June, 2008
In this issue:
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Microsoft Approves APOS Outlook Integration Kit as OBA | Office Business Application
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Berlin, Germany - May 19, 2008 - APOS Systems, the leading provider of platform extensions for Business Objects, an SAP Company, today announced at the Berlin SAPPHIRE User Conference that the APOS Integration Kit for Microsoft Outlook has been approved as a Microsoft 'Office Business Application' (OBA).
Office Business Applications (OBA) are an emerging class of application that helps businesses unlock the value of their line-of-business (LOB) systems and turn document-based processes into real applications. OBAs leverage the power of the Office Business Platform, that is, the clients, servers, services, and tools that comprise the 2007 Microsoft Office system to solve business problems.
The APOS Integration Kit for Microsoft Outlook allows users to connect to the BusinessObjects XI platform from Microsoft Outlook, with on-line and off-line report viewing as well as scheduling support.
The APOS Integration Kit for Microsoft Outlook gives BI (Business Intelligence) users a familiar, unified interface to stay connected with their BI analysis information while they're managing their busy schedule.
This style of ambient BI reduces training efforts and helps bring BI closer to all users throughout the organization. With Outlook integration, users are able to view reports, office documents, Xcelsius® documents, and dashboards from a familiar and readily accessible interface.
But beyond viewing, Outlook users can also schedule reports and export report instances from a simple, familiar interface. There's no need to get to know a different interface just to get at the required BI information.
The Integration Kit provides a simple, clean interface, utilizing the same right-click menus that are familiar in Outlook.
- "We're excited about this unique product, enabling our customers to utilize Microsoft Outlook, the most popular user interface in the world today, as their business intelligence portal.
One particularly empowering feature is the new ability to retrieve and store business intelligence documents for viewing from Microsoft Outlook even while disconnected from BusinessObjects XI.
It's even possible, while disconnected from BusinessObjects XI, to schedule a report and automatically receive the result for local analysis."
- Allan Pym, Vice President, Business Development, APOS Systems Inc.
For more information about OBA and the APOS OBA solutions for Business Objects, an SAP Company, visit www.obacentral.com and search for 'APOS' or 'Business Objects.'
For detailed solution information and online web demo, visit www.apos.com/IntegrationKitOutlook
All APOS BI Tools Now Support BusinessObjects XI 3.0 | Special Webinar
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 "The momentum for BusinessObjects XI 3.0 deployments is ramping up among our customers. Many are testing version 3.0, or are already installing it.
We are pleased to be able to release our full line of BI Tools so quickly after the release of BOE XI 3.0, and have already started delivering our version 3.0 product line to customers. This is going to be another successful release, in a long line of outstanding products."
- Ofir Gil, Vice President, Product, APOS Systems Inc.
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BusinessObjects XI 3.0 offers more opportunities for APOS BI Tools to extend the platform and help you maximize on your investments in business intelligence.
All current APOS BI Tools for BusinessObjects XI 3.0 are now available for download here or
drop us a line for more information. View our recent Press Release for APOS support information for BusinessObjects XI 3.0.
Special Webinar - June 19th
Join us for a webinar that focuses on the specifics of how APOS BI Tools and BusinessObjects XI 3.0 work together.
This 60 minute webinar focuses on the differences in the XI 3.0 versions of the APOS BI Tools suite as compared to the functionality within BusinessObjects XI 3.0. The main purpose of the webinar is to provide high level information to help you better understand these differences.
Date: Thursday, June 19, 2008
Time: 8am PDT, 11am EDT, 4pm BST
Speakers:
Warren Kobbeltvedt, Vice President, Sales, APOS Systems Inc.
Fred Walther, Manager of Pre-Sales, APOS Systems Inc.
Register now for this valuable webinar!
Case Study | Salvation Army
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"The time savings have been enormous. As a rough calculation, our APOS tools enable our Payroll Manager to save up to 20 working days a year."
...Alison Cash, Business Analyst,
Salvation Army, Australia Eastern Territory
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Tools Used:
InfoScheduler and Instance Manager for BusinessObjects XI
Background:
For administrative purposes, The Salvation Army is split into Territories around the world. There are more than 300 centres and 5,000 Ministers and Employees within the Australia Eastern Territory (AUE). As a Registered Charity and Public Benevolent Institution, The Salvation Army relies on donations to fund its work in the community. It is a priority that funds are allocated appropriately and accounted for.
Challenge:
The Salvation Army (AUE) distributes more than 900 payroll reports to department managers on a biweekly basis. To ensure that information is received in a timely manner, payroll reports are distributed overnight after each payroll is completed.
In the early stages of implementing BusinessObjects Enterprise, there were some issues which caused the reports to fail. Each time that occurred, the failed reports needed to have their parameters re-entered and the report re-generated.
It could take the HR System Administrator and the Payroll Manager 3-4 days to re-generate the reports. Additionally, most of the reports are distributed to the centre managers via e-mail.
If the recipient information changed or additional parameters need to be added to an existing instance, the laborious process of deleting the existing instance, re-entering the parameters and regenerating the reports was very time consuming and would severely impact the workload of the Payroll Manager.
It became apparent that there needed to be a more efficient way to re-run the failed reports. The Salvation Army (AUE) contacted APOS Systems for a solution.
Solution:
"Instance Manager provided a straightforward method of editing an existing scheduled report and running it at any time," stated Alison Cash, AUE Business Analyst. "It had the same fields as the Central Management Console but not having to move between forms and update all the time was a great improvement. The layout was familiar, so the time to learn how to use the product was very quick."
Shortly after discovering an article in the APOS Newsletter about InfoScheduler managing report instances, they downloaded the demo version and since purchased it. "
The InfoScheduler tool is extremely easy to use and it took very little time to see that this was the solution to our remaining issue.
Not only could we re-run hundreds of failed reports quickly but we could finally see a group of reports that are scheduled, their parameters and recipients in one easy spreadsheet layout.
We could then utilize the strengths of Excel to copy instances and make quick changes," Alison added.
The APOS BI Tools have alleviated stress for the Payroll Manager in the event of a report failure and managers do not have to wait days to get their reports. This has also means fewer calls to The Salvation Army AUE Payroll Helpdesk...
View the full case study, along with other APOS case studies here.
Contact apos@apos.com to have your company featured in an APOS Case Study.
Vice President's Corner | Allan Pym, Vice President Business Development
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 The pace of activity at APOS seems to escalate with each passing quarter. May was a very busy month for APOS on many fronts.
Of particular note was our involvement in the SAPPHIRE User Conference events held in Orlando, Florida, and in Berlin, Germany.
The Orlando event hosted roughly 15,000 people, and the Berlin event, which was held jointly with the Business Objects User Conference, hosted about 9,000 people. These two events were very impressive in their size, scope, and success.
At both events the Business Objects solution suite was front and center for the SAP community to see, and the feedback we received from attendees was very positive on what these solutions will bring to their implementations.
The Berlin event was particularly exciting this year as we now have a London, UK office to directly serve the Europe/Middle East/Africa region. The growing awareness and adoption of the APOS solutions in EMEA was quite apparent during conference meetings with various customers, prospective customers and business partners. We look forward to building on this strong momentum.
Regardless of geographic region, we consistently receive excellent feedback from customers on the evaluation software process that we follow with prospective customers.
The readily available nature of the APOS solutions and the access to our top-notch technical support team are key items that people refer to in this feedback.
I encourage our prospective customers from all regions to fully utilize the evaluation process and the various resources that we make freely available to you.
Please contact me if you have any questions about the process or the resources available to you. |
APOS Development Corner | Ofir Gil, Vice President Product
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 This is the first edition of my APOS Development Corner column.
I will be reviewing topics that the APOS development team is focusing on right now, along with our plans for the future. Hopefully this information will give you some insight to the inner workings of our development team.
We are entering a new era of intensive localization at APOS. We started adding limited localization to our Integration Kit for ESRI GIS a couple of years ago,
but we are intensifying our efforts in order to make our tools more accessible to users throughout the world. Our initial focus is on end-user facing tools like the new Integration Kit for Outlook,
Integration Kit for ESRI GIS, Integration Kit for crystalreports.com, InfoScheduler, AddressBook Gateway,
and Distribution Server.
Traditionally our tools were used by administrators, developers, or power users. Our integration kits are a big change for us as they are focused on the end-users within the organization. Before we created the integration kits, our InfoScheduler had more end-user reach than our other tools, especially in the Finance department.
We had clients who preferred using it to schedule to their Inbox the various reports they needed, while easily changing the various parameters that controlled their reports. These customers helped us solidify some of the concepts behind our Integration Kit for Outlook.
This new focus on the end-user changed our development path and increased the importance of localization. When we started developing the Integration Kit for ESRI GIS, we had a different kind of tool on our hands. The included UI was intended to be used by end-users throughout the organization.
We had to offer translations to a number of languages out of the box and made the UI easily modifiable by the customer to facilitate the option of adding other languages.
Our newly released Integration Kit for Outlook is a 'full-on' end-user tool. It is intended to be the access point for users throughout the organization to consume BI on a daily basis. We are focusing our greatest localization effort yet on this tool.
Our Integration Kit for Outlook will be supporting English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese very soon in our XI 3.0 version. We will be translating our UI, server, and administration module to all of these languages, as well as our documentation and white paper.
We are currently looking for beta sites to help us test the new localization. If you are interested in participating in our beta program, please email us at apos@apos.com.
This is an exciting step for us...and it is kind of cool for me to see the Integration Kit for Outlook in Japanese...
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Now, for some more in-depth technical talk, read on...
Technical Tips and Tweaks | Flex and Flash
As I am immersed in my new role as VP Product at APOS, it feels like my old consulting and programming days are slipping away. I will use this column to stay connected to those roots.
Some of the tips will be my own, but I am hoping for contributions from readers as well.
If you have an interesting tip, or have any comments or questions, please email: mytips@apos.com. I may publish the content of those emails from time to time, so please let me know if you do not want it to be published or don't want your name to be mentioned.
My first tip is dedicated to Nigel, who has been an APOS supporter and friend for over a decade now, and to Donald who introduced us to Flex and has also been a supporter and friend for many years.
This tip is about including Flash inside your Web Intelligence report. We started working with Flex a few months ago to facilitate integration with BusinessObjects Enterprise and other Flex supporting platforms.
We used Flex to add a Flash based UI for our Distribution Server to help users with scheduling. We have other projects on the go and we are confident that Flex is going to make Flash even more accessible as a UI in business situations.
It gives a full client feel and abilities to a thin client deployment. Including a Flash presentation inside your Web Intelligence report can give another dimension to your report.
Some of our upcoming projects will use this technology as part of the product. Here are full details of how to include a SWF file inside your Web Intelligence report.
APOS BI Tools Overview Webinar | Learn More About Current APOS Solutions
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WEBINAR - June 24th, July 22nd
Join us for an overview of the APOS BI Tools Suite for the BusinessObjects XI platform.
This webinar will provide high level information to help better assess the range of current solutions available. Learn how APOS BI Tools can help leverage and extend the BusinessObjects XI platform.
Date: Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Time: 8am PDT, 11am EDT, 4pm BST
Date: Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Time: 8am PDT, 11am EDT, 4pm BST
Speakers:
Warren Kobbeltvedt, Vice President, Sales, APOS Systems Inc.
Register now for this valuable webinar!
APOS Management Team | Learn More About Us
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People have always been the secret to our success. As APOS extends its reach, both geographically and through our products and services, these key people will be blazing the trail: view the APOS Management Team here.
APOS BI Tools Suite | Extend BusinessObjects XI Without Custom Development
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Visit here to request evaluation software download instructions for our ever-growing suite of BI Tools.
Instance Administration and Scheduling . . .
Archive Manager - report instance archiving, with restore capability!
InfoScheduler - power batch scheduling from Microsoft Excel
Instance Manager - administrator power tool for managing instances
Instance Monitor - email notification of failed instances
System Management and Monitoring . . .
KPI - metadata for analysis, who's viewing which reports, license analysis, server activity monitoring
Object Manager - report promotion, object & security management
RealTime Monitor - powerful SNMP monitoring & control of servers, with alerts
RunTime Manager - set availability time windows for Job Servers, Page Servers, etc.
Enhanced Report Distribution . . .
Bursting Manager - burst a large instance into small ones, burst one report to many
Distribution Server - powerful post processing capabilities, zip support, password security and more
Report Package Booster - consolidate reports to password protected pdf/xls and distribute
Application Integration . . .
AddressBook Gateway - integrate Outlook/Exchange with ePortfolio/InfoView 'schedule to email'
Integration Kit for crystalreports.com - schedule Webi, Deski, Crystal Reports to crystalreports.com
Integration Kit for ESRI GIS - two-way integration between BusinessObjects and ESRI GIS
Integration Kit for Microsoft Outlook - connect to BusinessObjects XI from Outlook, offline report viewing
Row Level Security . . .
View Time Security - row level data security without C++ development
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This newsletter is published approximately 12 times a year, to share information about how APOS BI Tools and services are extending the BusinessObjects platform for companies like yours.
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This newsletter was sent to: {EMAIL}
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Head Office: 1118-100 Conestoga College Blvd., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2P 2N6
Tel: 519.894.APOS(2767) - Fax: 519.894.1891
Help Desk: 519.894.APOS(2767) Ext. 1
Branch Offices: 35447 McKee Road, Abbotsford, BC, Canada V3G 3E4
Tel: 604.864.0766 - Fax: 604.864.4291
80-83 Long Lane, London, UK EC1A 9ET
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EMEA Support: 44 (0) 208 819 9640 Ext 1
Email: apos@apos.com - Web: www.apos.com
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(c)2008 APOS Systems Inc.
All rights reserved. APOS BI Tools is a registered trademark of APOS Systems Inc. The Business Objects logo, SAP logo, Business Objects, SAP, Crystal Reports, Xcelsius, WebIntelligence and Desktop Intelligence are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects and its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries.
Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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