limited nav
Aggregates

7. What We’ll Cover Overview The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
A look at new Broadcasting features in the new release
Wrap up

8. The Broadcast Wizard - ad hoc scheduling
You can access the Broadcast Wizard from the context menu in a query
The Broadcast wizard is a tool for end users to distribute queries, and workbooks to single individuals or larger audiences through or the enterprise portal

9. Step 1 – Choose an Output Format
Independent HTML file
We can use this option to send a single HTML file (standard static web page). This is an easy way to send webpages that can be used by handheld devices (i.e. Blackberry or PocketPCs), and also by custom web applications.
The report is a snapshot vs. "live" data

10. Step 1 – Choose an Output Format (cont.)
HTML as Separate MIME Files
This option results in a set of individual files
for each web item in your report.
The benefit of this standard web format
option is that it optimizes reuse of objects,
as images are cached in the browser after
being accessed for the first time.

11. Step 1 – Choose an Output Format (cont.)
Online links back to current Data
The link back to the on-line source (requires recipients to log on with a username and a password to see the content, but can see the latest data). This is the most secure method for protecting the access to your date. However, the recipient must have on-line access back to your system, have a username and password.
The recipient may not see the same as what you believe you sent him, since the data may have been refreshed since you sent the broadcast.

12. Step 1 – Choose an Output Format (cont.)
Depending on how your mail system is setup, this is what a recipient of an on-line web link might see.
Text can also be added by the sender

13. Step 1 – Choose an Output Format (cont.)
Zipping the files reduces size of the distribution files and help network traffic:
It is very good for MIME files, which tends to be many and relative large.
Not a good option for handhelds (requires unzipping, and several read steps)
Normally not needed for single HTML files unless the report is very long
Reduces network traffic and the size of the mail in the mailboxes.

14. Step 2 – Identify Recipients and Enter a Message
Enter one or more addresses, a subject, and body.
The 'importance' level will flag the for delivery to your recipient.
Click Continue to save and schedule the broadcast to execute later… OR
Click Schedule to execute the broadcast once only, during the next available processing window and exit...
Adding comments in the 'contents' area will make the query much more understandable to your recipient…

15. Step 3 – Define A Name For the “Broadcast Setting”
This is the name under which your settings are stored
If you want to execute this broadcast more than once, with these settings, you can save the settings.
You can retrieve the settings later.
Define groups of settings for reports you send repeatedly (i.e., weekly status reports, month-end financial reports, etc.)

16. Step 4 – Tell the System When to Schedule the Broadcast
We can schedule the job to run every time the infocube is changed (the process chain has run)
We can limit the users to when they can schedule jobs to avoid stress on the system. We can provide multiple pre-defined times when they can schedule the reports.
We can also allow the users to create their own scheduling times (Only authorized users see this)
Setting up pre-defined 'windows' of time is a developer's job.

17. Broadcast Wizard Demo

18. What We’ll Cover Overview The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
A look at new Broadcasting features in the next release
Wrap up

19. The BEx Broadcaster The Query Designer The Web Application Designer
BEx Broadcaster is another way you can access tools to broadcast queries, workbooks and web apps. It is typically given to the powerusers or developers, since it have more options and requires slightly more skills.
You can get to the BEx Broadcaster through:
The Query Designer
The Web Application Designer

20. Regular Scheduling by PowerUsers using BEx Broadcaster
Through the regular BEx Broadcaster more advanced users or developers can broadcast content to specific BW users, roles, addresses or groups and set language. You can also make the broadcast user specific.
Another feature is that you can authorize access through another user (if permitted). The output formats are the same as in the broadcast wizard.

21. BEx Broadcaster - Exception Reporting
If a certain exception has occurred, or if a certain level has been reached, you can make the broadcaster send you an exception report.
First you have to define the exceptions for the query and make the exception 'active'.

22. BEx Broadcaster - Exception Reporting
In BEx Broadcaster we can select the pre-calculation tab and ask to be alerted only when we reach a certain minimum level of the exception.
Key concept: Don't spend time monitoring 'business as usual' activities, only get alerted when exceptions occur And don't search for exceptions, send them automatically to you.

23. BEx Broadcaster - Filters
If you pre-calculate the queries, you can allow the recipient to navigate the reports by the characteristics you select. When doing so, you have to include a navigation block in the web template so that user can actually use the navigation features you have enabled
The more items you include, the larger the size of the broadcast items. This is not a 'big-deal' if you are mailing to a few of users, but for thousands of users daily, you should select these items carefully.

24. BEx Broadcaster - Filters
If you pre-calculating a web template, you have the ability to specify a control query to be used in the pre-calculation of the navigation filters. This is a great feature, when you have specific queries that contains the navigation filers that you want to broadcast.
The benefit of the Filter Navigation tab is that you can select which items you want to enable, without having to create new queries.

25. What We’ll Cover Overview The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
A look at new Broadcasting features in the next release
Wrap up

26. Why Broadcast to the Portal vs. Email?
More powerful
Users can comment, rate, and discuss the broadcasted assets
You can place the assets in iViews on cockpits/dashboards
You can integrate the assets with other Portal content!
Portal users without a BW user id can now access BW content
Broadcasted assets are included in TREX searches
More user friendly
Users can subscribe/unsubscribe themselves!
Easier, more flexible administration
You can leverage the Portal’s access control lists/capabilities
No address lists to maintain - users sub/unsubscribe
Avoids the glut, and the BW/network performance hit!

27. Broadcasting to the Portal
The Broadcast options are similar to the distribution. You have several choices:
1 - Deploy via KM “Favorites” Deploy via the “BW Showcase” role
2 - Deploy via a KM Folder Deploy via a custom iViews that you define
3 - Deploy Via Collaboration

28. Using BEx Broadcaster to send items to the Portal
You can broadcast the content to the portal at fixed intervals and have the content instantly available through independent web pages. You can also broadcast to the portal through links back to your system
There is a demo role available in SAP Enterprise Portal version 6.0. You can use this role for your publishing to the portal or enhance it anyway you like.
The role is available under com.sap.ip.bi.business_explorer_showcase

29. Sending items to a KM folder, Content directory or iView in the Portal
KM Folders and Portal roles appears as targets within the Broadcast Wizard and Bex Broadcaster...
You broadcast the content to a personal portfolio of a user, or a portfolio shared by a set of users i.e. knowledge management folders.
You can see all KM folders and broadcast directly to any of them.
Users can subscribe to the broadcasts and be notified when the content is updated:

30. Deploy Via the “BW Showcase” Role
You don’t have to go through KM or Collaboration...
Use the special “SAP BW Showcase Role”
com.sap.ip.bi.business_e xplorer_showcase
You can use this role for your publishing to the portal or enhance it anyway you like.

31. What We’ll Cover Overview The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
A look at new Broadcasting features in the next release
Wrap up

32. Why is Broadcasting so all encompassing?
BW is an integrated decision support system with a high degree of flexibility.
Therefore the broadcaster has to function for a variety of purposes and for a diverse audience.
Today, broadcaster supports everything for portals, PDAs, alerts and to caching and Knowledge Management.

33. Broadcast Process Flow – Three Key Avenues

34. Security and Encryption
Controlling who can schedule ad-hoc, or through the BEx Broadcaster is a critical maintenance issue. You can control the user's ability to schedule the reports, through the new authorization object S_RS_BCS (the administrator still uses the standard S_RS_ADMWB object).
You also have new broadcast settings for the RSADMWBOBJ field. These settings include: Maintain/Delete (23), Display (03) and Execute/Schedule (16).
Activate Secured Socket Layer (SSL) 2.0 or higher in your browser and use HTTPS as a protocol for you browsers to encrypt and secure your web content. This is not an SAP function, but standard Microsoft browser web options.

35. Process chains and Timepoints
You can also assign broadcast event to process chains. First you create a variant with and assign it to the infocube. The event in the process chain will trigger the broadcast event.
Creating timepoints
Background jobs can be created (transaction SM36) to schedule any jobs starting with the text "TP_BROADCASTING_". This is to allow users to broadcast at certain time points. Under SM36 start the condition,
select the date and time when the job starts,
select the periodic flag and define
it as hourly, daily, weekly, monthly
or other.
Timepoints controls when end users can schedule broadcasts. This is used to avoid heavy scheduling during data loads or times when many users are accessing the systems.

36. Creating Timepoints Creating timepoints
Background jobs can be created (transaction SM36) to schedule any jobs starting with the text "TP_BROADCASTING_".

37. Creating Timepoints

38. Broadcasting using the Reporting Agent to external applications
You can also use the traditional reporting agent to mail pre-calculated reports to a variety of targets including 3rd party portals such as Plumtree.
IMPORTANT: “Old Reporting Agent scenarios still run in NetWeaver 2004s. However, the Reporting Agent will not be developed any further and is removed from the 2004s Workbench. You can now only reach the Reporting Agent using transaction code REPORTING_AGENT” – SAP Dec. 2005

39. Workbook pre-calculation - what do you need?
Use transaction RSPRECADMIN in the BW administrator workbench to get to the pre-calculation settings. You also need one server with:
MS-Office XP (or .net framework version 1.1 or higher)
MS-Excel-2000 (or higher)
SAP BW workbook pre-calculation services (on standard BW install CDs).
Note: servers with this installed will be visible under the transaction 'RSPRECADMIN' and you can also perform server load balancing.
GUI v with BEx (or higher)
This is not needed for standard broadcasting of web queries or web applications, only for workbooks.

40. Cool programs for Managing Broadcaster
There are some programs that can help you manage the SAP BEx Broadcaster :
RSRD_BOOKMARK_REORGANISATION is a program which can be used for reorganizing and deleting bookmark IDs and view IDs that were created for Information Broadcasting by the system and are no longer needed.

41. Transaction codes for Managing Broadcaster
RSRD_LOG - This displays all logs for BEx Broadcaster settings. Logs are only written for scheduled settings and not for settings executed directly.
RSRD_START - Using transaction RSRD_START, you can execute (and therefore debug for test purposes) any settings. Make sure that the indicator for executing settings online is activated.

42. Cool programs for Managing Broadcaster
There are some programs that can help you manage the SAP BEx Broadcaster :
RSBCSRE03 - Deleting logs created by broadcaster.
In large BW systems with many users and frequent broadcasts, the logs can be really big and should be deleted periodically
Latest News: With SAP NetWeaver 2004s, there is a new transaction RSRD_ADMIN (or rsa1 -> Administration -> Broadcasting), where you can view your schedules.

43. What We’ll Cover Overview The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
A look at new Broadcasting features in the next release
Wrap up

44. Deciding Who Should Be Allowed to Do What - Governing Council
There are many options and decisions to be made on who should be able to access all the Broadcast features. A good approach to decide how gets access and also when to create any timepoints is to create a Governing Council of a few managers and developers
Power
users
Regular
Authors
Developers BW
Admins
Portal
Process Chains
Schedule using
pre-set timepoints
Free schedule
One-time
Bex Broadcaster
Bex Wizard
Scheduling
Tools
Target 
- /  -

45. Spam filters and server blockers
Users that create a high volume of s may be automatically blocked by spam filters in the browsers and mail servers. You will have to make sure that the internal system have flagged you as a valid broadcaster.
Review regularly that mail systems such as Yahoo, Google, AOL, Microsoft and others have not flagged all your s as spam.

46. Management of Timepoints
Be careful to not add all your broadcasts to the end of process chains. Large systems with hundreds of infocubes may be 'bogged down' with lengthy process chains that slows down the whole load processing.
Good timepoints may be 6-8 am when the load jobs are finished and before a large numbers of users accesses the system.
Another good time may be at the end of weekly, or monthly loads on the weekend (i.e. Saturday or Sunday mornings).
The key is to balance the times when jobs can be executed. If this is not carefully, all users tends to schedule their broadcast between 7 and 9 am each morning.

47. Avoiding Volumes of Junk
Users have a tendency to schedule queries for distribution and never disable the schedule after it has started to run. This creates mountains of junk that few actually use.
Users who don't want a broadcast tends to simply
delete it, or create a program/agent that automatically
removes the .
So, how do you know if anyone reads the broadcasts?
A process to review and control internal "spam-kings'
have to be established. Hint: use the transaction codes
'SCOT' and 'SOST' to monitored SMTP mails.
A periodic review of scheduled broadcasts should be performed by the developers to see if there are any candidates for deletion.

48. Push Vs. Pull - Change in Mentality
Users have a to change their mentality to stop reviewing everything that is 'business as usual'. The Push mentality requires that users plan for what is important to them and set up fixed sets of reports that are used to manage the business.
In general the push approach reduces the time users spend looking for information and provides them with more time to examine data that really matter to them.
You should carefully consider using the BEx Broadcaster for the core reporting that is done through any handheld computer devise. This will simplify the security setup and also increase the speed of any report (will be viewed on the device instead of accessing back to the source system through limited bandwidth).
Casual users and executives are prime candidates for broadcasted reports

49. KPI and exception reporting
A major challenge in setting up the BEx Broadcaster for exception reporting is the definition of what an exception is.
This is setup in the query and used by the broadcaster.
If the query does not
define the exception the
way that a user wants it, it
is not available to
broadcast as an exception.
Exception reporting require that a query is executed and 'evaluated' to see if it should be broadcasted. This overhead can be substantial if you have a high number of users 'monitoring' different queries

50. What We’ll Cover Overview The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
A look at new Broadcasting features in the next release
Wrap up

51. New Broadcaster features of BI 2004s
New Object Types You can broadcast BEx query views and formatted reports (“reports”) in addition to Web applications, queries and workbooks. Reports are a new BEx object type developed within the new BEx Report Designer tool.
New Output Formats New output formats are based on the distribution type you select. But, you now can broadcast web documents as PDF files.

52. New Broadcaster features of BI 2004s
New Distribution Types
You can broadcast to any printer using Adobe’s PDF, Printer Common Language (psl) or Post Script (ps). (hint: Set up the printers under tools CCMS  print).
You to broadcast user-specific information based on attributes in the master data attributes using a distribution list in BI (bursting of s). The information can be controlled by the system so that users only see data related to them.

53. New Broadcaster features of BI 2004s
Exception broadcasting is now available in the Broadcaster. Create the exceptions in the query designer and select distribution type in the broadcaster. You can also use additional distributions types (subordinate) and create rules for when the exception report is “monitored”/executed. Exceptions can be based on single events or levels of any performance measure.
You can use multiple distribution type to create a setting that broadcasts many channels (i.e. the printer and the portal).
NOTE: To manage all alerts and workflow tasks from a single location, an alert is integrated with the portal’s universal worklist the “central alert framework” of NW application server.

54. New Broadcaster features of BI 2004s
To increase the performance of key queries, you can fill the OLAP Cache, or the MDX Cache. This is useful if you have large numbers of users accessing a query, or you have a query that accesses a high volume of data.
The Fill Precalculation Store distribution type allows you to precalculate Web templates, and the Precalculate Value Set option you to fill pre-calculated value set variables with values for characteristic values. The pre-calculated value sets are then available as variable values in BEx queries.
BREAKING NEWS: Reporting agent “goes-away”. The old Reporting Agent you could pre-calculate the data of a template and access it through the URL . It could not broadcast queries, workbooks or web templates by or to KM folders.
SAP Dec. 2005: Old Reporting Agent scenarios still run in NetWeaver 2004s. However, the Reporting Agent will not be developed any further and is removed from the 2004s Workbench. You can now only reach the Reporting Agent using transaction code REPORTING_AGENT

55. What We’ll Cover Overview The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
A look at new Broadcasting features in the next release
Wrap up

56. 7 points to take home
Do not schedule all your broadcasts after a process chain has completed. It is tempting but may slow down nightly data loads.
Control the times users can run reports to avoid too high stress on the system.
Segment the broadcast tools based on the user roles and level of training.
Monitor the logs carefully and make sure that "spam-kings" are controlled.
Do not give free scheduling to a high number of users.
Be aware that spam filters may catch many of your broadcasts.
Broadcasting to a portal simplifies the distribution, but be careful with links to workbooks.

57. Resources Dr. Bjarne Berg’s resource site
SAP Developer Network
"New BI Capabilities in SAP NetWeaver" Version 2.0, June 30, 2005
Broadcasting with SAP NetWeaver '04, Eric Schemer, Glenn Leslie and Oliver Mayer -- TechEd 2004.
Information Broadcaster with SAP BW, Katie Beavers,
BW Expert (bwexpertonline.com)
“BEx Information Broadcasting in SAP BW 3.5 Puts Users Front and Center”, Glenn Leslie, August 2005

58. Director of BI, MyITGroup Ltd.
Your Turn!
Questions?
Dr. Bjarne Berg
Director of BI, MyITGroup Ltd.