View or View Lastest Instance

Posted byDavid Taylor 9 Comments on View or View Lastest Instance

To View or View Latest Instance, that is the question.

An Instance

…Helpful Tips is also known simply as a Scheduled Instance or Report Instance.

If you are new to BusinessObjects, an instance is what we call a report which contains both a report template and data in a single file.  In the case of a scheduled report, once the report has been run, both the report template and the report layout are combined together and saved back the Repository.  This is called an instance or more specifically a report instance.

On Demand Reports

When a developer publishes a Crystal Report, typically only the report template is saved to the repository.  When the end user clicks on the report, the BusinessObjects platform will connect to the underlying data source and apply the report template to the data coming from the data source and produce a report layout which is then rendered in your browser.

Scheduled Reports

Scheduled Instances are extremely important because they are able to be rendered to the user in a few seconds as opposed to a live retrieval of the data which might take up to a minute (or more depending on your environment).  Users today do not want to wait.  As much as possible, I recommend organizations use report instances to improve the user experience and maximize scalability.

BEST PRACTICE:  Reports which take longer than 45 seconds to retrieve data
from the database should be scheduled.  Many long running "view on demand"
reports can cause an excess consumption of system resources.

View Latest Instance

In XIR2, the user was able to either click on the links, View or View Latest Instance, depending on what actions where available.  In XI 3.1  this was simplified.

In XI 3.1, the user may either click on the report and choose an Action from the menu or they may double-click and open the report.

When the user double-clicks on the report, a default action is taken.  The default action when clicking on reports is to View the report on demand.  This action will run the report retrieving the most current data for this report.

In many cases it is preferable to have the system run the Latest Instance of the report instead of running the report on demand.

This option can be changed globally for your SAP BusinessObjects environment via the CMC.

To change this option in XI 3.1, go into the CMC and Select Applications

From the CMC, InfoView Application Settings

Next Right-Click on InfoView and choose Properties.

Set the Default Viewing Option

When you scroll to the bottom you will see the option: Default Viewing Action on Listing Page.  Here you may choose either:

  • View the object (default behavior)
  • View the latest successful instance of the object

BI Launchpad v4.0

In BusinessObjects v4.0, this option is no longer available.

The default behavior is: View the latest successful instance of the object.  This is the opposite of the default behavior in XI 3.0.

Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.

«Good BI»

9 replies on “View or View Lastest Instance”

  1. Many thanks, exactly what I needed. One minor criticism though, the seasonal “snow” effect on this web page (as at 4th Jan 2012) is making my browser (IE8) flicker like crazy, makes it hard to focus on the content.

    1. Great. Glad it was helpful. Thanks too for the feedback…. you never know if these articles are helpful or not.

      Sorry about the snow effect impacting your browser. I’m running IE8 and am not seeing the flicker… but that said it’s time to turn off the “winter” anyway. Hope you had a good holiday with your family and friends.

  2. Thanks for the article! I’ve been searching for this through the whole documentation… 🙂
    Unfortunately when you switch to “viewlatest instance” this affects also hyperlinks. I’ve created hyperlinks for different instances (different prompts) and suddenly I could not double click them any more… 🙁

  3. BUT!!!… if you click on the link in the “Home” tab of the BI Launchpad, under “My Recently Viewed Documents”, it will take you to the “Object”, not the latest instance which is very confusing!!!

    1. that IS confusing. Have you added this to the ideas place? or opened a ticket with technical support? That seems like a bug to me.

  4. Yes, we’ve created an OSS note. At this point, SAP is saying that this is a “feature” not a “bug”… 🙁

  5. This is available in 4.0 (I’m on SP4), but they moved it again.
    In the CMC go to Applications/Crystal Reports Configuration. In the column on the left, click on BI Launch Pad, and the option to “View Latest Instance” vs. “View Object” is there…

  6. Again, in 4.0 SP4, for Web Intelligence Documents, go to Applications/Web Intelligence. The Smart View settings are at the bottom of the page.

  7. I can’t say I’m a fan of this change to be honest. We have some reports that need to load the last instance and others that need to run live data. Before, we used security rights to determine what happened when a user double clicked on a report in the BI but I’ve been told you’re unable to do that now? A work around is to right click and select ‘View’ from the menu to get the live report data rather than the last instance but expecting our users to remember that change is going to be a problem. Any thoughts?

Comments are closed.