I got a comment from someone new recently who said:
Sigh. There is so much about Business Objects that makes me scream “WHY??? Who designed this thing? Nobody who has ever used it in the real world, that’s for sure!”
First it made me laugh. But then it made me think. At various points Business Objects has done things that made their users extremely frustrated, and it seems that sometimes it’s because they don’t know what people are doing with their products. The best example that I can think of happened a very long time ago, but it was a “biggie” as they say. It happened during the update from 3.1 to 4.0. Anyone else remember those exciting times? 
Continue reading “What We Do Without Business Objects Knowing About It…”
One of the most frequent questions that comes out of either the “building reports” or “universe design” areas on BOB has to be: how can I get rid of the time on my date prompts? And it’s not a new question; I bet if I searched I could find the same questions dating all the way back to 1998, which are the oldest posts we have on the board.
The overwhelming complaint generally boils down to, “… but my users don’t like it.” I get that, certainly I do. But to be honest it’s easier to spend an hour or two of your time 
convincing the users that it is more cost effective to leave it than to try to change the way the tool works. It’s not worth the time to remove the time when it works perfectly fine if you ignore it.
Normally I am all about trying to figure out a creative solution and do the “outside of the box” thinking. People that know me understand that one of the best ways to motivate me to solve an issue is to say something along the lines of “… and Business Objects said it can’t be done.” Well, then I have to do it. But not in this case.
Continue reading “Making the Best Use of Your Time (in a Prompt)”
As a community service I present the first post in my new “rants” category. I miss being able to rant… I haven’t been able to chew anyone out for trying to export a Business Objects report into Excel for quite a few versions now. So here goes…
If you have a cell-phone with a nice LOUD ringtone of your favorite musical artist, and the ring tone goes on for almost a minute, and the decibel level is high enough so that you can hear it over the rumble of your Harley, then for the sake of everyone’s sanity TURN OFF YOUR FREAKIN’ PHONE when you’re not at your desk. Or take it with you. Or put it on silent mode.
Or next time when you come back to your desk you might just be phone-less.
There. I feel better. Carry on with your normal activities.
