Hi Paul and Welcome!
That’s a great suggestion. You should put it in the Wish List thread
I think Michele Pinti posted a message regarding setting up a document via BCA with a VB script that pulls and runs a current version of a report. That way, you change the corporate document, the new copy is automatically scheduled. Pretty neat trick!
Cindy Clayton 
(BOB member since 2002-06-11)
Er, I thought this was the wish list thread? 
Paul Williams 
(BOB member since 2002-07-10)
Oh 
. We are aren’t we ? I got…uh…lost for a bit. Maybe Michele will chime in on the VB thing I mentioned. Maybe we’ll even get it in the code section!
Cindy Clayton (BOB member since 2002-06-11)
I definately second that (and third and forth it for that matter)!
I have found loads of situations where you need to define the same complicated variables in many canned reports using the same universe.
Daniel Williams (BOB member since 2002-08-19)
I’m not amazingly sure about this, but can’t templates carry variables with them?
Paul
Paul Williams (BOB member since 2002-07-10)
[Eileen – I’ve copied this post from the Supervisor forum originally posted by Hayden Gill Supervisor API - What do we have to do to get one ?!?! ]
I’d like to try and put forward an enhancement request to BusinessObjects to get a Supervisor API developed.
I’m tired of being told that ‘direct manipulation of the repository is unsupported’ but not being provided with an alternative way of managing the repository.
Perhaps some one could raise it as an issue at the User Conference (I don’t think I’ll be flying from Australia to attend)
The problems I have with Supervisor are:
1) User management
I have a complex Organisational Structure with over 800 users located in approx 250 Organisational Units. Being a university, these Org Units get changed around on a weekly basis, requiring either a manual sync. of the repository or using the Import/Export file method.
The file method is doable, but is extremely clumsy.
2) Universe Access Management
I then need to manage 40+ universes, in areas such as HR,Finance,Student,Physical Resources etc. The easiest way I have found to manage access to these universes is to:
While this works, every new group I add slows the repository access down exponentially. Logging into reporter takes minutes because of all the checking it needs to do for access rights etc etc
3) Document Access Management
I then need to manage groups of users based on their ‘Roles’ within the organisation so that we can send reports to ‘HR Managers’ or ‘Finance Officers’
The only logical way to do this currently is to create yet more groups in the repository. This is a ‘double whammy’ - management of users in ‘role groups’ becomes an issue again, and repository speed also becomes an issue since every new group we add slows the repository access even more.
How will a Supervisor API help ?
1) User management
User Management and Synchronisation becomes much easier if you have an API that lets you:
a) Find a user, and return a list of groups to which they belong
b) Remove a user from a group
c) Add a user to a group
d) Add a new user
e) Delete a user entirely
f) Add a new group to a parent
g) Move a group to a new parent
h) Remove a group
Just about all of these things are done through the import/export batch update - it shoudln’t be hard to replicate them as an API
2) Universe Access Management
An API that allowed me to link/unlink a resource (in this case a Universe) to/from a user or group would allow the repository to be synchronised with an external source such as a database relation or perhaps even some sort of directory. The ability to list which resources were linked to a user/group would also be required.
In my case, I could avoid creating ‘Universe Authority’ groups and just link individual users/groups to a universe. We already have this information stored in a database, we currently have no ‘supported’ method of enforcing this programatically.
3) Document Access Management
In this example the API would allow me to link/unlink a ‘document resource’ to a user/group in the same way as in ‘Universe Access Management’
In the same way as above it would allow more flexible allocation of resources, and at the same time - provide a large performance benefit.
If I cannot convince BusinessObjects to create such an API, I’m thinking of trying to write my own - perhaps as a dll that people could link to in their VBA/ASP code with methods and properties for doing these things. My code would be setup for a SQLServer enivironment, but if others wanted to work with me to create Oracle/DB2/Sybase etc equivalents that would be great.
Sorry for such a long rant, it’s late and I need coffee
Eileen King (BOB member since 2002-07-10)
[Eileen moved the answers regarding Supervisor API to the Supervisor forum. I thought they’d do a lot more good there!
Here’s a link to the topic
Eileen King (BOB member since 2002-07-10)
as you probably all know, users often have a hard time understanding why BO won’t allow filters to be defined on aggregated measures. who hasn’t come across the need to list (and count!) only those customers with more than, say, 50 orders ? in my opinion, this is one of the shortcomings which keeps a lot of sites from rolling out BO’s true ad-hoc query capabilities throughout the entire company - instead, canned reports are distributed, implying that end-users still have to rely on others for report creation.
what I would therefore very much like to see in Reporter, is an option which will “freeze” the data the way it is displayed at a certain moment (ie aggregated), after which filters can be applied without restriction.
I realize this is a delicate issue, but I’m convinced this feature will open the door to BO to a lot of people out there !
mirko (BOB member since 2002-08-21)
Well, to add to these and others, our users would also like:
Dave’s surprising 
suggestion to Save as XLS
Use an XLS range (named or otherwise) in an In-List condition
Be able to use IE on a Macintosh with WebI
Be able to open the query panel from WebI of a Corporate full-client report (i.e., convert it to a WebI query panel)
Anita Craig (BOB member since 2002-06-17)
Yes, but templates also have a lot of extra baggage. If we could define commonly used variables in the universe, the user can select them on the query panel and have them immediately available on the report. It’s a request I’ve seen from more than one client.
Dave
Dave Rathbun (BOB member since 2002-06-06)
Oh, and another one that I forgot
Ability to set own Default templates and other formatting defaults in WebI
Anita Craig (BOB member since 2002-06-17)
If I could copy and paste data providers, than would save me a lot of work. 
oskarthor (BOB member since 2002-08-28)
Guess what! (boy are you gonna be happy :-D) You can! Relatively simple ones anyway using Glen’s handy dandy copy a data provider add-in at Dave’s site.
Cindy Clayton (BOB member since 2002-06-11)
Allow cells to be positioned over charts. Then you could easily add additional descriptions or comments. This is now only sometimes possible when cheating i.e. you edit the cell properties under “Appearance” especially “Top” and “Left” in combination with “Horizontal” or “Vertical Position Relative to:” and try to find values which are in the area of the chart.
Allow the selectable text orientation for every cell, not just in “Axis Label Format”
Make the automatic drop-down boxes for drilling customizable. There are options like (Remove) which I’d like to remove for certain reports.
Allow drop-down boxes and other form objects paintable and positionable freely on the report, so that highly customizable reports are possible. BO can do drop-down boxes automatically when you drill, why not provide this functionality customizable? Then one could create filters in drop-down boxes etc.
Fix the code for the page layout settings. There are often problems when a user creates the report with let’s say paper size “A4” and then publishes this report to the “Corporate Documents”. Another user who retrieves this report and has a different default printer or maybe a different printer driver gets the report “corrupted” as it is often in “Letter” format. Of course the chart or table then suddenly uses an additional part on another page whereas it fitted exactly on 1 page before with “A4”.
Make the handling of images more efficient. If you have a companys logo on each page of a report with multiple report tabs (= reports) this logo uses the same amount of file space for each page it is on.
I have a report with 8 tabs and 2 logos on each tab (= page) and the logos are always the same 2 logos. The report is 8.838.144 bytes big as a file. When I delete the 2 logos on each page the file size is only 253.440 bytes.
Maybe BO could provide something like PowerPoint with the “Master”.
Provide the possibility to change the universe for a dataprovider in the “Data Manager” on tab “Definition” even if the original universe is not available on the user’s workstation. ( I got a report from a user from a different repository AND the universe on which the report is based exists in my repository but with a different name than in the source repository. It was not possible to change the universe to my differently named universe without first creating a universe with the exact same name as in the source repository).
VBA: Provide delete- and change methods for every add-method.
For filters there is
myRep.AddComplexFilter sFilterObject, sFilterText
but there is no DeleteComplexFilter.
For dataprovider conditions there is no change method to simply change the Operand1. I have
to delete the condition and add it again as a new one with the new Operand1. This is a problem
because of the various possibilities to combine conditions with “and”, “or” and so on.
DataproviderObj.Conditions.Remove
DataproviderObj.Conditions. Add(thisClass, thisObject, thisOperator, thisOperand1)
Why no “Change”?
Klaus Rehm
Klaus Rehm (BOB member since 2002-08-28)
Yes I vote for this one too
and what’s about asking more function in formula such as diffdate with result in second or fiscal date calculation… of course optimized fo BO.
Norbert
norbert (BOB member since 2002-08-29)
How about the ability to choose what type of join you want when you link dataproviders in a report.
It would be so nice to have an inner join instead of the full outer join we get now!
Hayden_Gill 
(BOB member since 2002-08-15)
Another bullet on my wish list:
I wish that within my query panel of BO Reporter I could drag an object from “Results Objects” into the “Conditions” Panel directly, instead of browsing through the “Classes and Objects” list on the left pane.
Andreas 
(BOB member since 2002-06-20)
A suggestion for Designer…
When I want to make a lot of objects turn in to details for the same object, it would be so nice to be able to do a “repeat” or something so that I wouldn’t have to do the same things 20 times in a row… 
Eileen King (BOB member since 2002-07-10)
One thing I was so excited when I found out…when you’re in the query panel, if you click on an object and then click on the funnel (simple condition) it will put the condition in with an “=” and provide you with a lov to pick from. If you want something fancier, you can modify the condition. 
Eileen King (BOB member since 2002-07-10)
Actually, it doesn’t do that. It does better. If you choose 1 thing it puts and = , if you choose several things it puts and in list.
Steve Krandel (BOB member since 2002-06-25)