Tuesday, June 17, 2025

APOS Publisher for Cloud Core Features & Advanced Capabilities

Core & advanced features of an enterprise scheduling and broadcasting solution

APOS Publisher for Cloud is designed to overcome limitations inherent in SAP Analytics Cloud Publications. By design, SAP Analytics Cloud encourages "Pull" communications, in which users log in to view their reports and dashboards. While SAP Analytics Cloud Publications addresses basic SAC report scheduling & distribution needs, it is not suitable for "Push" communications, in which reports and dashboards are distributed, often in high volumes, and generally by email.

SAC Publications' limits on the volume of publications and the number of external recipients are major boundaries to a Push strategy, as are limits in generating recipient content dynamically, conditional broadcasting, and format and destination options.

Core Features

APOS Publisher for Cloud overcomes SAC Publications limitations with a rich feature set that covers a wide variety of potential use cases within any enterprise, including:

• Scalability - meet volume requirements with multiple processing servers and failover capabilities
• Dynamic rules - Generate tailored report distribution using dynamic recipient data
• Filters and variables - Apply filters and variable values on an individual basis to ensure each recipient receives the data they need and are entitled to
• Security integration - Supports numerous SSO configurations
• Formats and destinations - Supports a wide range of report formats (Excel, CSV, PDF, Text, HTML, MHTML, ODS (open document for office), XML, OXML (office open XML), XPS (print format) and delivery destinations (Email (attachment or body), network file location, FTP/FTPS)
• Report consolidation - Reduce overload of emails/reports by consolidating into a single report/email
• Export options - Allow multiple export formats in a single email (e.g. XLS, PDF and PPT)
• Widget-level broadcasting - Target specific widgets on a given SAC Story page
• Conditional broadcasting - Trigger/event based scheduling based on specific conditions/thresholds
• Monitoring and alerts - Monitor distribution processes and receive notifications about the status

Advanced Capabilities

While the core feature set enables organizations to expand scheduling and broadcasting use cases well beyond their original requirements, APOS Publisher for Cloud's advanced capabilities can be game changers for organizations looking to transform their solution landscape.

SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office Scheduling and Broadcasting

Many organizations use SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office (AfO) to share Excel-based insights, but SAP does not support scheduling and broadcasting AfO reports in SAP Analytics Cloud. APOS Publisher for Cloud removes this limitation and provides the same core features available for SAC report scheduling and broadcasting to AfO report scheduling and broadcasting.

APOS Publisher for Cloud:

• Removes barriers and enables capabilities that allow companies to move ahead with adoption of SAP Analytics Cloud
• Allows companies to retire BusinessObjects deployments that have been in place only to serve Analysis for Office scheduling needs
• Enables existing BEx Broadcaster deployments to move ahead with their adoption of Analysis for Office

Self-Serve Broadcast Scheduling with the Web User Interface

One of the many features that sets Publisher for Cloud apart is its self-service report broadcasting capabilities available through its Web Scheduling UI.

The diagram below shows the roles of APOS Publisher for Cloud users:

While system administrator and broadcast creator roles require some technical expertise, broadcast schedulers, using the Web-based user interface, require very little. APOS Publisher for Cloud's Web Scheduling UI simplifies the task of scheduling report broadcasts so that more line-of-business users can participate in your communications strategy, and the workload on your administrators and broadcast creators is greatly reduced.

The UI consists of four tabs:

• History - the bursting definitions to which you have access. The three buttons to the right of the bursting definition allow you to schedule broadcasts, view burst history, and remove the bursting definition from the list.
• Favorites - set up bursting definitions that you run frequently for easy access.
• Public - folders containing bursting definitions available to most users, and which you can add to your favorites.
• Personal - folders containing bursting definitions available only to you, and which you can add to your favorites

The simplified user interface makes scheduling report broadcasts fast and easy, allowing non-technical business users to reach their audiences with consistent messaging.