BI 4.1 Web Intelligence GUI Customization

Definition

Customers have been asking for a way to modify/customize the buttons and tabs that are shown in webi intelligence and with the introduction of BI 4.1, that ability is now available.

In BI 4.1, the option to customize the webi GUI has been added that will allow you to remove various buttons and tabs (among other things) from the webi interface. This modification applies to both the BI Launchpad Rich Internet Application and Web viewer as well as the stand alone Web Intelligence Rich Client.

This allows a great deal of flexibility when dealing with end user needs and what the administrators want the end user to have access to.

This ability should help with one of the biggest issues administrators have run into with the release of BI 4.0.

In BI 4.0, customers found that the security settings had changed as it relates to drilling and filtering in Web Intelligence.  In order to perform those actions, users have to have the Reporting - enable formatting right enabled.

This would cause issues when administrators did not want users to have the ability to modify or update reports, but did want them to be able to drill down and use report level filters.

By customizing the Webi interface, they can work around this issue in BI 4.1

How it Works

Customizing the interface is done at the group level in the CMC.

Right click on the group name and select Customization.

This puts you on the Web Intelligence interface customization page.

On the User Interface Elements page, check the Design Mode toolbar

Go to the Features tab and check Design Mode and Data Mode

Once you save both, that user group will now be able to drill and filter, but not have access to the design mode in webi.

Here is what it will look like when you right click and select Modify in BI Launchpad

Notice that there is no Design or Data button in the upper right hand corner, but you do have access to Drill and Filter bar.

I would advise you to check out the User Interface Elements page in the CMC to see what all can be hidden from the end users. The list is quite long and users have been asking for this for quite a while (hopefully it will reduce the number of questions about modifying BI Launchpad to remove these things).

Involved Components

Best Practices - How to's

This should only be considered a way to customize the viewer and it is NOT to be considered a security feature.

http://scn.sap.com/community/businessobjects-web-intelligence/blog/2013/03/10/what-is-new-with-web-intelligence-41-part-1-developer-support-asug-webcast

http://help.sap.com/bowebi