Installation Steps for biExport On-Premise

If you want to use biExport productively with an on-premise installation of the biExport service, these are the necessary configuration steps.

Software Requirements

The server, on which you install the biExport service, does not have to meet high system requirements. The basic requirements are:

• Windows Server OS
• 4 GB memory
• 2 core CPU

If you expect high productive usage, the number of CPU cores mainly drives performance. If exported PDFs contain a lot of pages with tabular data, it makes sense to think about a dedicated server with a GPU, in order to get the highest rendering performance. The export load can be distributed over several biExport service instances by the use of the biExport Load Balancer.

Installation

1. Please register your user on www.biexcellence.com/register and tell us that you are interested in biExport for SAC. Also leave us a message that you would like to install the product on premise.
2. After successful registration, you can find the downloads for your installation on www.biexcellence.com/downloads.
3. Download the package biExport Widgets 4 SAC.
4. Install the Widget as shown in this blog post.
5. Download the package openbi Repository Server.
6. Decompress the package and install it.
7. Download the package biExport openbi Plugin Installer.
8. Decompress the package and execute the EXE file.
9. The Export openbi Plugin Installer automatically finds the open bi installation. From the Export group, choose SAP Analytics Cloud, and if you want to precalculate and publish SAC workbooks, also select the Analysis for Office Export Plugin. From the Publish group, select those Output Channels that you want to use. Then start the installation.
10. Make sure the firewall does allow communication from and to the Export Service: Export Service uses the following ports by default:

    9091 http 9092 https 9093 Configuration

    Make sure these ports are not yet used and opened. Otherwise change the default ports in the Web Configurator.

11. Find the bi excellence openbi Repository service in the Windows Services and open it.
12. Choose start automatically.
13. If you are using live connections with SSO: We recommend to run the service with a user, who is authorized to access those Live Connections via SSO (for details read below).
14. Start the service.

Configuration

You can configure and monitor the biExort service via configurator.biexcellence.com.

1. Login to your server
   For the first login use user "admin" and password "Initial".

2. Navigate to Settings ...

   

   ... add the tracing parameter:

   Name: EXPORT_TRACE on Productive Server: ERRORS on Development & Test: BASIC for Support Cases: X (stores all trace files in the export_temp subdirectory of OPENBI installation)

   ... define how long biExport should wait for SAC stories to execute in background execution:

   Name: EXPORT_TIMEOUT Value: 60000
3. Activate https support

   Open bi requires a PKCS#12/PFX (.pfx or .p12) server certificate, which includes any intermediate certificates and the private key in one encryptable file.

   Commands to convert different certificate formats to PKCS#12/PFX using OpenSSL:

   1. Convert PEM to PFX: $ openssl pkcs12 -export -out certificate.pfx -inkey privateKey.key -in certificate.crt -certfile CAcert.crt
   2. Convert P7B to PFX: $ openssl pkcs7 -print_certs -in certificate.p7b -out certificate.cer $ openssl pkcs12 -export -in certificate.cer -inkey privateKey.key -out certificate.pfx -certfile CACert.cer

      Install the certificate to the Windows Certificate Manager. Use Local Machine as store location and Personal as certificate store on the machine where the open bi Repository Server is installed.

      In the Web Configurator navigate to Settings and add parameter SSLPath. Set the parameter value to the Common Name (CN) of the certificate.

      

      Open bi will search for the certificate in the certificate store.

   After changing this setting the service must be restarted!
4. In the Console you can always check what the service is currently doing:

Test

Now the service should already be up and running. You can test it by calling the server UI from a browser - a login screen and CMS navigation should appear:

When adding the Widget to your SAC Application...

... set the Server URL to

https://[your server URI]

and you can test the first export. The License Key does not have to be entered in this scenario.

For Briefing Book Generation, Scheduling and Background Execution

1. Configure oAuth on SAC

   This step is not required if you are using SSO for logging in to SAC and Live Connections. For import models and live connections with popup authentication, follow this blog post for configuration instructions.

2. Determine SAC tenant URL

   The Tenant URL is displayed in the Background Execution parameter group of the biExport Widget

   Alternatively you can open an SAC application in your web browser and activate the developer tools (F12). Enter the following scrpt into the console and press enter:

   sap.fpa.ui.infra.service.AjaxHelper.getTenantUrl(false);

   Note down the result.

3. Create a Connection Template for re-login

   Connection Templates are created in the Web configurator.

   After logging in, navigate to "Connection Templates", choose "SAP BO"...

   

   ... and enter the following information:

   

For import model scenarios / Live Connections:

For Live Connection scenarios with SSO:

For Mail delivery

If you want to connect to your SMTP server, create the following parameters in the Web configurator:

License

The evaluation license for the on premise installation is valid for 60 days.

Once you have successfully evaluated, you can start your license contract and we provide you with a license file that must be placed in the OPENBI installation folder.