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Guide for using Business Objects XI for OMNI Reports

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Table of Contents

Using Business Objects XI Infoview for the First Time ............................................. 3

Accessing Business Objects InfoView Utilizing the OMNI Portal ......................................3 Accessing Business Objects InfoView via the Direct Web Address..................................4

Setting Your Business Objects Infoview Preferences ............................................... 6 Select Your “Favorites” ................................................................................................ 8 Refreshing a Document in Business Objects XI....................................................... 10 Printing Data From a Document in Business Objects XI ......................................... 12

Printing All Pages of a Document .......................................................................................12 Printing a Specific Tab/Report within a Document............................................................13 Printing a Tab/Report that is One Page in Length .............................................................15

Saving a Report in Business Objects XI ................................................................... 16 Additional Helpful Hints for Using Business Objects XI.......................................... 17

Modes for Viewing Document Output .................................................................................17 Exiting a Document...............................................................................................................18 Formatting of Date Prompt Values......................................................................................18 Choosing Prompt Values from a List ..................................................................................19 Another Example of Printing Specific Tabs/Reports within a Document........................22

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Using Business Objects XI Infoview for the First Time To use InfoView, you must have one of the following web browsers installed on your machine:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer • Safari (for Macintosh users) • FireFox

Using Internet Explorer optimizes the experience with the advanced features of Business Objects XI Infoview. There are a couple of ways to access Business Objects Infoview. It can be accessed either via the OMNI portal or by entering the web address directly. Below you will find instructions for accessing it both ways.

Accessing Business Objects InfoView Utilizing the OMNI Portal 1. Log onto OMNI 2. From the OMNI Portal Page, select the link for Business Objects XI

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Accessing Business Objects InfoView via the Direct Web Address

1. Open your web brower 2. Go to http://bo.oti.fsu.edu 3. The Log On to InfoView page appears

4. In the Username and Password field, type your FSUID and associated password

5. Click the Log On button. You are now logged onto the new the Business Objects XI InfoView homepage

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Setting Your Business Objects Infoview Preferences The first time you start Business Objects InfoView, the Home page of the Business Objects XI (BOXI2) opens by default.

Follow these instructions to set your preferences. You need only set your preferences once, but can change them later if you wish.

1. Click the Personalize InfoView now link to the right of the Business Objects XI logo, or the Preferences Icon (see arrows above)

2. Select the General tab, if you are not already on this tab 3. In the “My initial view is…” section, select the option that you want to set as

your initial view. We recommend you select Favorites as the option. If you choose Favorites, then the Favorites folder is automatically displayed on the Workspace panel the next time you log on

4. In the “My default navigation view is” section, we recommend that you select the option of Category. The option that you choose determines whether the Navigation panel displays the objects in InfoView by the folder or the categories

5. For the option “On my desktop …” specify the maximum number of objects to display per page in the Workspace panel. We recommend specifying the value 100

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6. Leave the defaults in the “For each document, show me …” section 7. In the “View my documents …” section, we recommend you select the “in a

single fullscreen browser window, one document at a time” option 8. In the “When I close my browser window …” section, we recommend you

select the “always log me off InfoView” option 9. Leave the defaults for the last two sections 10. Click the Apply button at the bottom of the page 11. Return to the bottom of this page and click the OK button

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Select Your “Favorites” When creating Favorites, you are will want to choose the documents that you use most often. This will make it much easier for you to find them each time you need to run them. We recommend you do this once for all of the reports that you commonly use. You can always add additional favorites later, as new reports are created or you begin using additional reports.

Follow these instructions to choose your Favorite documents:

1. Click the Categories icon (curved arrow above) to see the different categories of documents

2. Expand (click the plus sign beside) Corporate Categories to view the folders within this category. This category contains all of the OMNI related reports

3. Expand (click the plus sign beside) the OMNI folder. You should see both Financial and HR folders

4. Click on either Financial or HR (whichever is most applicable for you) to see the available documents within the folder in the right panel

5. Click the check box to the left of each document you use frequently and wish to add to your favorites (a green check mark will appear)

6. Click the Organize menu option in the right panel and select the “Add to my Favorites …” option. NOTE: it may take a few seconds for the next screen to appear.

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7. Click once on the Favorites folder in the small window, and then click the OK button at the bottom right corner of the page. This will add the selected document(s) to your Favorites list

Your initial configuration is complete. Log off using the yellow lock icon on the top right side of your InfoView menu bar. Then log back in to see your preferences displayed and access your Favorites list. Below is an example of what your display may look like if you created some favorites.

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Refreshing a Document in Business Objects XI The following steps will guide you through refreshing or running a document in the new version of Business Objects:

1. Begin by displaying the document you wish to refresh. If you saved the document as a favorite, you can access it from your Favorites folder. Otherwise you will need to navigate to the document by going thru Corporate Categories > OMNI > Financial or HR (appropriate one) > Report Name

2. Click (use the left mouse button) on the name of the document to select it For example, to refresh the Cost Center document, click on the words “Shortcut to Cost Center Report” (from your Favorites). You should get a pop-up window asking you to wait while the document is being processed. The initial page of the report will then be displayed.

3. If the “Left Panel” is not already displayed (to the left of the document window), click the View option on your menu and select “Left Panel”. This will allow for the simplest and quickest way to input your criteria for running the document

4. Select the value “User Prompt Input” from the dropdown at the top of the Left Panel (this field may appear defaulted to the value ‘Navigation Map’)

5. Enter appropriate data in the Prompt areas. In the example above (Cost Center Report), you would enter a value or partial value for DEPTID. If you are not sure

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of the value(s) to enter and wish to see a list of prompt values, go to the Choosing Prompt Values from a List section of this document on page 18

6. Click on the Run button to refresh the document

Once the document has been successfully refreshed, it will be presented to you in HTML “Page Mode”. If you want to view it as a PDF, you can change the mode by selecting the PDF mode option from the View dropdown list.

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Printing Data from a Document in Business Objects XI Printing can only be done in Business Objects XI when the document is viewed in PDF Mode. Unlike the previous version of Business Objects, ALL the reports (tabs or links along the bottom of the document) are displayed in ONE PDF member. To print a single report within a document you must know the first and last page numbers that you want to print. This section of the document will provide you instructions for printing all pages of document and printing a specific tab/report within a document.

Printing All Pages of a Document If you want to print ALL pages within a document, follow these simple instructions:

1. After refreshing/running your document, from the View menu dropdown, select the option of “PDF mode”. Adobe Acrobat will open and display the data as a PDF

2. Press the Printer Icon in the top border of the Adobe window, select the desired printer

3. Leave the default value of All selected in the Print Range section

4. Click the OK button at the bottom right side of the print window. The entire document (all pages from all tabs) will be printed

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Printing a Specific Tab/Report within a Document Remember, when printing specific tabs within a document, you will need to specify the page number range (for the tab) that you wish to print. The steps below will walk you through printing tabs/reports within a document.

1. After refreshing/running your document, from the View menu dropdown, select the option of “PDF mode”. Adobe Acrobat will open and display the data as a PDF

2. To find the first and last page numbers, in the Bookmarks area, click on the tab/report you want to print. The first page of that tab/report will be displayed. Note the page number found in the Adobe window at the center of the bottom border. Do not use the page number from the actual report page

This small arrow allows you to hide or show the Left Panel. It can be hidden so more of the report is visible. If the Bookmarks collapse each time, change the “Options” in the top Bookmarks border.

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3. Now click on the very next report/tab in the Bookmarks area, and note the

ending page number for the report you wish to print is one less than the Adobe starting page number displayed at the bottom from the next tab/report

For example, suppose we want to print the “Curr Detail” tab/report of the Cost Center Report. We run the report for the department we are interested in and display it in PDF mode. It has a total of 32 pages in the entire document. Click on the Bookmark for “Curr Detail” and note the first page is 10 of 32. Then click on the Bookmark for “Curr Summary” (the one immediately under “Curr Detail”) and note the page is 14 of 32. So, we want to print pages 10 through 13.

4. Press the Printer Icon in the top border of the Adobe window, select the desired printer, enter the page numbers for your report (“Pages from 10 to 13” in our example above)

5. Click the OK button at the bottom right side of the print window

Repeat the steps above if you wish to print additional individual reports within a document. NOTE: Some versions of Adobe (ex. 8.01) do not have the “from” and “to” page values broken out into two separate fields. It has one box for “Pages” where you would enter a value of “10 – 13” (as in our example).

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Printing a Tab/Report that is One Page in Length

If the tab/report you are printing is only one page in length, rather than performing the steps in the section above, you can print by doing the following:

1. After refreshing/running your document, from the View menu dropdown, select the option of “PDF mode”. Adobe Acrobat will open and display the data as a PDF

2. In the Bookmarks area, click on the tab/report you want to print

3. Press the Printer Icon in the top border of the Adobe window, select the desired printer

4. Select the Current page option in the Print Range section of the print window 5. Click the OK button at the bottom right side of the print window

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Saving a Report in Business Objects XI If you want to save a version of a report onto your computer, you have the option to do so in Excel, PDF or CSV format. As with the prior version of Business Objects, saving the document will save all tabs/reports within it. However, if you choose the option to save to EXCEL, you can delete unwanted worksheets. To save a report, click the Document icon on the menu (from HTML Page mode only) and then select the “Save to my computer as” option. Select the format you wish to save it in – Excel, PDF or CSV.

You will want to pay close attention to the directory name in which you save your report, so that you can navigate there to retrieve it once it is saved.

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Additional Helpful Hints for Using Business Objects XI

Modes for Viewing Document Output When refreshing a document, the data is first presented in HTML format and can only be seen one page at a time. This is called “Page Mode”

Sometimes it is easier to quickly scan the report without having page boundaries. To do this, from the View menu, select “Draft mode”. Some of the formatting is lost, but the report can be easily viewed by scrolling. To return to viewing the report in HTML “Page Mode”, select that option from the View menu and you’ll be returned to the default view.

If you are viewing the report in “PDF mode” and wish to return to HTML “Page mode”, click the View in HTML format button on your menu (this button is only displayed when in “PDF mode”).

Go to First Page

Go to the Preceding Page Viewing

Page 2

Go to the Next Page

Go to the Last Page

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Exiting a Document Once you are finished with a report and wish to refresh another document, click the Document icon on the menu (from HTML Page mode only) and then select the “Close” option. You will be warned that you will lose the data if you proceed. Click OK to return to refresh another document.

Formatting of Date Prompt Values When entering a date value at a Prompt on a report, it must be in the format m/d/yyyy. Examples:

11/2/2007 12/15/2007 1/4/2008

When using the Left Panel prompt window, there will be a Calendar icon at the end of prompts requiring a date. If you prefer, you can use this option rather than typing a date value into the prompt. After using this icon to select a date, you will see that it has a time at the end. Most documents will ignore the time. However, if you find one that doesn’t perform properly with the time, use the backspace to erase the time portion of the value.

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Choosing Prompt Values from a List The prior version of Business Objects always populated the “List of Values” for each Prompt when refreshing a document. This was very time-consuming, and most people typed the data values into the prompts anyway. Business Objects XI only takes the time to gather this data if you specify. If you know the values you need to enter into the prompts, you can save yourself time if you choose not to see the list of prompt values. If you do want to display the Prompt List of Values, either click the Advanced button or click the Refresh Data button in the upper right corner of the screen.

Advanced button

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The following is a screen shot of the Prompts box returned from pressing the Advanced or Refresh Data buttons. Note, depending on how many prompts are on the document, it may take a few moments to retrieve them.

To input prompt values from this window, follow these steps:

1. Highlight (click once with the left mouse button) a row in the top box for which you wish to enter a value(s)

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2. Either type a value in the bottom-right box (as was done in this example above, for First Pay Period End Date) OR highlight a value in the bottom-left box and

press the button to move the value to the bottom-right box.

NOTE: After clicking the Button, notice the 8/23/2007 value is in both the bottom-right box and the top box. The values displayed in the top box will be used when Run Query is clicked. Notice that this report is NOT ready to run because Last Pay Period End Date has not been updated/selected.

3. Repeat this process until all necessary prompt values have been entered 4. Click the Run Query button at the upper-right of this Prompts window to run the

report

>> Button

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Another Example of Printing Specific Tabs/Reports within a Document The Timesheet by Department report provides another example of when it might be preferable to print specific tabs within the document. This report can be very large when run for big departments. For large departments there can be 1000+ pages in the PDF. The prompts for the Timesheet by Department report have not changed from the prior version of Business Objects, but the format of the dates did change. Once this report has been run, change the view to PDF Mode (View > PDF mode). In the Bookmark view, you will see all of the different tabs within this report. You can click on each of the tabs to see how many pages are contained within each one. The screenshot below shows each of the tabs of this report.

Below is an example of the pages per tab/report for a large department and the corresponding page range you would use to print that particular tab/report. Tab/Report Name Starting Page Print Page Range In-Out Reqd Both 3 of 1226 3 - 200 I-O Reqd P&L 201 of 1226 201 - 299 I-O Reqd I-O 300 of 1226 300 - 398 In-Out NOT Reqd 399 of 1226 399 – 516 All w/In-Out 517 of 1226 517 – 950 All P&L Only 951 of 1226 951 - 1167 Empl Detail 1168 of 1226