How to export images from a URL in Web Intelligence to PDF or Excel

Hello everyone,

Another long standing customer request has been implemented in Web Intelligence, but without great fanfare. So little so that I did not realize it had been implemented until recently.

We now have the ability to export URL based images to PDF and Excel from Web Intelligence.

This has been a complaint from users for ages and it is now possible to do.

Previously if you created a WebI report with an image from a URL, if you exported it to PDF or Excel you would get a blank cell.

Starting with BI 4.1 SP6, SP7, and BI 4.2 that is no longer necessarily the case.

You can make registry edits to allow the URL images to be embedded in both formats.

(Note that the instructions for Linux are also included in the user guide below.)

This information is found in the Web Intelligence User manuals.

I am using http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/sbo41/en/sbo41sp7_webi_user_guide_en.pdf

In section 7.7 on page 448.

Here is step by step how you can do it:

Create a blank WebI document.

Add a blank cell.

Right click on the Cell and select Format Call.

Click on the Appearance selection on the left.

Select the Image from Address radio button and insert the image address as follows:

Click Ok.

After resizing the cell I have the following:

Save the Report.

If you now export to PDF you will not see the image, you will see something like this:

Now to implement the registry edits to enable this to work.

Open the registry and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SAP BusinessObjects\Suite XI 4.0\default\WebIntelligence\BlobManager

Create/Modify the string value ResolveHTTPUrl and set its value to yes.

Create/Modify the string value PROXY and set its value to <proxy>:<portnumber> where your replace <proxy> with your proxy name and <portnumber> with the proxy’s port.

It will look something like this:

Now that those are set, you can try exporting again.

Assuming the above information is configured properly, you should now see the image as such:

PDF

Excel

That’s it!

You can now export your URL based images to PDF or Excel from Web Intelligence.

It has been a long time coming, but it is finally here.