Information Broadcasting - 2

Introduction : IB is mainly used to automate queries, web templates, reports to different destinations such as to end-user emails or group of user mails(E-mail Bursting), to portal roles, to KM folders and in different output formats such as PDF, Excel, XHTML , HTML or as a online link .It can also be used to pre calculate web templates and queries which improves performance as when end-user runs report it will pre-calculate and store it offline .IB can be called from different places such as query designer , BEX Analyzer and from Portal and also from the context menu of any web-template(with option send).You can schedule IB settings background by scheduling at regular intervals or upon data change in Info provider . The important pre-requisite for IB is mail-server needs to be configured in system.

Information broadcasting allows you to make objects with business intelligence content available to a wide spectrum of users, according to your own requirements. It also offers functions to optimize performance and for exception reporting.

BEx Information Broadcasting is the Business Explorer component you use to distribute BI objects that were generated with the various BEx tools. The following figure shows how Information Broadcasting is integrated into the function landscape and tool landscape of the Business Explorer:

Broadcasting Functions

Information broadcasting provides various functions that are executed by business experts and in system administration.

The following distribution types are available in the BEx Broadcaster; the distribution types provide different functions for system administration and business experts.

Broadcast E-Mail (Bursting)

You can distribute BI objects (queries, query views, Web templates, or reports) as precalculated documents or online links by e-mail to recipients that you identify based on master data.

           

Broadcast by Exception

You can check queries or query views in the background for exceptions. If a threshold value for an exception is exceeded or not reached, the BEx Broadcaster immediately generates a document according to the criteria you defined and distributes this to the recipients by e-mail, to the portal, or as an alert.

           

Broadcast (Multi Channel)

You can distribute a BI object (query, query view, Web template, report, or workbook) with a broadcast setting using multiple channels (e-mail, portal, or printer).

           

Precalculating Value Sets

You can fill variables of the type Precalculated Value Set for characteristic values with values in the background. The precalculated value sets are then available as variable values in queries.

           

Filling the OLAP Cache

You can precalculate queries and fill the OLAP cache with generated data to reduce the time needed to access the data. 

(The distribution type Fill OLAP Cache allows you to precalculate queries and to fill the OLAP cache with the generated data. If the users call Web Applications, queries, reports or workbooks that are based on this data, the access time is significantly reduced and the workload on the application server is considerably less. Since the functions of the OLAP cache were designed so that the user does not have to wait any longer than normal when evaluating a query.)

Filling the MDX Cache

You can precalculate BEx queries in the background, which then serve as data providers for Crystal Reports. This improves the performance of Crystal Reports.

(The Fill MDX Cache distribution type allows you to precalculate BEx queries in the background, which can then be used as data providers for Crystal Reports. This function is a device used to improve system performance when executing Crystal Reports.)