Business Object has two tools for building dashboards: Xcelsius and Dashboard Builder. Having more choice can be a good thing, but it can also make it difficult to figure out which product is best for you and your company. In this discussion we’ll look at each product and who it is best for as well as how to use it.

Xcelsius lets you quickly develop dashboards using a point and click interface. Prior to being bought by Business Objects, it was a stand-alone tool that made it easy to visualize data in Excel spreadsheets and perform what-if scenarios. After being acquired by Business Objects, it was made ‘enterprise ready’ and enabled to consume NetWeaver BI data. This is ideal for desktop deployments because it can be saved as Flash and integrated into Crystal Reports, PDFs, Power Point slides or online sites.

The one point of confusion for Xcelsius is determining which version to buy. Xcelsius Present only consumes Excel data and the data is static. Xcelsius Engage doesn’t limit you to data from Excel. You can consume web services and XML data. Finally, Xcelsius Enterprise is designed to consume enterprise data sources from Business Objects BI.

Dashboard Builder lets you build composite dashboards. This means that it can combine content from Crystal Reports, Xcelsius, Web Intelligence and Voyager. You can create tabs and page for the different content. For example, you an Xcelsius dashboard can be included within a Crystal Report, or you can use Dashboard Builder to place them side-by-side in a composite view. The Dashboard Builder also lets the individual parts communicate with each other by exchanging data and passing parameters to each other.

To download a trial version of Xcelsius, follow this link:
http://www.sap.com/usa/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/sme/freetrials/index.epx

To see an overview of how to use Dashboard Builder, click on the following link for a record webinar:
http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/index?rid=%2Fwebcontent%2Fuuid%2Fb04f7e1e-981c-2c10-9898-860238a6388d