1. WebFOCUS 8 Update
Chuck Wolff
October 30, 2014

2. WebFOCUS 2014 Release Snapshot
Maintenance release
with new ESRI embedded Maps
Release
Maintenance release
InfoDiscovery Release 8.1; Release
WebFOCUS Release 8.2
2/2014
4/2014
5/2014
7/2014
Q3/2014
Q4/2014
Q1/2015
WebFOCUS AppStudio Release
WebFOCUS InfoDiscovery Release 8.1 – Customer Evaluation
WebFOCUS Release
8.0.10
Timeline for this year should be out in September which includes InfoDiscovery as an option. 2

3. WebFOCUS Mobile Enablement Developing Applications
WebFOCUS Version 8
There have been major enhancements across WebFOCUS 8 since its initial release in 2012
Improved Reporting
Advanced Charting
Business Analytics
WebFOCUS Mobile Enablement
Developing Applications
ReportCaster Scheduling and Distributing Information
Administering and Securing the Environment
Server Enhancements
Adapter Enhancements
The intent of this slide is just to point out that since the introduction of WF 8 there have been new features in all areas of the product. We can only cover a few of them in this presentation.

4. Fundamental Differences: WebFOCUS 7 vs. WebFOCUS 8
Changes to the architecture
New Security Model
New BI Portal (to replace the BI Dashboard product)
Consistent ribbon user interfaces across all products
HTML5 Charting and Visualizations
Release of Application Studio (to replace WebFOCUS Developer Studio)
Highlight the major differences between WF7 and WF8.
The architecture has changed slightly which will be covered in the next slide.
There are slides on the Security Model, BIP, the ribbon interface and some new charting types.
There is an Application Studio presentation for later in the day, so we will delay most of the details to that presentation.

5. WebFOCUS 7.x Architecture
USERS
Web/Presentation Tier
Application Tier
Optional
Web Server
Mandatory Reporting Server
Optional RC Distribution Server
EXECUTIVE
Mandatory
Application Server
ANALYST
ReportCaster Distribution
, FTP, Report Library
Data Adapters
WORKER
WebFOCUS Client
Resource Analyzer/
Governor
MOBILE USER
The WebFOCUS architecture consists of a Reporting Server layer which accesses the data and produces the output. And the Client layer which interacts with the user. In WF7, the content that is used with the Client is stored in a file based system.
Data Tier
Data
Provider
PUBLIC
RDBMS
Repository
File-based
Repository
DEVELOPERS

6. WebFOCUS 8 Architectural Change
WebFOCUS 8 - Web/Presentation Tier
Previous Versions - Web/Presentation Tier
Optional
Web Server
Optional
Web Server
Mandatory
Application Server
Mandatory
Application Server
WebFOCUS Client
WebFOCUS 8 Client
BID IA MR RC
BID IA MR RC
BI Portal
UOA
Security
But, in WF8, that content is moved to a relational database. We have also added new information on the Security and BI Portal. The only content that remains on the file system is BI Dashboards. Many customers are replacing the Dashboards with the BI Portal as part of the migration process, but Dashboards can be migrated and used as they are in WF7.
RDBMS
Repository
RDBMS
Repository
File-based
repository
File-based
repository

7. WebFOCUS 8 Architecture - Repository
Files stored in RDBMS repository includes:
UOA security authorization resources.
Managed Reporting content.
BI Portal & IA content.
ReportCaster content such as schedules, distribution and access lists, configuration files.
Report Library report output.
Benefits:
Standard database backup and logging procedures.
General database network and security access.
Database clusters to provide redundancy, failover and distribute database workload.
WebFOCUS Client
BID IA MR RC
BI Portal
UOA
Security
File based
repository
RDBMS
Repository

8. WebFOCUS 8 Client Security Model

9. Why a New Security Model?
Managed Reporting Role Security was Limiting
Only 5 base roles and 9 permissions
One role for all user associated Domains
Domain Security Model was Limiting
Could not customize security on sub-folders
Content Sharing was Limiting
Couldn’t share with specific people
This slide points out some of the limits of WF7 and earlier security. Of course these limits are no longer present in WF8.
WebFOCUS 8 Addressed These Challenges!

10. WebFOCUS 8 Security Model
Flexible Security Model
Over 150 assignable permissions
Can develop custom permission sets
Sub-Groups and Inheritance Simplify Policy Creation
Easy to Use Tools to Create and Verify Security Policies
Makes it Possible to Support Many Different Deployment Requirements

11. WebFOCUS 8 Security Model WebFOCUS 8 Security Center – Users & Groups Tab

12. WebFOCUS 8 Security Model WebFOCUS 8 Security Center – Permission Sets Tab

13. User Interfaces

14. User Interfaces Consistent ribbon-based user interfaces for all tools
The Ribbon Interface which is used across the Microsoft platform is now part of WF8. Here are examples of InfoAssist, BIP, Reportcaster and the Reporting Server console.

15. Business Intelligence Portal (BIP) & InfoAssist (IA)

16. Why WebFOCUS 8? New BI Portal – Assemble and Maintain Content
Business users can drag-and-drop content to:
Create new pages
Replace stale content on existing pages
The new self-services minimizes end user requests to IT and Power Users as well as long term dashboard maintenance
Interactive container menus and layout options allow business users to fully control how their information is displayed
Robust styling automation allows IT, analysts, and business users to share content that automatically adopts the look-and-feel of different portals resulting in tremendous time savings
The BI Portal is a new mechanism to interact with the user. Content is prepared by developers and published on BI Portals. Then users can change their view, add or remove content and basically arrange the portal for their business needs. This is all controlled by security privileges.

17. BI Portal & InfoAssist Key features and enhancements
BI Portal key features include:
Live Preview (WYSIWYG)
Containers
Accordion (Vertical)
Tabbed (Horizontal)
Panels
Maximize on screen real estate – more space to place content
Themes & dynamic report styling
InfoAssist key features include:
New HTML 5 chart engine integration & multi-drill
Full Active Report styling and enhanced conditional styling
Relative Positioning
Tools consolidation – Advanced Graph Assistant in InfoAssist
The BI Portal allows a developer to see right away how the content will interact with the user. There are several new display containers such as Accordion and Tabbed panels which we will see an example in another slide.
The BI Portal also supports a consistent theme that can be set in the portal and used in all of the other tools such as InfoAssist.
InfoAssist in WF8 consolidates many WF7 tools such as Report Assist, Graph Assist and Advanced Graph Assist.

18. Business Intelligence Portal (BIP) Overview
BIP is the successor to the Business Intelligence Dashboard (BID)
Key Capabilities
Integrated with new security model
Consistent ribbon-style navigation
Modern containers for content
Easily add content via drag-n-drop
Built in themes can be inherited by reports and charts
Built on today’s extensible web architecture

19. Business Intelligence Portal (BIP) Sample Screen
Pages
Containers
Point out the various parts of the BIP. Also point out some of the containers mentioned in the previous slide – Tabbed, Accordion, etc.
Content

20. InfoAssist Major New features
InfoAssist has added many new features in WebFOCUS 8
Hold Files
HTML 5 Charting engine
Multi page Documents and Dashboards
Relative positioning between components
Active Reports styling
Support for Powerpoint 2007 (pptx)
Subquery Filters using a HOLD file
Lightweight Mapping
Drill down filtering and Portal refresh
This is a list of many of the new features within IA since the introduction of WF8.

21. Refresh BI Portal
Allows one report or chart to filter another report or chart in the BI Portal
This is a feature that is exposed in App Studio that allows content in one container to effect contend in other containers on the same page. This is similar to the Magic Filters technique.

22. Active Technologies Sample
Column chart with bevel effect
Pie Chart
Line Chart with smooth curves
Scatter chart
Also note: Unified Palette + smart automatic layout (No more overlapping labels!)

23. HTML5 output Sample Waterfall Chart (Visual Cash Flow Statement)
TreeMap (great for big data and nested data)
Bubble Chart (note soft shadow and sphere effects, now simple one-click properties)
Interactive 3D charts in the browser (rotate them on your iPad)

24. What’s ahead for InfoAssist 8.2
There are additional features being added to InfoAssist as it continues to grow. Here are just a few new features planned for the 8.1 release.

25. Dynamic Groups

26. To start the process, click on a dimension and select Create Group

27. Dynamic Groups
Create a cluster of dimension values that make higher level categories
Grouping items of an existing field
Useful to re-organize data or to highlight ranges of values
Example: Combine sub-regions into higher level regions
Sometimes you need to create a grouping of sort fields into a higher level sort field. This of course could be done with a DEFINE, but while you are in InfoAssist you can just create a new grouping while building the report. This is the dialog box to accomplish this.

28. Then in a report, you can use the Group just as any other column

29. Charting – Lightweight Mapping

30. WebFOCUS Mapping Capabilities 8.0.05, 8.0.06, & 8.0.07
Leverages Leaflet API to provide:
Interactive mapping out-of-the-box
9 Layers of Zoom
Translated Countries
Choropleth (colored Polygons)
Points
WebFOCUS Client
Leaflet API Call (GeoJSON)
It is now easy to add a map to your application. The mapping capabilities continue to evolve throughout WF8.
Map-Tiling Engine
OpenStreetMaps in & 6
ESRI in
Alternate Map-Tiling Engine
ESRI, Google,etc

31. Interactive Chart Options
Select Map
Select Type and Location
To create a map, choose the Chart Type of Map, then choose one of the two variations. The first one is a Chloropleth map which colors in outlines of states, countries,etc based on a measure. The other is a Bubble map which creates bubbles of various sizes on top of a geographic location based on a measure.

32. Interactive Chart Options
Select Color Scale

33. Interactive Chart Options
Indicate what column will be used to identify the geography for the map.
Add Geo Location

34. Set Location Type
Then state what format the data is stored in. 2 letter state abbreviation, full statename, etc.

35. Interactive Chart Options
Here is what is produced.

36. Charting – Treemap

37. Treemap
Display hierarchical (tree-structured) data as a set of nested rectangles.
Each branch of the tree is given a rectangle, which is then tiled with smaller rectangles representing sub-branches.
A leaf node's rectangle has an area proportional to a specified dimension on the data.
Leaf nodes are colored to show a separate dimension -optional
Tree maps are structures that graph aggregated measures and display them in a relational size to one another. Here we see that the Central region is the largest amount of all the regions. Within the region, the sizes of the boxes also indicate the comparative size of the measure. In Central, the Video Players and Stereo Systems categories are larger in sales. The color can be added to indicate another measure- perhaps the blue color indicates the number of items shipped within each of the categories. The darker the blue, the higher the number.

38. Hidden Gems
Now lets talk about a few other new features coming in InfoAssist

39. Field Search Field Search
The Field Search box can assist users with locating a particular column in a very long list of columns in the data panel.

40. Clipboard Options
The clipboard option will allow users to copy/paste etc to and from the clipboard directly.

41. Extended Functions
8007
8101

42. Re-designed Chart Picker
There is a newly designed chart picker which allows an InfoAssist user to more easily identify which chart type to select. There are over 100 chart types available within InfoAssist in the current release.

43. Animate Once

44. Summary and Releases Feature 8008 8200 Refresh BI Portal
Dynamic Groups
PowerPoint PPTX output format
Lightweight Mapping
Treemap
Two-part File name
Field Search
Control User Override preferences
Cut/Copy/Paste in Document Mode
Extended Functions
New chart Picker
Animate Once
Most of the features we pointed out are available in the release, but a few of them have also been added to the 8.0 track.

45. ReportCaster

46. ReportCaster User Interfaces
ReportCaster content is accessible from the BIP tree
New Scheduling tools with ribbon implementation
New Distribution and Access List tools
Each tool has a security privilege
Reportcaster has changed as well. Scheduling a report is easily done directly from the BI Portal

47. Creating a Scheduled Task
Right-click on a procedure in the BIP tree and select Schedule and then choose the Distribution method
Just click on the report that needs to be scheduled then select the destination format for the schedule. This list can be controlled by security.

48. Schedule is placed in a folder in the tree
Schedule right-click options are available from the tree
Notice that the schedules are stored in the same folder location as the report which makes it easy to locate later.

49. Library output stored in the WF Repository
Library item is placed in the specified folder
Right-click to View versions, Subscribe, Delete etc
If the destination is the Report Library, then the library output is also stored in the same location.

50. WebFOCUS 8 Mobile Features
As WF8 progresses, more features have been created to deal with Mobile applications

51. WebFOCUS Content and Mobile Strategy
Responsive web design (RWD) is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices.
With all the devices available to users, it is important to create content that takes advantage of the capabilities as well as the size of the device. Not all dashboards created on a desktop monitor are easy to view on a smart phone.

52. WebFOCUS Content and Mobile Strategy
Auto-sizing Content – Content automatically takes the size of its container. Object are built with relative/proportional size.
There are a couple of features available to developers. The auto sizing feature within Application Studio adjusts the size of the output based on the device – as you see in this example. However, sometimes the content becomes very small and hard to see.

53. WebFOCUS Content and Mobile Strategy
Auto-Adjusting Content – Content moves and adjusts to the form factor to improve experience. Smaller form factors will work by user swiping through components while larger form factors will see all at once.
So using another method of auto adjusting content, the application can split up the frames of the dashboard into individual frames on a small device. Then using normal motions of swiping, you can switch between the frames. (this is illustrated on the next slide)

54. WebFOCUS Content and Mobile Strategy
Form Factor Specific Content – Content is segregated and developed specifically for certain form factors. You will want to ask different questions and see different things when you are on a phone than on a tablet or desktop.
Also, form factor content can be unique to the device. Drop downs on a tablet are different from a phone.

55. WebFOCUS Application Studio
WebFOCUS App Studio is the most robust BI application development platform on the market today.
Expanded Charts and visualizations
Easily create Dashboards that draw data from one source, or multiple disparate systems
Will eventually replace Developers Studio
Application Studio is introduced in WF8, release and will eventually replace Developers Studio as the development platform. Both Dev Studio and App Studio can be installed on the same machine if desired. But take appropriate care when developing between the two.

56. Upgrading to WebFOCUS 8

57. Planning the Upgrade: Migration Strategy
Use the WebFOCUS 8 upgrade as an opportunity to cleanup applications
Conduct an inventory of applications and report usage
Identify reports that:
Are never used and can be removed
Can be consolidated
Should be updated/improved to leverage WebFOCUS 8 features

58. Upgrading to WebFOCUS 8 The Migration process
So how do you make the switch to WF8. There is a process

59. Planning the Upgrade Upgrade path for WebFOCUS product components
Product Component Used
Upgrade Path
Managed Reporting
MR data and MR security rules can be migrated and stored in the WebFOCUS 8 repository. WebFOCUS 7 domain tree structure will be preserved.
Reports should continue to run as they did in WebFOCUS 7.
BI Dashboard
BID content can be migrated and will be stored on the file system in WebFOCUS80/worp directory structure.
Migrated BID Favorites/Mobile Favorites will be stored in WebFOCUS 8 repository.
BI dashboards can be used “as is” with some caveats. Certain WebFOCUS 7 BI dashboard functionality is removed in WebFOCUS 8.

60. Planning the Upgrade Upgrade path for WebFOCUS product components
Product Component Used
Upgrade Path
ReportCaster
Fully integrated with new WebFOCUS 8 architecture and security.
All ReportCaster and Report Library content can be migrated and stored in the WebFOCUS repository.
Developer Studio
Can be installed on same machine as Developer Studio 7. Developers will be able to switch between two releases.
Leverage WebFOCUS 8 architecture and security authentication and authorization model.

61. Managing ongoing development during upgrade
Full migration from WebFOCUS 7 to an intermediate version of WebFOCUS 8
Use WebFOCUS 8 Change Management from the intermediate version of WebFOCUS 8 to the targeted WebFOCUS 8 environment (Sandbox, Dev).
This workflow is illustrated below
WebFOCUS 8 migration tools
Existing WebFOCUS 7 Production
WebFOCUS 8 Change Management
Intermediate version of WebFOCUS 8
Use WebFOCUS 8 Change Management to promote to QA/Prod
WebFOCUS 8 Sandbox/Dev

62. Release 8 Migration

63. Release 8 Migration Migration Drivers
Meet demand for new capabilities from the Business
Modernize existing content and applications
Take advantage of infrastructure enhancements, e.g., security
Address compliance requirements
Establish a current platform baseline for future maintenance
Expand and scale BI usage (internal and customer-facing) based on support for leading technologies, e.g., data visualization, mobile, new adapters, etc.
First, lets look at why customers want to upgrade

64. Release 8 Migration Update Migration Barriers
 Consuming major new releases takes significant planning (can be up to one year)
Cost and administrative processes involved with hardware procurement can span months, causing delays in standing up parallel new release environments
Assessing scope of entire effort can be daunting for enterprise class environments
“Known unknowns. Unknown unknowns”
Required remediation and potential level of effort
Implement new feature(s) in place of technique(s)
Candidates for modernization: InfoApps, BI Dashboards, Report/Graph Assist Reporting Objects and MyReports
Customizations
Then there are reasons why some customers are so ready to move forward

65. Release 8 Migration Update Current Migration Workflow
InfoApps
Forms
Reports
Dashboards
Security profiles
Migration tools move all Release 7 applications and their associated security profiles to Release 8
Change Management tools used to selectively migrate objects from Release 8 staging environment to Release 8 Dev and/or Test environments
Traditionally, the migration takes all of the previous releases content and moves that in one bundle to the upgraded version. Many customers install a sandbox version of the new release to test the migration then they use Change Management to promote applications from the sandbox to Dev up to Prod.
WebFOCUS 8
Staging Environment
WebFOCUS 8
Dev, Test
WebFOCUS 7

66. Release 8 Migration Update New Migration Workflow
Migration tools will now allow for selective, incremental migration directly from Release 7 environments to Release 8
All: performs a full migration
Domain List: includes content and associated Groups and Users
Group List: Users and Domains
Now, there is a change in the migration tool. You can selectively migrate content, so you no longer have to do a big bang approach. You can migrate certain domains of content or certain groups of users.
WebFOCUS 8
Dev, Test
WebFOCUS 7

67. Release 8 Migration Update New Migration Workflow
Migration can be phased in over time based on business priorities
Hardware and administration costs associated with staging environments eliminated
Supported with Release and later
Since it can be a phased approach, this makes the move a little easier. This partial migration is new, but is available to be used with and later
WebFOCUS 8
Dev, Test
WebFOCUS 7

68. Release 8 Migration Update Migration Assessment Tool
Now available via field Technical Account Managers
Utilized to provide key data points as a step in determining scope of migration efforts
Scanning of both Reporting Server and Managed Reporting environments
Features detected
Remediation candidates (forms, reports, etc.)
Estimated level of effort and suggested approach
Additional important steps:
Usage Monitoring via Resource Analyzer
Reporting Server activity
Release 8-level Portal and data visualization
Real-time view of entire Reporting Server usage
Migration Assessment and Modernization service via IB Professional Services
A big question is always around how things will work in the new release. To help understand areas that might need some attention, there is a Migration Assessment Tool that your Technical Account Manager can use to help you. It scans your existing installation and helps point out certain information.

69. Release 8 Migration Update Migration Assessment Tool: Sample Output
Here is one output from the Migration Assessment tool

70. Release 8 Migration Update Migration Assessment Tool: Sample Output
Here is a report that indicates areas to pay attention to. This help is available if you need it.

71. Questions ?