Mii DashboardConnector PDF
Mii DashboardConnector PDF
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................... 3
PRE-REQUISITES ............................................................................................................................................ 3
DOWNLOAD AND SETUP CONNECTOR ....................................................................................................... 3
GENERAL OVERVIEW OF DIFFERENT TABS AND FUNCTIONALITIES .................................................... 5
Definition Tab:.................................................................................................................................................. 5
Catalog Tab: ..................................................................................................................................................... 5
Advanced Tab: ................................................................................................................................................. 6
Usage Tab: ....................................................................................................................................................... 7
CONFIGURATION TO EXECUTE A QUERY TEMPLATE: ............................................................................. 8
CONFIGURATION TO EXECUTE A CATALOG OBJECT: ........................................................................... 10
PASSING PARAMETERS AT RUNTIME: ...................................................................................................... 13
VISUALIZING THE DATA:.............................................................................................................................. 14
EXPORTING THE DASHBOARD AND IMPORTING IT IN MII: .................................................................... 16
SOME TIPS WHILE CREATING DASHBOARDS: ........................................................................................ 16
APPENDIX ...................................................................................................................................................... 17
Icon Library .................................................................................................................................................... 17
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ............................................................................................................ 18
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................ 19
INTRODUCTION
This document will lead you through all steps necessary for the integration of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0
(Dashboards) with SAP MII. It will guide you through the steps for configuring the MII-Dashboards Connector in
Dashboards 4.0 application and will help you set up a connection, create dashboards using MII query templates or
Plant Information Catalog and embed the same in a MIIs HTML/JSP page.
MII Dashboards Connector is an Add-On data connection that can be installed in BusinessObjects Dashboards. The
connector allows you to connect to any MII instance easily and get data from it. You could browse through the
projects and select the query template from which you want to create dashboards. Alternatively, you could also
browse the Plant Information Catalog to select the tags and groups and hence make dashboard out of it. With this
connector, the creation of dashboards becomes easy and intuitive as you do not have to remember the WSDL URL,
file path, etc.
Dashboards is a part of SBOP 4.0 Feature Pack 3. Dashboards is data visualization software that allows you to create
and export interactive dashboards from Excel spreadsheets or other external data sources. These dashboards
contain various components, such as charts, gauges, and dials that are bound to data sources. The components
display the data in a compact and visual manner.
Dashboards also allows you to connect to external data sources. Hence, this feature is utilized by the MII-Dashboard
connector to get the data from any MII instance with which dashboards can be built.
PRE-REQUISITES
In order to use the MII-Dashboards connector, the following has to be present
1. SBOP 4.0 Feature Pack 3 Dashboards
2. MS-Excel
3. Flash player 10.3x or higher
DOWNLOAD AND SETUP CONNECTOR
Step 1. Download the MII-Dashboards connector from MIIs Admin Portal.
Content Development Tools and Archives page
Step 2.
Download the connector to your file system and extract the zip archive.
Step 3.
Open the Dashboards application and navigate to FileManage Add-Ons..
Click install Add-On, choose the connector XelsiusConnector.xlf that was downloaded and extracted. Click close.
Step 4.
Once the connection parameters are entered, you can verify it by clicking on Test Connection button.
The connector operates in two modes of execution.
1. Execute query template:- Choose a query template that was created in the MII Workbench
2. Execute Catalog Object: - Browse and select Plant Information Catalog Objects and use them to build
your dashboard.
Bind the output to the spreadsheet using the cell selector.
Catalog Tab:
In this tab, you would select the Plant Information Catalog Objects you would want to work and create a dashboard
with. To add one or more objects, you would use > button and to remove you would use <. You could also pass the
object names at run time by binding the Parameter Value column cell to a cell in the spreadsheet.
By default, the catalog objects would get the current value. You could change the mode of query execution by passing
the Mode in the Advanced tab.
Advanced Tab:
Here you would be able to configure your query according to the business scenario. For example, you could
pass the start and end dates of a query, change the mode of execution and also pass the tag names at
runtime (In case of tag, PCo and Catalog query).
The left list box would list down all the input parameters that the query templates could possibly take in. These
set of parameters differ from one query template to another.
You could either manually enter the value in the input field or use the cell selector (
spreadsheet cell to pass the value at run time.
) and assign a
Usage Tab:
This tab is used to configure the load parameters for the connector. Parameters like refresh option, trigger
options and idle and load messages can be set up here.
Step 4: Preview the output by clicking Preview XML to get an idea on how many rows and columns to
bind.
Each column in the output corresponds to a column in spreadsheet and each Row to a row. For
example, if you are using a Tag Query with 5 tags in current mode, then you would choose 6
columns (1 column for DateTime) and 1 row in the spreadsheet.
Step 5: Bind the output to the spreadsheet. Do this by expanding the output parameters tree , select rows.
Now click on the cell selector (
).
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Step 4: Preview the output by clicking Preview XML to get an idea on how many rows and columns to
bind.
Each column in the output corresponds to a column in spreadsheet and each Row to a row. For
example, if you have selected 3 Tags from the catalog and using Current mode , then you would
choose 4 columns (1 column for DateTime) and 3 row(1 row for each tag) in the spreadsheet.
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Step 5: Bind the output to the spreadsheet. Do this by expanding the output parameters tree , select rows.
Now click on the cell selector (
).
Choose range of cells. Make sure you bind enough rows and columns in the spreadheet to avoid truncation
of the values.
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) button beside it. This means that the input is bindable and that the
A typical use of that would be to change the query template mode at runtime. For example, you have a tag
query that executes in current mode. Now, you want to change the mode on a click of a button. This can be
easily achieved by binding the Mode input parameter to the spreadsheet and then triggering the connector
to load the selected mode.
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c.
In the right side properties panel of the component, select By Range under data. Click the cell
selector and choose the area of the spreadsheet which you had selected while configuring the
connector.
d. Give a name, description, X-axis and Y-axis details according to your requirements.
e. Preview the dashboard by clicking on the Preview button which is present n the standard tool
bar.
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For example, you are primarily using a tag query in current mode which has 5 tags in it. So you bind 6 columns
and 1 row in the spreadsheet. At runtime you change the mode to history. Since the query now would return more
data now, all the data would be missed because you have only mapped one row in the spreadsheet.
Its better to bind a considerable number of rows just to make sure that the incoming data is not missed.
5. While exporting the final dashboard to the file system, choose to export HTML. This would export both a HTML
file and an SWF file. The advantage of this being that the code to embed the flash object is already written.
6. Similarly, if you are importing an HTML and an SWF in MIIs workbench, make sure that you import it in the same
folder. This would avoid path conflicts. In case you wish to import the file in different folders, then you would need
to change the src property of the embedded SWF file.
APPENDIX
Icon Library
- Cell Selector: This icon would be present beside every input field in the connector. This is used to
bind the input and output parameters to the spreadsheet. All the properties except the output property should
only be bounded with a single cell in the spreadsheet.
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REFERENCES
For information on Dashboards, please go to http://help.sap.com/boxcel and review the SAP Documentation.
For information on creating and configuring the query templates in SAP MII, please go to http://help.sap.com/mii
and review the SAP Documentation.
Also check out the SAP Community Network - https://www.scn.sap.com for articles, Wikis, and Forums.
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