UPDATED 4/8/2017

CMaps Analytics for SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence is a powerful tool for to quickly visualize and analyze geographic data in your report (latitude/longitude, state, country, address, etc) with business measures and dimensions.

CMaps Analytics in particular offers important capabilities and customization organizations typically expect in dashboards. Here is a comparison table for CMaps Analytics vs standard geo maps that come with SAP BusinessObjects:

comparison

1. CMaps Analytics provides 2 distinct integrations with Webi

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Sidebar Extension

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Within CMaps Analytics for Webi, you can use standard templates or quickly create your own maps templates for multiple layers map views with alerts, drilling, custom regions, ESRI integration, and many other use cases supported by over 100 clickable properties.

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Embedded Element

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New to Webi as of BI4.2, CMaps Analytics is now available to be embedded directly inside of a Webi document just like any other chart visualization

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View Administration Guides

2. Format your Data as a Vertical Table

CMaps Analytics fetches data directly from Webi report blocks and requires your data to be formatted as a vertical table.

3. Empower Webi Report Writers

Casual users who create Webi reports can immediately create maps without any external tools, licenses, or software to install, and typically requires only 5 minutes to learn.

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Sidebar Extension

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Embedded Element

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4. What you see is what you get

Using report filters or report breaks will automatically refresh CMaps Analytics views with the most current data. Now, with CMaps custom elements, you can take advantage of input controls too!
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5. Hidden columns wont work

For some reason the Webi Extensions points SDK wont properly feed data when using hidden columns. Additionally transforming a table to a chart also won’t work.

6. CMaps Analytics requires IE10 or greater:

SAP’s new wave of analytics tools like Lumira and Design Studio have dropped support for IE8 and IE9. The final straw was Google Maps dropping support for IE9 as of August 2015. The modern HTML5 experiences of today are just not possible with IE9 without sacrificing a significant portion of the utility gained by using HTML5.

7. No Mobile Support 🙁

Unfortunately, visualizations and extensions for Webi are not supported at this time.

PLEASE VOTE TO VIA IDEA PLACE

8. Multiple layer maps are a breeze

A key difference for the CMaps Sidebar Extension is the ability to import custom maps templates from CMaps Designer which will transform your tabular data into mini geo-dashboards.

  • Multiple layers of information fed from multiple report blocks for combining regions, facilities, assets, and customers /employees in one view.

9. Use Webi Variables to Enhance your Map

Webi Variables provide a powerful mechanism for combining Latitude,Longitude or advanced InfoWindow content

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For example, if you want to display multiple dimensions, measures, and even OpenDoc URL inside of your InfoWindow, you can concatenate together multiple objects inside of a custom variable.

10. Enterprise grade security

CMaps Analytics uses Google Maps for consumer-grade experience, but all of your data from your Webi report never leaves the report. There is one exception if you decide to use batch geocoding which uses the “Location” property to convert geographic locations into Latitude/Longitude.

View Security Guide