ASUG Philadelphia: How ARI boosts business objects life cycle management, backup, promotion, disaster recovery and auditing

1. ARI
Jawahar Konduru
BI ADMIN
How ARI Boosts BusinessObjects
Life Cycle Management
Backup, Promotion, Disaster Recovery
& Auditing
Sébastien GOIFFON, Nathan Crook
GB&SMITH
Jawahar Konduru, Technical Lead/ BI Admin
ARI

2. 100 – 90K user deployments
1,000,000 administrated users
> 30 countries
> 98% renewal rate
> 500 clients
50 people
Boston – London – Lille
2015 Technology Fast 500 EMEA
and 3 times in a row
2014 startup North of France

3. Backup, promote & version
BO content
Schedule and burst your BO
reports
Explore and analyze BO
metadata
Ensure BO license
compliance
Automate report qualification
Non regression tests
Secure your SAP BO
deployment
SAP BusinessObjects portfolio

4. Holman Enterprises - founded 1924 - $2.6 billion in sales
CAUS MX UK EU
Family Owned
For Over
90 Years
Dealerships

5. Who is Automotive Resources International?
Headquartered in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey
Largest Privately Held Fleet Management Company in the World
Founded 1948
2800 Employees
1.1 Million+
Managed Vehicles
Truck
Expertise
Global Reach
Innovative
Technology
Best Workplaces
for Millennials

6. • Since 2000 (6x, XI R2, 3.1, 4.1 – in 2016)
• Primary reporting tool for Internal and External clients
(Billing, Telematics, Budget, Fleet Utilization etc)
• 145 PROD universes
• Webi, Deski, Rich Client, Explorer, Lumira, Design Studio
• Total 950,000 reports (870,000 Deski , 80,000 (WEBI) and
2.5 million Instances
• Single physical PROD server + QA + DEV (3.1)
• 6 server clustered physical/VM PROD servers + QA + DEV
(4.1)
• ~600 reports scheduled daily and ~4000 reports scheduled
for month end
Business Objects at ARI

7. • Identifying unused reports/duplicate reports
• Cleanup Instances - Oldest and unused ones
• Migrating the In-boxes of all users – is it necessary?
• Cleanup Universes – Unused universes and objects
• Need dedicated resources to develop programs using SDK
Challenges in migration

8. 360Eyes and 360Plus
1. Content analysis to prepare for BI4x migration
2. Real time view without running a report
3. Access to many AUDIT reports ~40
4. Back up & Recovery and Recycle Bin
5. Multiple BO environments comparison and
content transfer
• Installed on one of the QA server
(TOMCAT 7)
• Oracle 11G DB
• Allowing access to BO’s AUDIT DB

9. Content Analysis to prepare for 4x migration

10. Content Analysis to prepare for 4x migration

11. Content Analysis to prepare for BI4 migration
BO environment
Dashboard - Number of
reports, report type and
universes

12. Content Analysis to prepare for 4x migration Out of the box reports

13. Content Analysis to prepare for 4x migration

14. Content Analysis to prepare for 4x migration

15. Content Analysis to prepare for 4x migration

16. Content Analysis to prepare for 4x migration

17. Content Analysis to prepare for 4x migration

18. Impact Analysis
It can be useful before altering a database object to check the impacts

19. Real time view without running a report

20. Real time view without running a report - Users
• Add User
• Insert
• Remove
• Delete
• Group Membership
• Bulk User Management
• Purge Inboxes

21. Real time view without running a report - objects
• Copy/Move/Shortcut
• Delete
• Purge Webi

22. Real time view without running a report - universes
• Copy/Move
• Delete

23. Backup and Recovery (Recycle Bin)
1. Empty folder on a server/NAS/SAN with plenty
of disk space
2. SMTP server properties for email notifications
3. Schedule backup jobs
• Small BO installations – on a root level
• Large BO installations – Several jobs
(Universes, users, Reports)
5. Run every day

24. Backup and Recovery (Recycle Bin)

25. Backup and Recovery (Recycle Bin)
1. Select “Objects” tab and click on the Recycle icon
How to recover a deleted report
2. Enter search parameters

26. Backup and Recovery (Recycle Bin)
Search Options

27. Backup and Recovery (Recycle Bin)
3. Deleted report if found in the recovery DB (if it was a part of back up job that run before it was deleted)
4. Recover the report back by clicking on “Import” button

28. Rollback
Restore any object one by one (universe, personal & corporate documents, users, CAL).
Rollback/undo any action/object. 5 versions are available. Automatic cleaning.

29. Multiple BO installations comparison
Ability to log on to more than one BO environment for side by side comparison and content
transfer

30. Content transfer – drag and drop

31. Benefits
• Easy management of content in BO environment
• Easier and more intelligent clean up process
• Audit easy to access
• Recycle Bin
• Backup and recovery
• Easy install and initial setup of configuration
Challenges
• Initial 360 Jobs run time (next runs are incremental)
• Few less than intuitive options (document retrieval, content transfer)
• Identifying some of the icons like recycle bin and drag & drop

32. • User-friendly security
management web interface
replacing the CMC
• Document your deployed
security
• Audit and clean your CMS
• Repoint UNV to UNX
• GRC: Find who has access to
what on a click and export
security in xls
• Bulk Update content
• Find and Remove unbounded
documents
Secure your SAP BO
deployment
Replace the CMC by a user-friendly
web application giving you a 360°
view of your access rights

33. Backup, Incremental promote
Restore & manage versions
• Set up a powerful backup
strategy allowing restoring
any object selectively
(similar to rolling back or
undoing changes on
objects)
• Visual comparison of
different versions of a
given object
• 1 Biar per Object!
• Restore deleted content
using our unique recycle
bin, including personal
files
• Manage versions
More than a simple Back
up
• For large
deployments replace
import wizard or LCM
• Drag and drop
objects accross CMS
or Schedule
promotions
• Schedule promotion
of flagged content
across platforms.
• Log on to multiple
environments and
compare them

34. Highlight differences or export them to Excel:
Compare different versions

35. Compare Webi, Crystal and
Deski report outputs over time
and across versions
• Schedule report exports
• Compare report data in just
a few clicks and highlight
differences for fast potential
regression discovery
• Optimize your non-
regression tests and BO
migration projects
• Maintain accuracy and
consistency of
BusinessObjects reports to
mitigate risks
Automate report
qualification
Non-regression testing

36. Audit and control your metadata
over time and across versions
with Impact analysis
• Load your SAP
BusinessObjects data
(CMS, universes,
documents and audit
data) from a
datawarehouse
• Query and analyze
this data using pre-
built BO universes
and Webi reports
• Document your
deployment
• Detect unused
documents and
universes, dormant users
• Perform impact analysis
• Follow the evolution of
your metadata over time
• Compare environments
or BO versions during
migrations
Explore & analyze BO
metadata

37. Explore & analyze BO
metadata
Audit and control your metadata
over time and across versions

38. How good is your current licence coverage? Run
360Eyes compliance prior to LMBI. Unique BO
license compliance expertise for >8years Ensure BO license
compliance
• Compare your SAP BO
license pool with
currently deployed
licenses
• Make an accurate count
of deployed licenses
• License compliance is
just a mouse click away
• Unique and reliable
solution and expertise

39. User activity and
inactivity
How can we get system usage statistics and
information?
This can be covered by 360Eyes user activity
reports:

40. Dynamic and automatic report
bursting management Schedule & burst your
BO reports
• Schedule and burst your BO
reports using dynamic data
• Create your recipient lists
using XLS files, SQL queries or
BO reports
• For each recipient, specify
different values to dynamically
fill prompts or filters
• Customize values, format
(PDF, XLS), destination (e.g. E-
mail, SharePoint, Inbox)
• Schedule distribution jobs,
then manage everything from
the recipients list
• Any change to Excel / CSV
Automate your report
publications
• Easy to Install. Just a
webapp.
• Schedule and burst BO
reports using your Enterprise
Job Scheduler (Dollar
Universe, Control-M, UC4…)
• BO scheduling and report
bursting is integrated along
with other scheduling jobs,
such as ETL jobs
• Link data warehouse
loading and BO scheduling
very easily

41. www.tinyurl.com/optimizemigration
www.tinyurl.com/bobjbackup
Take a look at our solutions on:
www.youtube.com/360suite
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sebastien@gbandsmith.com
www.gbandsmith.com
617 319 3563
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