Promoting Documents using the Import Wizard

by: Joe Roberts, Principle Consultant, BOCP

In this day of increased regulatory oversight it becomes more important than ever to understand the process of promoting documents and reports through the different environments. SOX, HIPAA and other regulatory agencies often require a good deal of documentation around report design and consumption as well as security requirements on accessing information across multiple environments. Developers may have access to development environments but not to Production and Test, other might have access to Test/QA but not development, etc. I have even seen regulatory restrictions that require new documentation and testing every time a report is opened in a designer. All of these can be quite a challenge when all you need to do is move the report from Dev to Test to Production.

It is also important to maintain consistency as reports are promoted. Not only must we update the production report to the new version that has just passed user acceptance test but we need to maintain all the historical instance of the old version with the new version.

Enter the Business Objects Enterprise Import Wizard. While many have used the Import Wizard to migrate older versions of Business Objects or Crystal Enterprise to the XI platform many do not know how to use the tool to promote reports without have to manage them with a client side designer.

The diagram below shows the basic work flow for this exercise. We have 3 environments Development, Test/QA, and Production. In this case, the Development environment is our entry point. All new or modified reports are published directly by the developers into the Development Business Objects Enterprise. From that point forward the necessary objects (Documents, Reports, Universes, Connections, Business Views, Folders, Users, Groups, etc.) are moved from environment to environment using the Publishing Wizard.

The key here is to understand the selections you will make using the Import Wizard that will allow you to accomplish your goals.

· We must move the proper objects from Dev to Test to Production

· We must maintain the connectivity between the same object in each. For example: each migration Web Intelligence document must still connect to the proper Universe and run.

· We must be able to update the objects later without severing this connection

· We must be able to promote these reports etc. without opening them in a design tool

Prerequisite

The first step in this process is to build the development environment. This is critical! The key to making this system work properly is to maintain the same CUID (Cluster Unique Identifier) in all three environments. To do this you MUST build the development environment first.

Promotion

Import Scenario

To properly promote objects through the process you must understand the Import Wizard screens and how they will control this process. The first screen we will look at is the “Import Scenario” screen. You will need to choose the second option “I want to update the destination system using the source system as a reference”. The Import Wizard will compare objects in the source and destination systems by their CUID to determine if the object exists. If an objects exists it will update that object, if the object does not exist it will add it.

NOTE: if you choose the check box to automatically rename objects with the same title it will create a second object. Typically this is NOT what you will want to do. Leave this checkbox unchecked

Incremental Import

The very next screen allows you to determine how the system handles updating objects it finds that already exist in the destination system. Here is your second decision point. Obviously we are promoting one or more reports so we will want to select “Overwrite object contents”. Since the system will automatically bring the connected universe you need to decide if you wish to update that universe. If you uncheck the second option “Overwrite universe contents” it will maintain the connectivity of the object to its universe but will not modify the universe in the destination system. This is important especially when moving a document where the underlying universe may be in a modification phase.

The same thing is true of connections. If the connection in dev points to the dev database and the connection in test points to the test database you will want to uncheck the “Overwrite connection contents” this will allow the relationship to be maintained without changing the configuration of the connection itself.

Security

The Overwrite objects rights setting in the above example controls the migration of security context. If that is checked it will update objects that you promote to have the same security as the source system. Typically in promotion this is not desired. Security will most likely be different in the development environment than it is in test or production. The migration of users and security is usually unnecessary.

Selecting Reports

Finally you should select the objects you wish to promote. You can select a single object, multiple objects or even an entire folder of objects. Notice that when you select an object it also selects all folders included to get to that object. Since you choose the “Update” option at the beginning it will update those folders (if necessary) but will not alter your directory structure. If the folder does not exist (by CUID) it will create the folder in the destination system also.

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