My Questions. My Insight. One BI Standard.
BusinessObjects™ XI is the first and only business intelligence (BI) platform that delivers a complete set of market-leading BI capabilities: best-in-class performance management, reporting, query and analysis, and data integration. Business Objects XI introduces significant innovations that deliver BI in new ways to a much broader set of users as well as completing the integration of the Crystal and BusinessObjects product lines.

BusinessObjects XI Release 2 builds on the proven and trusted BusinessObjects XI platform. It provides substantial functional improvements and innovations across the BusinessObjects XI platform and includes full platform-level support for Desktop Intelligence™ (formerly BusinessObjects full client) to allow a smooth transition path to BusinessObjects XI for all existing customers who have invested in that technology.

BusinessObjects XI Release 2 takes innovation even further to allow non-traditional BI users to easily access critical business information via Intelligent Question™.

What’s new in BusinessObjects XI depends on where you’re coming from—Business Objects 5.x/6.x, Crystal v10 or both. For that reason, this document contains three sections:

• • New for all users
• • New for users of BusinessObjects 5.x/6.x
• • New for users of Crystal v10

BusinessObjects XI Release 2
BusinessObjects XI Release 2 builds on the world’s leading business intelligence platform, BusinessObjects XI, to deliver new ways to access the information you need to do your job, allowing you to be able to say "I can answer my questions. I can trust and share my insight. And I can do everything I need on one BI standard."

New for All Users

BusinessObjects Intelligent Question

Intelligent Question is a major innovation within BusinessObjects XI Release 2. It allows non-traditional users of BI tools to easily ask structured questions of business information: Who were my top ten customers this year? What products did they buy?

Users can dynamically ask questions through a simple, question-based interface that allows them to save favorites, then move to a web-based query and analysis front end (Web Intelligence™) for further analysis or export to Excel.

BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence
BusinessObjects XI Release 2 includes Desktop Intelligence—the new name for BusinessObjects full client. By using Desktop Intelligence, customers can protect their existing investment and benefit from the latest trusted and proven BusinessObjects XI platform.

Desktop Intelligence is available in all of the current BusinessObjects full-client deployment options including:

• Full "offline" mode (no connection to a network server)
• Client/server mode
• Three-tier mode
• Workgroup mode

Note that when deployed in three-tier mode, the ability for end users to automatically download and install Desktop Intelligence is not supported in BusinessObjects XI Release 2.

Desktop Intelligence has been enhanced to allow query and display of Unicode data. This provides organizations with the ability to further reduce the cost of ownership of delivery BI to multi-lingual audiences.

BusinessObjects Enterprise
With BusinessObjects XI, the service-oriented platform allows Crystal Reports®, Web Intelligence, Desktop Intelligence, OLAP Intelligence™, Dashboard Manager, and Performance Manager to plug directly into the framework. Customers who have invested in these products can leverage their current product investments, while gaining access to the broadest set of BI tools on the market.

New features include:

• Support for Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Desktop Intelligence, OLAP Intelligence, Dashboard Manager, and Performance Manager; plus Auditing, Publishing, Live Office, and Crystal Reports Explorer
• Single repository, security, system management, publishing, portal, and portal integration environment
• Integrated scheduling based on user input, events, and calendars
• Full cross-platform support for all leading platforms, web servers, application servers to fit virtually any customer scenario
• Auditing of all system interactions
• Support for Encyclopedia, Process Tracker, and Discussions—all new parts of the platform

Publishing
BusinessObjects XI Enterprise Release 2 provides the capability to personalize and deliver content to a list of subscribers. A publication maintains a list of subscribers, in the form of principals, as well as profile targets, and each recipient’s profile values. When you schedule a publication, each recipient receives a personalized copy of the associated report, based on the publication’s profile targets and the recipients’ profile

values. Users can subscribe to or unsubscribe to a publication, provided that they have the necessary credentials.

Process Tracker
Process Tracker is part of BusinessObjects Enterprise, designed to align business intelligence with an organization’s business processes. It allows an organization to visually map, track, and communicate standardized business processes through a set of activities and their associated business content for more consistent and proactive decision making. Process Tracker helps users visually outline the steps required to consistently follow a business process, such as Sarbanes-Oxley review or a vendor performance analysis. With each step in a business process, users can link associated BI content for easy access to the key information they need to make informed decisions. Accountability can be assigned to responsible owners for each milestone in a business process. Plus project stakeholders can add comments to each stage for timely collaboration.

Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia is a key new innovation in BusinessObjects XI for creating reference guides for BI content. It provides end users with a faster way to locate and interpret their corporate information for confident, accurate decision making. With Encyclopedia, end users can deliver handy BI reference guides right from their BI portal for instant access to the underlying context. Visual maps show relationships between BI documents making it easy to locate relevant information. Plus a search panel enables end users to locate specific BI content using everyday business terms. An overview panel explains the purpose of a document, what business questions it helps answer, and how it is best used. In addition, a glossary of synonyms and definitions explains the key terms used for consistent interpretation.

Discussions
Discussions provide threaded notes on a specific report, document, or dashboard Users can create and maintain comments on documents and to share that valuable insight across the organization, providing a greater understanding of the context of existing documents.

InfoView
BusinessObjects Enterprise XI includes an all-new BI portal called InfoView. With its single web interface, InfoView can access and interact with any type of BI content including reports, analytics, dashboards, scorecards, and strategy maps. InfoView provides a consistent user interface for both Java and .Net platforms. InfoView replaces both the previous BusinessObjects InfoView and the Crystal Enterprise™ ePortfolio product.