Tips and Tricks: Displaying Images on Web Intelligence Reports

By
Dallas Marks
– February 28, 2009Posted in: Business Intelligence, Web Intelligence

A frequent reporting requirement is to display an organization’s logo as an image, such as a GIF, JPEG or PNG) on Web Intelligence documents. There are two ways to accomplish this task:

1. Place the file in a special images directory on the BusinessObjects Enterprise server
2. Place the file on another web server

Let’s look at the first method.

On Windows installations of BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.x, the default <installdir> is C:\Program Files\Business Objects and therefore images should be stored in the <installdir>\BusinessObjects Enterprise 12.0\images folder.

On Linux and Unix installations of BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.x, the location of the images folder is <installdir>/bobje/enterprise120/images.

Once the image files are in place, Web Intelligence report developers can place a freestanding cell onto the report canvas. On the properties tab for the cell, set the Text property to boimg://, ex.: boimg://corporatelogo.jpg. Be sure to change the “Read cell content as” property to Image URL. The BOIMG prefix instructs Web Intelligence to look in the special image directory.

This technique also applies to XI R2, but the image directory is in a slightly different place. Images with BOIMG can be used in the Web Intelligence Rich Client; however, the image will not be visible until the document is exported to the CMS and viewed via InfoView.

One caveat that I was unable to resolve – the original corporate logo file had an ampersand (&) in its name. Although Web Intelligence did not display an error, it also did not display the image. My clever solution was to rename the file without the offending character, as I was unable to devise an escape character so it could be interpreted properly. If somebody is aware of a true workaround (or other misbehaving characters like &), please post a reply to this article.

Regarding the second method, type the URL (for example, http://www.yourorganization.com/images/corporatelogo.jpg) into the text field. As with BOIMG, set the “Read cell content as” property to Image URL.

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About Dallas Marks

As a business intelligence architect, developer, mentor and trainer, I help organizations across the United States harness the power of business intelligence, primarily (but not exclusively) using SAP BusinessObjects products. I prefer piano keyboards instead of computer keyboards when not blogging or tweeting about business intelligence.