SAP Focused Insights

Full focus on dashboards

I like to remember times - not that long ago - when customers would come up to me and ask, "Hey, there are these cool dashboards in Solution Manager - can you set us up something like that?" I thought: Challenge accepted!

Sure, dashboards are always well received, whether in operations, by service managers, or even by CIOs. At every level, they make a difference - everything at a glance and adapted to the respective perspective.

So I set to work and, well, was a bit frustrated with the results. The templates delivered at that time were unusable in handling - and ugly to boot.

Data sources did not deliver what they should, and then Flash (!) as a runtime environment. So the topic of dashboards was over for me and ultimately for the customers for a while.

Useful and even free

It's not often that SAP offers something for free, but since the beginning of the year the SolMan add-ons Focused Build and Focused Insights are free. Not the only one, but certainly a reason why I took a closer look.

Until then - burnt children are known to shy away from fire - I had not yet dealt with the dashboards in SolMan 7.2, there were more important topics in SolMan for me.

So when I reviewed Focused Insights, my expectations were low. But I have to say: Focused Insights is finally the product that I'm sure many have been waiting for.

You ask, why? First, the Focused Insights dashboards are really usable! They include seven best practice models of dashboards, grouped into the three use cases of Strategy, Governance and Operations.

There is something for every target group. They can be run and used without major adjustments. If desired, practically everything can be adapted and expanded, depending on where the focus lies. You can mix different sources with each other.

So, for example, I can build a dashboard that combines test results from the test suite with incidents from ITSM and a business process monitoring KPI - pretty cool, I think.

Without developer knowledge

Second, the Dashboard Builder now allows me to build dashboards from scratch without any developer knowledge, and they look good to boot thanks to UI5 (Flash is dead, the Security Officer is happy!). I can use charts, graphs or tables for visualization, can configure drill-downs and of course export the data for further external processing.

From this, I can then build a tile in the launchpad, for example, which immediately shows me the value of a KPI. Or I can show the dashboard on a large screen, for example in the reception area, where it really makes a difference with activated auto-refresh and is well received by visitors.

Thirdly, the KPI catalog (https://go.support.sap.com/kpicatalog) from SAP. It helps to get to the right data source. Just have a look! It now contains over 800 KPIs, which you can consume in your dashboards.

So there is no need to ask: How do I get the data I need, in which table are the interesting values? Focused Insights makes use of SAP Solution Manager data and integrates seamlessly into SAP solution management.

I think SAP has done a good job here. And I'll mention it again - you don't pay any licensing costs for Focused Insights. As you can see, I'm very impressed and recommend you to give dashboards a chance again!