BW and Webi fomat/edit report

Question

Hi all,
Currenty I'm working integrating BOE with SAP BW and I have some "challenges".
I search on sap portal and sap notes but I didn't find any document/blog that describes advanced formating in webi.
My question is can we do some modification's on report like If clauses, concat strings, best practices using hiearhies... Do you have some best practices with "formating" webi ?
Thank you for your response,
BR,
Gregor

Answer 1

Hi,
Here are the some formatting tips in Webi report
Tip #1 - Use the Last Refresh Date:
Go to Templates Tab->Free Standing Cells->Last Refresh Date
Drag this cell into you report
And you’ll have the last date and time on the report, so when you print it this date will be printed, too.
Tip #2 - Use the Document Author function:
Maybe you’d like to know who created this WebI document. Insert a blank cell from Templates Tab->Formula and Text Cells
Press Formula Editor option and…
Select from the list of Functions: Document Author.
And that’s how you’ll know who created the report.
Tip #3 - Formatting before printing
To make sure all your elements fit properly in the page before sending it to PDF format I recommend to press the Switch Page/Quick Display option.
Then click anywhere in the report page and in Document Properties set Page layout options.  For example:
Move Author and Last Refresh date to the header and add a title.
Tip #4 - An extra tip
This example shows months by their number. End users would prefer to see the month name instead, don’t you think?  If you can’t modify your universe to add a month name dimension you can create your own formula at report level to get this.
On month column create this formula:
That’s it:
Don’t forget to take into account these little tips from now on when you create your WebI reports.  These examples were made with BusinessObjects XIR3, but you can apply them with BusinessObjects 4.0, too. It's just that in BusinessObjects 4.0 the page layout is on its  own menu above the report.