Hello again to all you branding fans. This is Blog number two on branding in SAP BW. The first was on BEx templates which can be found here

As I mentioned before, branding in some organisations is very important and should not be underestimated. In my experience I have found that if the look and feel of the portal and web reports are branded in a way that the users are familiar with then you are half way there to winning them over. It truly is amazing how powerful this can be. Please put it to the test and see the response you get from the users, compared with the same functionality with the standard SAP themes.

Enterprise Portal 7 (EP7.0) uses a Portal Theme for style and branding, this is not new to EP, although it does have some new features. The main one being that it now controls the look and feel of web reports, this caused me much confusion 18months ago when trying to brand web templates. In previous BW versions, the web template look and feel was created by cascading style sheets (CSS) which were stored in the MIME repository. These cascading style sheets could then be referenced directly from the Web Application Designer (WAD) and applied to your report. If like me, when you first got your hands on the much improved WAD in BW7.0 you searched furiously for the button to link to the CSS as with BW3.X then this Blog will be off great use as a one-stop-shop for branding your portal and web templates.

The first step is to logon to the portal and navigate to System Admin ->> Portal Display ->> Theme Editor. In my opinion the best of the SAP standard templates is the Tradeshow theme. Click on the Tradeshow theme to open it and click "Save As" and rename accordingly, remember to use appropriate naming conventions. This theme will now be stored under System Admin ->> Portal Display ->> My Themes and is ready for editing.

Now Comes the fun bit, branding the portal and portal components to your organisation's look and feel. This is a very intuitive and user friendly process in terms of making the changes. Its just a matter of changing the hexadecimal codes for colours and fonts to that of your organisation's standard using the interface provided by just clicking on the theme (This is a useful link if you need to convert RGB to Hex values http://www.321webmaster.com/hex-to-rgb.php). It's also possible to add logos and URLs to certain areas of the theme. This being said, it's not as easy as that, it can be a very long winded and arduous process when you come to change the look and feel of web reports. It's not immediately obvious what sections in the portal theme change web report components and some trial and error is required to master this. Your best bet is to follow the steps below to assist with this process

1. Set portal theme as default. Please see section below "Setting New Theme as Default"

2. Make a changes to the portal theme

3. Save changes to Portal Theme - be patient here as it can take some time to save

4. Log off Portal, This is so Portal theme changes take effect

5. Run a web report to see the changes the theme has had on the look and feel of the report

6. I would expect a few iterations of step 2-5 before the theme has the desired effect.

Setting New Theme as Default

Once you have made all the necessary changes to the styling and saved your theme, the next step is to set this new theme up as default.

Navigate to System Admin ->> Portal Display ->> Desktop & Display rules. The Portal Content folder appears.

Navigate to Portal Content ->> Portal Users ->> Standard Portal Users and open "Default Portal Desktop" by right clicking Open ->> Object (see screen shot below)

The next step is to navigate to your theme.

Navigate to System Admin ->> Portal Display ->> Desktop & Display rules. The Portal Content folder appears. Scroll down to Themes and expand the hierarchy, right click on your newly created theme and select "Add Theme to Portal desktop". Within the Default Portal Desktop page, select the radio button for you theme and click "Set Default"

Your new theme has now been set as default for all users who logon to the Portal. Its as simple as that. Now, some of you may be asking, Well, that's all very well and good, but how do I use different Portal Themes for different users, roles, groups etc. This is also very simple and here is how its done.

Setting different portal themes assigned to different users

1. Follow steps as above and create a second Portal Theme - You may require a separate theme for internal and external users

2. Navigate to System Admin ->> Portal Display ->> Desktop & Display rules.    The Portal Content folder appears. within Portal Content navigate to; Portal Users ->> Standard Portal Users and open "Default Portal Desktop"

3. Right click on Default Portal desktop and copy, then paste into the same folder (or create a new folder and paste)

4. Open the newly created Portal desktop and rename

5. Set the new Theme as default for this desktop

6. System Admin ->> Portal Display ->> Desktop & Display rules then Portal Administrators ->> Super Administrators ->> right click Master Rule Collection and open object

7. Here you can add a new IF statement on User, Role, Group, Bandwidth, URL Alias, Browser Type and Browser Version. 

The example below shows two IF statements based on user. One is for all users (*) the other is just for USER02. You will notice that the file paths differ. This is because they are linked to different default desktops. The IF statement for USER02 is a result of step 3 above. It is in the portal desktop where you can set what theme is set as default. Therefore these statements link to different portal themes.

Rule Collection

IF User = USER02

Then pcd:portal_content/every_user/general/defaultDesktop_COPY

IF User = *

Then pcd:portal_content/every_user/general/defaultDesktop

You now have the knowledge to create/edit a Portal Theme and to set as default to all Portal users, or to different subsets of users. Now go show those users how cool you can make their portal and web reports...

How many of you SAP BW Developers have given swish demos to business users, with all the functionality they could wish for, only for them to turn around and state that the branding is not correct and that it doesn't have the right company look and feel. This can be very frustrating, but first impressions of any report/demo are very important and branding is often overlooked. This happened to me whilst working for a large multi national company, where branding was very high on the agenda. Below is a simple one-stop-shop to create and implement a branded BEx workbook/query in SAP BW7.0

BEx Templates

These steps provide a basic and easy solution to implementing a branded look and feel to queries and workbooks in Business Explorer (BEx)

The first step is to open BEx and run a query. I would expect that the query look and feel is that of the SAP standard "Tradeshow" style as set by default. The next step is to set your desired company colours in the Excel palate. To do this. go to Tools --> Options and select the Colour tab. Here you can modify existing excel colours and change using the RGB colour model.

You are now ready to brand your workbook. Access the SAP styles, this can be done via the excel toolbar, go to Format --> Styles. The following box will appear

Here you will see over 40 styles to change. Some are fairly obvious, for example; SAPBEXHLevel1. This style will change the look and feel of all hierarchies at level1. others are less obvious, for example SAPBEXaggItem is what I would call the results heading.

An easy and quick way to change the styles of the workbook and see the effects straight away is to click on any cell in the query, for example click on a characteristic heading and then go to Format -->Style. You will find that the style for characteristic headings appears by default (SAPBEXchaText). This is the same with any cell in the query, its style is pre-selected when you go to Format -->Style. It is for this reason a alone that I find it easier to brand the workbook with a query already open. This being said, it is limited to how complex the query is, as its fairly likely that your query will not have every possible style, it is at this point where a bit of trial and error may come into it.

Brand of all the features from the design toolbar is also possible, for example the navigation block, drop down box and text boxes. For this reason it is worth adding a few of these to your query and changing the styles in exactly the same way as specified above. As you go about changing various styles, you will find that quite a few actually share the same style, for example characteristic headings share the same style as the filter options in the navigational block (SAPBEXchaText).

These steps above should have you branding your workbooks in know time at all. Below is an example of a simple branded workbook. Don't forget to add logos, project identifiers and help line details as appropriate.

The next step is to set your newly created branded workbook as default, so whenever you open any query it opens up with these new branded styles. Again, this only takes a a few simple steps.

1. Remove the drill down of all the columns so you are left with a couple of cells.

2. Save the workbook into a role in BEx with a logical name like "Branded Workbook Template"

3. Log out of BEx and log back in. Open the workbook you have just saved

3. Go to the global settings icon on the BEx analyzer toolbar.

4. Here you can set which workbook is set as default. Click on the "Current workbook" selection and click set as default.

This workbook has now been set as default for your user and any query that you open will appear with your branded styles. Any new workbooks that you create and save will also now save in these styles. Any existing workbooks will continue to use the styles that were in place when that workbook was created.

End users will have to follow steps 3 and 4 in order to set the branded template as default. This is very simple and can be done as part of user training.

Happy Branding....