VC and Powerpoint export

[Former Member]

We want to export Infomations (Charts,Tables etc.) to Powerpoint.

An export to excel and then to powerpoint could only be a workaround.

Is there someone who tried this "feature". Idear: There must be an Webservice and plugin in Powerpoint to do this.

This woulkd be a great feature for all of uns, if this works.

Just saw the feature in another BI software on the Cebit and now I want to have it in SAP BI.

Greetings

J. Steinhorst

[Former Member]

And yes, you can do that in Powerpoint by just embedding the page in an HTML object.

I've seen other examples (fromother companies), where the embedded the whole Flash application into PPT, which is possible and a feature from MS. This way navigation is still possible.

BUT: what about security?

Of course you can access data through JDBC and other connections from PPT, but you need to ensure security.

And if you want to "just" display the dat ain a PPT, why loose the whole background and not show the live application with the real data? Especially after having read Edward Tufte's excellent document about the "Cognitive Style of PowerPoints".

BTW: as BI guy Tufte is a guru that you should anyways know by heart. He is the author of a couple of really easy to read books about information visualization.

Sorry for sounding too passionate about this topic (which I am , but I don't see a reason to ruin your immense BI work by presenting the data in a low-resolution format and therefore the worst medium you can choose.

[Former Member]

Sorry for getting back to this topic. I am aware of the WIKI and some How-to-guides but it is still not 100% clear to me if it is possible to copy a Visual Composer chart to the clipboard, giving the possibility to show this graph later in a Powerpoint presentation. We are building a KPI cockpit that will be used by the upper management. They will be zooming in on the graphs with alarming KPI values only and they like to include screenshots of these graphs in powerpoint presentations. (and management is not familiar with snagit, alt-print screen,... )

I played around with the system command "export" but this doesn't seem to be compatible with graphs and is actually copying the table to the clipboard. The command doesn't seem to be compatible with graphs but only with forms or tables ?

Is this actually possible at all or not within Visual Composer ?

thanks

[Former Member]

The mechanism described in the How-To-guides just takes the data, but not a graphical UI element. The same is true with copy & paste.

Unless you modify the generated ASP code and use native Flex functionality to export charts to Powerpoint, there is probably not much chance.

And this would also require that you have the Adobe Flex developer license, because you'd need to compile the coding, and with doing a change you cannot do that in VC anymore, but have to do it with the Flex tools.

[Former Member]

1) See the Visual Composer WIKI:

https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/VC/Exportingdatafrom+VC

2) Even if you can do PowerPoints, it does not mean that this is a clever way to present information. I'd recommend to read through the following blog and the references included (it actually is an eye-opener why nobody understands the information presented with slide decks and why people make wrong, even fatal decisions):

/people/mario.herger/blog/2007/03/05/smarter-information-transfer-or-why-i-dont-like-powerpoints