Testing the Export Feature of SAP BO Design Studio 1.5

With version 1.4 of SAP BO Design Studio, its printing or PDF export capabilities were limited to the browser print function. This was a feature most customer’s did not like and could not use at all. For this reason, we at bi excellence have created an Export Addon with the capability to flexibly export your Design Studio applications to PDF, PowerPoint, Word and Excel.

Now, with version 1.5 SAP also brings an enhanced PDF export function into its set of standard features. How does it work? What is it good for? That is what we want to investigate in today’s blog article.

The PDF Export Component in DesignStudio 1.5

This is how you can add the PDF Export Component to your Application:

1. There is a new “Technical Component” available for PDF:

2. You simply add it via “Create Child” on the “Technical Components” node.

3. Unfortunately the configuration possibilities are really thin – you can only add a URL to a Header Image:

How do you start now a PDF export?

1. You do so with the standard way of handling events in DesignStudio – choose the onClick handler of the component (button, link, image, etc.) you want to use for triggering the export.

2. In the Script Editor you type the name of the technical Export Component, and you are presented three different methods:

• “exportApplication”: Exports all elements of the application one by one below each other, SAP calls this “report layout”
• “exportApplicationScreen” : Allows you to create a WYSIWYG copy of the application

• “exportPanelScreen” : Allows you to create a WYSIWYG copy of a specific panel (helpful if you use tabs or page books)

Unfortunately, that’s it already from a feature perspective.

The PDF Export Results in DesignStudio 1.5

Now let’s have a look at the PDF documents that SAP creates. We will compare both “report layout” and “WYSIWYG copy”. For our investigation, we use a beautiful Design Studio dashboard from our partner graphomate (www.graphomate.com), which demonstrates their beautiful chart add-on components.

When you click on export the user receives a popup, where page size, orientation and header and footer can be customized.

And this is what is returned when we hit the “Print” button:

You can see that our logo (which we specified as “Header Image” in the Export component’s parameters) in the component’s properties is included. Next to it, we receive the header in Arial bold. We also receive the footer in a smaller font-size.

Now let’s zoom in to 200%:

This test has already revealed several drawbacks of the standard export:

• Export quality is not vectorised as you are used to from PDF. Not even the SAP’s standard text components are vectorised! Moreover, the quality is too bad for a decent print out. Users will certainly complain about this.
• Configuration of the export is really limited. You can add your company logo – fine. But only in the upper left corner. What if I want to have it on the right?
• Frankly, I would like to get rid of the buttons in the print out. I’d like to configure the export to automatically hide the “export” and “clear filter” buttons. This is not possible.
• Okay, so we have headers and footers. But do you really want your users to always enter something there? They certainly expect filters, report titles, page counters or some standard texts to be added automatically. A one click export would be much more convenient!

Last but not least, let’s have a short view on the “report layout” export.

Here, the user receives two more options in the export popup: To include Meta data in the header and the page counter in the footer.

Again: What about some more flexibility? I would like to choose exactly which meta data to include, and also how it should be formatted.

And this is what you receive:

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One component by page. I cannot choose a sorting, nor can I hide certain elements from the export. Again, the exports are pure images, not vectorized. And what if I have long tables, e.g. ones with a scrollbar?

In the application – a scrollbar is shown:

In the print out – no scrollbar, but also no additional lines:

Summary – our opinion

Frankly if you take a closer look at the export feature that SAP provides with 1.5 it has a lot of drawbacks. It might be enough to persuade the IT department that exporting is not something that Design Studio cannot do at all. But does it fit business requirements? Consultants and project managers might know that business can be really demanding when it comes to export in a good quality, in a good layout and – most important – exactly what they want!

Evaluate out biExport today!