13.3 - 15.1 Upgrade - BO WEBi vs. Jaspersoft

[Miroslav Skriputa]

Hi community,

we are planning to upgrade to 15.1 from 13.3 having many reasons why we should do:

1. new User layout (current GUI has bad reputation within Business)

2. Application portfolio Add-in

3. Portfolio management module supporting aggregate calculated attributes

4. Export to Powerpoint

5. new MS project interface

 

There is however one reason we are not so sure if we can live without:

We have designed many WEBI report layouts (as replacements of originally implemented Crystal reports)

These WEBI reports are integrated within Clarity as both standalone reports executed from Reports menu (with parameter of project name) or integrated within processes (e.g. approval of Change request generates PDF that is stored as link within Change request list portlet)

 

We know that from 14.4 there is no possibility to run both WEBI and Jaspersoft, but I am not sure if we are able to recreate with Jaspersoft what we achieved with WEBI (I mean links in portlets, process calls for report creation etc.)

 

What would you do in our place?

thank you for your advice!

 

Miro

[Aurora_Gaimon]

There are 2 options:

 

1 - Migrate BO report to Jasper. You can always engage CA Services for such a task and assessments.

2- Get a SAP license to run BO and create an interface to export data from CA PPM DB (transactional db) to your own DataWarehouse. BO reports should run against your DataWarehouse then and users will have to run reports from a different webconsole (infoview).

 

Therefore, my suggestion is (1): migrate to Jaspersoft.

[Miroslav Skriputa]

hi Aurora,

I read somewhere that only Crystal reports can be converted. Are you sure conversion service is available also for WEBI based on our custom universe?

thanks for confirmations

Miro

[Aurora_Gaimon]

Hi

 

That's actually not true. We have "converted" (=re-written) WEBI report to Jaspersoft. Instead of using "universes" you an either use SQL queries or domains. One year ago we migrated a customer who had WEBI reports, it's not a "conversion" with a tool, it's a more a "..let's create a new report from scratch.." using queries to achieve same results

 

If report is not complex and no Gantts, it will take 5 days effort for each (as average).

[Nika Hadzhikidi]

Hi Miro

You are correct, there will be no possibility to run your BO reports from Clarity. Jaspersoft reporting functionality is different, and currently the reports and ad hoc views are only being ran from the Advanced Reporting page. There is a known enhancement raised here to get links in portlets, actions etc. here it is, you can vote on it:
Integrate Jaspersoft reports in CA PPM 

Also, you should be able to convert some of you WEBI SQL queries to Jaspersoft Studio reports. I would actually recommend you upgrade your Test box to 15.1 and try the new reporting capabilities, including the Ad Hoc Views. I think at this point you will get the answer on how things work and direction on how it could work well for your company.

 

Hope this helps -Nika

[Miroslav Skriputa]

Thanks Nika for your response!

I voted for the idea. As mentioned also there, it can temporary workaround to ask people for generating reports manually and attaching to project collaboration but in long term we need functionality with similar outcome as was integration of BO.

I played with Advanced reporting already and I was really pleased with the capabilities (and also export to PPT works nicely :-) )