I’ve had the privilege of working with a client that is currently using Crystal Reports and Crystal Enterprise 10 but wants executive dashboards. Because of the desired feature set, the client has adopted BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.0, Xcelsius 2008, and Query as a Web Service (QaaWS). This will also be my first experience with Business Objects on 64-bit Windows, so I’m excited.

I’m doing a bit of minor customization. I’m pleased to report that although the file locations have changed, many of the tricks in XI Release 2 still apply.

Changing the Default Logo
I discovered the secret location by clearing the “Display Business Objects logo” box in the CMC’s InfoView Properties, then checking the radio button for “Display custom logo”. By leaving the default value of “logo.jpg”, I was able to log into InfoView and display the properties of the broken image link. The default image still goes in the schema.blue folder like XI R2, but the path is now C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Tomcat55\webapps\InfoViewApp\res\schema.blue.

Customizing the InfoView Login Page
The procedure for customizing the InfoView Login page is also very similar to XI Release 2, other than the web.xml file now lives at C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Tomcat55\webapps\InfoViewApp\WEB-INF\web.xml. As before, you’ll want to restart Apache Tomcat to see your changes in effect. Curiously, Business Objects XI 3.0 hides the CMS/cluster name and authentication type out-of-the box (frequent customization requests).

For example, the app.name parameter controls some text on the login screen as well as the HTML TITLE tag throughout the user’s session. The TITLE tag trick is pretty cool, as the text that you choose will always be what users see when their browser window is minimized. So you may want to change the value from InfoView to CompanyName InfoView. And the app.name.greeting, which by default is BusinessObjects, can be modified so users are greeted by Welcome to Our BI Portal instead of Welcome to BusinessObjects.

Changing the Default Web Intelligence Paper Size
When Business Objects Enterprise is initially installed, the default page size is European A4, not the American standard Letter. In XI R2, this situation is easily corrected by modifying the defaultconfig.xml file. The Java and .NET versions of Web Intelligence each have their own defaultconfig.xml file.

NOTE: Existing reports will still have the page size set when the document was saved; however, this modification will change the default setting for all new documents.

If you are using the included Tomcat web application server, the defaultconfig.xml file for XI R2 is located at C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Tomcat\webapps\businessobjects\enterprise115\desktoplaunch\webiApplet\AppletConfig\. The defaultconfig.xml file for Business Objects Enterprise XI 3.0/XI 3.1 is located in a slightly different location at C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Tomcat55\webapps\AnalyticalReporting\webiApplet\AppletConfig.

Conclusion
That’s all I have for now. There’s no customer requirement to customize the style sheet, and the client hasn’t used their new environment long enough to want any features disabled (discussions, information on demand) by tweaking additional XML files. But stay tuned…

It’s nice to know that it’s still possible to tailor the InfoView user experience. However, the drawback to the current approach is that you’re always in danger of a service pack or fix pack overwriting these files. Perhaps a future release will add common customizations as parameters that can be controlled via the InfoView application configuration in the CMC.

Do you have a favorite customization for XI 3.0? Feel free to post a comment to this post.