In a two-part series on the SAP Community Network, I’ve made the case that organizations that rely on the SAP BusinessObjects semantic layer, the universe, should whole-heartedly embrace adoption of the Information Design Tool (IDT). The latest release, SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise 4.2 Support Pack 3, includes many refinements from the original BI 4.0 released five years ago. It also introduces IDT support for linked universes. And SAP has just released updated education materials for version 4.2 of Web Intelligence (BOW310/BOW320) and Information Design Tool (BOID10).

Information Design Tool 4.2 Training

EV Technologies is an SAP authorized education partner. We can help your organization create a BI training plan and bring SAP BI education on-site to your location. We can also help you enroll employees in public training classes throughout North America, virtual training classes that your employees can take at their desks, or even electronic learning that they can take at a time most convenient for them.

We’re really proud of our universe design instructors. When they’re not in the classroom, they’re putting their universe design and data visualization skills to use for a diverse array of SAP customers.

The universe design curriculum from SAP should be a key component of your BI training plan. During the BOID10 Information Design Tool course, students construct a universe that exposes them to the best practices in universe design while simultaneously avoiding the pitfalls of not-so-great universe design. This second aspect of the course is vitally important, as those pitfalls are frequently the ones that expensive consultants have to come in and fix later.

Be sure to include a line item in your next universe project plan to budget for the BOID10 Information Design Tool course.

Information Design Tool Mentoring

Our team of universe design experts would love to build your organization’s next great universe. But it might be more beneficial to your organization if we come alongside and mentor your BI team in the creation of high-value, high-performance universes using the Information Design Tool. The mentoring approach has the additional value of being more cost effective than a full outsourcing of your universe design.

Information Design Tool Conversion Plan

Using our Sherlock®-as-a-Service, we will inspect your BI landscape with an eye toward UNX conversion and adoption. First, we’ll identify obsolete users and content that can be safely archived and removed from your BI landscape. This activity will reduce the number of documents that require universe conversion and testing. Next, we’ll analyze your universes and rank them according to utilization. We’ll also flag universes that appear to be poorly designed that may be candidates for redesign, retirement, or consolidation with other small limited-use-case universes. Sherlock® can be used to track progress on both universe conversion and user adoption.

It’s been five years since SAP launched the original Information Design Tool 4.0. In those five years, SAP has improved usability and closed the feature gap with its predecessor, the Universe Design Tool. At the same time, SAP has elevated universes created with the Information Design Tool as the preferred semantic layer for their latest tools, SAP Lumira, SAP Design Studio and SAP Analytics Cloud.

• The Fate of the Universe Depends on You, Part 1 of 2 via SAP Community
• The Fate of the Universe Depends on You, Part 2 of 2 via SAP Community
• Conversion of the relational universes in BI 4.x, from UNV to UNX via SAP Community wiki
• Universe Design (.UNV) v Information Design Tool (.UNX) via SAP Community wiki

Not sure where to start? Let’s begin with a simple conversation and review your organization’s readiness for the Information Design Tool. The Information Design Tool is ready for you.