Hi,
Can anyone help me know the difference between creating a Dashboard using:
Using Xcelcius is better or PM?
Are there any restrictions on using each of these projects or Either of the product have any disadvantage that could be overcome using either of the product?
Please clarify.
Amrita.
Amrita (BOB member since 2006-11-02)
XCelsius is a really neat tool but it just uses an Excel file as a source. It’s stand-alone and doesn’t use the Business Objects platform, it just runs on a PC. PM is a Business Objects tool, needs the Business Objects servers, and as such can obtain information from any database that you can connect to with BusObj. They have different uses and can’t really be compared.
Gillian 
(BOB member since 2005-08-18)
Hi there,
the most obvious advantage for a certain project was that i need speedometers that refresh themselves every 5 to 30 minutes. With PM it was a dead end. No chance without starting to program a lot. Xcelsius does auto refresh in seconds. For sure PM is more integrated within the BO platform (link to webi, drill into various dimensions and stuff like that … ) … Overall … Xcelsius heals (for the moment) a lot issues that i would expect form a world wide BI vendor plattform product.
RalfHH 
(BOB member since 2005-01-03)
Xcelsuis will have the ability to be refreshed from universes in the first half of the new year.
With the Web Services interface you can get now, connectivity is not an issue. You have to have the workgroup version, however.
IMO, Xcelsius gives people the ability to create some snazzy things, but lacks substance due to Excel being so involved. But, most companies don’t get anything out of the Performance Management suite because they don’t properly define metrics.
It’s all going to merge together as Xcelsius is a major part of the upcoming Performance Manager rewrite.
Steve Krandel 
(BOB member since 2002-06-25)
Steve, any idea where i can find further info on this such as dates?
ideally i want to get an idea of whether my company is better off sticking with PM or swapping to Xcelsius, and then whether i’d have to shell out a fortune if i let PM licensing lapse to reinstate it.
we don’t utilise PM as we could as the business aren’t that interested. give them some swanky graphics though and they love it.
from a BI developing side i am not a fan of PM anyway and find it cumbersome, longwinded and limited for what i need to produce
i’m currently looking at swapping to Xcelsius as i’m hoping the development time will be similar but the solution will be more flexible in terms of changes to business requirements.
can’t afford the Live Office thing so will be using the Web Connector we already have via our licensing, and hope that won’t be too much of a pain to get working.
d’you reckon i may be better delaying the dashboarding part of the project until some of the Xcelsius visuals come into PM? i’m talking months though, not years.
sorry for the long email, i’m interested in Xcelsius but figured that it would merge with PM sometime, I just wondered when…
cheers
Neil
Neil Phillips 
(BOB member since 2002-08-22)
This is really something you should talk to your BO Account Manager about.
My understanding is that much of the Xcelsius stuff will be in PM.
Steve Krandel (BOB member since 2002-06-25)
Yeah, I kind of thought that would be the case, but thanks anyway.
Neil Phillips (BOB member since 2002-08-22)
It’s simple, one is overly complex and the other is very easy. The Dashboard Manager (in my opinion) will become legacy stuff. If you have ever developed a dashboard within the dashboard manager you know why I say that. There are great things that the dashboard manager does, but the hassle of it’s set-up outweigh its advantages.
Let’s put it this way. BO used their own dashboard tool to build their packaged analytics. Once the effort of building those dashboards became evident, they switched to building their BI in Crystal Reports.
Even though Xcelsius has several limitations, Xcelsius w/ web services is a much cleaner solution, for now. The Business Objects reps will hard sell Dashboard Manager because there is more money in it. Conceptually, Dashboard Manager is a more scalable solution, but having to develop in it’s interface makes other BO options more favorable.
HOPEFULLY, the goal/responsibility logic of Dashboard Manager will get migrated to Xcelsius with Web Services, and the metric logic will make its way to the Universe, or something that more closely resembles WebI.
The thought process that BO had in the beginning was the following:
-Have a logical layer (metrics) detached from the User Interface
-Expose the logical layer to the end user (ie. make it web based)
-Leverage Business Objects Universes
-Allow end users to manage their User Interface
They essentially wanted to make a WebI-like environment for a dashboard. However, their implementation of the development interface made it so complex that BO has had to restate their intentions for the product. (ie. They now tell their clients that metrics and dashboards are to be built by developers) If this were the intention from the beginning you would have seen a 32 bit client for design. All the logical elements are in place for creating a scalable dashboarding solution in BOs Dashboard Manager. However, their UI suffers greatly, and seems to be an almost completely separate BI tool. Additionally, much of the functionality already existing in the Business Objects Enterprise environment is repeated in dashboard manger, requiring multiple locations for managing similar functionality. For example, Dashboard Manager has its own collaboration and scheduling. Something that Business Objects Enterprise (Crystal Enterprise) has packaged since version 10. Granted, Dashboard Manager tries to add more components to colaboration, but that is besides the point. The goal of XI is to bring all content to a single BI platform and management environment.
Somehow the Dashboard Manager team has avoided the scrutiny of the rest of the BO development organization. However, I cant imagine that this will last for another 2 years.
jthillam (BOB member since 2006-01-31)
There are somethings you can do now.
At the conference in San Francisco they announced that there are 11 xcelcius objects now in dashboard manager. I know the metrics are not easy but if you know the lowest possible summary you need to be at it works great.
To get the Xcelcius objects you need to load MHF 1 on top of XI Release 2 with SP1. Search on MHF1 and you will see my posting on how to get these working.
Also, within MHF 1 you can add Xcelsius swf files to Dashboard manager and build an entire dashboard using the swf files.
tenather (BOB member since 2002-08-29)
hi all,
we recently had a visit from our bo account manager who catagorically stated that excelsius would remain a “plugin” product as he put it and not be integrated into the webi/dashboard manager/EPM stack. the plan for the stack is, apparently, that the tabular dashboard typed stuff will get sucked into webi, the metrics etc will be moved into EPM and dashboard manager will cease to exist.
but crystal excelsius isn’t involved in this and remains outside the stack as it does just now 
i’m confused 
as this is directly contradictory to the general feeling here and elsewhere - that excelsius will be incorporated.
any thoughts?
cheers
jcahmb
P.S. I should say we’re using dm and epm on solaris at the moment and having horrific problems 
so any chance that excelsius will be integrated gives us a llittle bit of hope 
jcahmb (BOB member since 2005-11-15)
I think I would trade your BO rep in on a new model 
and tell him next time to pay attention at their sales meetings. 
Our rep here has told us it will be integrated later this year and the packaging has not been decided on.
Tell him he should read up on what has been done within MHF1.
Ok need I say more?
What I have learned with dashboard manger is:
tenather 
(BOB member since 2002-08-29)