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WAD: Problems when exporting to PDF with embedded .swf

Former Member

on ‎05-24-2011 2:21 PM

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I'm using Web Application Designer (WAD) 7 and have created a template with an "Export to PDF" button and an embedded .swf flash file which is an Xcelsius dashboard.

What i'm trying to do is show the information I want on my dashboard and then export that to a PDF to email out to multiple users who would be interested in the data each month. If exporting to PDF isn't the best route to get a snapshot of this dashboard out to other users and there's an easier way please let me know, but here are the issues i'm having:

1) When I have the dashboard showing the information I want and click the "Export to PDF" button, the dashboard reloads as the PDF settings window pops up and gets reset back to it's initial state.

2) If I ignore problem #1 and click on 'OK' in the Export dialog anyway after selecting PDF settings, my Adobe Reader pops up but then shows a message saying "The file cannot be opened because it has no pages". Basically it doesn't see the .swf as being a component to take a snapshot of and print on a PDF. I did try adding a text component just so there was something on the template and I then get a PDF with that text component showing and no .swf snapshot.

Has anyone come up with a workaround for this? I've tried using the BEx Broadcaster with the 'Send' option but get the same results in regards to the blank page.

Thanks as always for the help!

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former_member183777
Active Contributor
‎05-25-2011 2:24 AM
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From our experience, the PDF export button in WAD only exports certain web items such as table, chart, text etc. So I wouldn't expect it to export embedded .swf.

Is the Xcelsius dashboard connecting to Netweaver BI data connection. If it has no connections, you can export the Xcelsius to PDF from Xcelsius tool and E-mail it out. We have also used Xcelsius Print buttons to print a snapshot of the dashboard and by printing to a PDF printer you could potentially create a PDF of the snapshot, but it won't be .swf file.

For my knowledge: how did you embed the .swf file in WAD template.

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Former Member
‎05-25-2011 2:34 PM
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Thanks for the reply.

The dashboard is connected to a query in NetWeaver BI to get its data. So the request of the user is to be able to adjust the dashboard to show the information they need (well say of a certain region) and then take a snapshot of that and email it out to co-workers in Group A. Then the user will adjust the dashboard to show other data (for a different region we'll say) and take a snapshot to email out to co-workers in Group B. etc and etc.

I have looked into installing a PDFCreator print driver but that wouldn't be feasible to get it on all machines in the business. I've also looked into getting it as a .jpeg which would suffice, but am unsure if there is a way to do it with script and connect that to the dashboard when a button is pushed (will look into this). This seems like a topic for over in the Xcelsius forum now.

I used the following code within the <body></body> tags of the WAD's xhtml to embed the .swf:

<object id="dashboard" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" height="600" width="800" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" >
<param name="Movie" value="bwmimerep:///sap/bw/mime/Customer/JavaScript/dashboard.swf" />
<embed src="bwmimerep:///sap/bw/mime/Customer/JavaScript/dashboard.swf" name="dashboard" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" />
</object>

former_member183777
Active Contributor
‎05-25-2011 10:54 PM
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You can use the PRT SCR button on the desktop and then paste the screenshot in a word file.

SAP supplies 0DASHBOARD_TEMPLATE to render Xcelsius dashbaords. From the Xcelsius client, you can use the SAP menu to publish the .xlf file to BW server and then use the launch menu option to get the URL. The string at the end of the URL can be used to build iviews in the portal.

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