BusinessObjects Chop Shop (InfoView hacks)

Customized Infoview XI 3.1

In the spirit of Orange County Choppers, I began this week with a need to customize Business Objects InfoView in support of customer requirements. The customer needed to alter their SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI 3.1 InfoView to remove a couple of unneeded menu choices: the Open menu (home of My InfoView and Encyclopedia) and the Dashboard menu (see final screen shot below).

Customized Infoview XI 3.1

Ideally, the customization would be possible by a simple adjustment of InfoView application rights in the Central Management Console (CMC). Unfortunately, the list of configurable rights for InfoView is still not as robust as many customers would prefer.

After some digging, I found a discussion thread on the BusinessObjects Board (BOB) that was very helpful. The good news is that I can achieve the effect that I’m looking for. The bad news is that it required chopping a JSP file, which is an unsupported modification. In addition to the potential humiliation by SAP BusinessObjects tech support, one’s environment is only a single hot fix or service pack away from having the JSP overwritten.

The chop job is performed in the C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Tomcat55\webapps\InfoViewApp\jsplisting directory on the headerPlus.jsp file. I’ve updated the original BOB post with the details of my (unsupported) modification.

UPDATE: After taking a second look, I took a more surgical approach of uncommenting the lines of code that visualize the buttons without affecting the rest of the functionality. I updated the code sample on BOB with this new approach.

Dallas Marks

Dallas Marks

I am an analytics and cloud architect, author, and trainer. An AWS certified blogger, SAP Mentor Alumni and co-author of the SAP Press book SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence: The Comprehensive Guide, I prefer piano keyboards over computer keyboards when not blogging or tweeting.

4 thoughts on “BusinessObjects Chop Shop (InfoView hacks)

  1. If your users are using Firefox, you can write and deploy among them a greasemonkey userscript that hides the unwanted elements.
    Pro: no unsupported hacking of BO; will still be there after an upgrade.
    Con: requires specific browser + plugin, and that users install this script on each machine.

  2. Hi Ethan,

    If you have the script , can you shate it with me please

    -Vijay. K

  3. Hello Mark/Site Viewer,

    Hope things are great!

    Questions for you
    I would like to make #secure# as a default subject line for all the scheduled WEBI reports which are being distributed through email to out Internal/External users.

    Reason: to make secured report distribution .

    I know that there are multiple options to the subjects line like
    title, ID, Owner, Date and Time and Email Address which can be added. I think adding “#secure# to this list and making this as default ( user can still add subject after #secure#) would solve this issue .

    Can you guys provide me the directory where can find this Code in the BO Backend ? or is there any other way we can implement this ?

    Your suggestions are greatly appreciated and valued .

    Thank you,
    Chakra

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