Frequently Asked Question

Symptom

• You want to activate the N4V Webi extensions provided by Need4Viz to enhance the Webi capabilities

Reason and Prerequisites

Environment:

• SAP BusinessObjects 4.3 SP3+
• N4V 2024.1.0+

Resolution

The goal of this article is to activate the N4V extensions provided by Need4Viz (starting from N4V 2024.1.0 release).

The extensions can only be used in a SAPBI 4.3 SP3+ environment. Some features in the N4V Panel are only working in 4.3SP4+ environment.

Two distinct extensions are provided by Need4Viz : the user extension and the designer extension.

1. The user extension

Once activated for the user's group in the CMC, the user will see the HTML / PDF icons (both in Design and in Reading mode) in Webi :

To activate this extension, the URL to declare in the CMC is http://localhost/N4VCustomElements/extension/Need4Viz/webi_apps/user_app/extension.json (see below for the details)

2. The designer extension

This extension give the Webi designer user the ability to access the Chart Recommender, the N4V SVG tool and the N4V Palette tool.

Once activated for the user's group in the CMC, the designer user will see the Chart recommender, SVG and Palette icons (both in Design and in Reading mode) in Webi :

To activate this extension, the URL to declare in the CMC is http://localhost/N4VCustomElements/extension/Need4Viz/webi_apps/design_app/extension.json (see below for the details)

3. How to activate the extensions

Log in to the CMC.

"In the Application / Web Intelligence / Authorized URLs" panel, add the http(s)://xxxxxxxx/N4VCustomElements URL :

Assignment of an extension to a users group : Choose the users group who will be able to use the extension and right clic to "Customization".

It is highly recommended to create 2 distinct groups in the CMC, dedicated to the N4V extensions :

The first group will be able to see only the user extension, the second group will see both user and designer extension. 

Then affect the related extensions to each of those groups.

Clic on "Extensions" tab the "Add" :

If the N4VCustomElements webapp is deployed on the SAPBI Tomcat server, fill the following URL (generally you'll need to replace the http://localhost or http://127.0.0.1 by the https URL of the N4VCustomElements deployment) :

http://localhost/N4VCustomElements/extension/Need4Viz/webi_apps/user_app/extension.json (or http://127.0.0.1/N4VCustomElements/extension/Need4Viz/webi_apps/user_app/extension.json)

The user extension is located in http(s)://xxxxxxxx/N4VCustomElements/extension/Need4Viz/webi_apps/user_app/extension.json

The designer extension is located in http(s)://xxxxxxxx/N4VCustomElements/extension/Need4Viz/webi_apps/design_app/extension.json

Clic on "I accept the risk" then clic "OK"

Activate the extension(s) (tick the extensions) then Save and Close the popup.

Log in to SAPBI with a user account included in the updated group. Open a Webi report and check in the right panel the Extensions button:

Click on the button, then N4V extension panel is displayed :