Using SAP Dashboards publicly without login prompt

Question

I have built a dashboard using SAP Dashboards and we wish for it to be displayed within the company, on screen. The trouble is that when you export it as a flash file, it wants you to log in so it can run the queries. I'm assuming that there's some way to prevent this and have the dashboard log itself in somehow? It'll be displayed on a TV so don't want to have to hook a keyboard and mouse up to it every few hours to type a password in! Plus we don't want the users knowing the login details because we only use the admin account.

PS I'm currently using Query Builder which is built into Dashboards in order to pull out my queries. I've read there may be a way to achieve what I want by using QaaWS but I'm using a UNX universe and it doesn't work with the Query as a Web Service Designer.

Thanks for any help, I'm pretty new to this

Steven

Answer 1

One possibility is to use the OpenDocument functionality.

OpenDocument is an HTTP link to an object (Webi document, Dashboard, …) stored within the BusinessObjects repository. You can generate an OpenDocument link by right-clicking the object in the BI Launch Pad and selecting Document link (see this tutorial for a step-by-step guide).

By storing the dashboard in your repository, the only remaining authentication issue is to provide the necessary credentials to OpenDocument. Access to the universe you're using as a database will then be automatically determined based on these credentials.

OpenDocument can be configured with Single Sign-On (SSO). The SSO source can be Active Directory, SAP BW, …. Once you set up SSO, clicking the generated OpenDocument link should automatically log you on and open the dashboard; no additional authentication will be necessary.

SSO authentication is something that's set up in the back-end (on the BusinessObjects server side). You can find more information on this topic in the Business Intelligence Platform Administrator Guide. The link points to the documentation for BI 4.1 SP04, for other versions or other product manuals, have a look at http://help.sap.com/boall_en/.

To summarize:

• Set up SSO and configure OpenDocument to authenticate using SSO
• Store your dashboard in the repository
• Generate an OpenDocument link to your dashboard

Answer 2

I wanted to answer my own question since I got this working and wanted to help anyone else who might have the same problem, because it took a long time to find the answer.

The solution is to build the universe as normal but then to create a webi report in which you build the queries you would've had in your dashboard, and put the result of each query in a table. Then you can publish that table as a web service and in the dashboard instead of using the query builder, click Data>Connections and add a QaaWS connection to that web service. In the Input Values section, click on the "login" value and point it to a cell in your spreadsheet which has your BO username. Then do the same for the password value.

When published, this will enable your dashboard to log into BO at whatever intervals you specify and refresh itself without needing any user to manually enter login credentials.