Customer Reviews

Business Objects XI - CBT: Web Intelligence XI

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For $62, I was expecting a professionally-edited book, with an overview, some case studies and perhaps a running example. This guide to BO is a printed set of slides based on screen shots of BO, along with some presentation notes that go with the slides. The author doesn't even edit out the printing of empty slides between sections. The "computer-based training" (CBT) is the author reading the words on the slides, with the slides showing, or a screenshot showing; NOTHING interactive or useful unless you wish to have slides read to you.

A fair price would be less than $30. This is really a print of slides from an introductory course.

We've have been buying the Creating Documents with Business Objects books for years. Whenever we hire a new employee, we order the Web Intelligence book, and if they are to make universes, they also get the Designer book. This combination has worked very well for our employees. Recently, we ordered the CBT versions of these books and were surprised to see that we still got the same book. We quickly put the CD in to check the CBT and were happy to see that the CBT is actually quite good. We were also surprised that we got both at the same price as the previous versions of the books. The Designer book comes with a presentation that allows us to teach a class on Universes. The Web Intelligence book did not come with the presentation. We contacted Schmidt Ink, and were informed the non-CBT version of the book has the presentation. The person we spoke with also said that the presentation will be on the next print of the CBT. By the way, Schmidt Ink sent us a free copy of the previous edition, since we bought so many CBT's. We are very happy that these CBT's are available. They are high quality, easy to use, and inexpensive. One other note, so far the author has been very helpful. We have contacted him several times and he has discussed several matters with us, which is one of the reasons for this review. I just want to thank the author for great books and for helping us so many times.

Business Objects XI - CBT: Designer XI (2nd Edition)

I needed to quickly get up to speed with Business Objects for my company. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints training was out of the question. Thank goodness for Robert Schmidt's books!!! Not only was the book easy to understand, but the author was also very helpful! I also purchased a more technical reference book for Business Objects and quickly realized that had I not first completed the Schmidt training book, I probably would have given up on learning Business Objects on my own.

Though the book is based on powerpoint slides, it does contain addtional explanation & also directions. However, I found the video links to be the most helpful, when the step-by-step directions weren't clear.

A couple of suggestions for the author:
(1) I would pay extra for the powerpoint slides to be in color within the book and not just the video.
(2) An index at the end of the book would be helpful.

Overall, I'm extremely grateful to have found this book. The Creating Universe training book was even more enlightening.

Thanks Robert!!!

I used this book to update my skills. The course on CD and the book are even better than the official BO courses from SAP and costs only a fraction of the official course.

This is a great book by Mr. Schmidt to start with WebI. It helped me a lot to understand many topics which are not even covered in official BO WebI class. Nicely written.
However I would encourage Mr. Schmidt to include exercise and more examples on advanced topics on formula, variables and context. I have already bought other 2 books of Mr. Schmidt for Universe design and Desktop Intelligence and hoping the same outcome.

Schmidt has done an excellent job with the quality and effectiveness of this computer-based training offering. I hope he does more.

I purchased this book in order to learn about Business Objects. Unfortunately, this book is a bunch of slides and isn't interactive. there is a link to a website (no longer active) where you can purchase time on the server to work with a database for a fee but I don't think it's available.

This book is worth $30 tops.

I bought the Designer and WEBI CBTs and want to tell you how much I appreciated the classes and how thoroughly Robert covered everything. I am now doing advanced WEBI reports in a very short time. He has also been very supportive in answering my emails with questions. I would highly recommend these classes to you.

Sir, I am impressed by the fantastic reviews. I would like to refresh my knowledge of Business Objects, but want to clarify if your CBTs require a person to have the Business Objects software installed on his/her PC or if even without that the CBT would work. I do not have the software, and I would need the CBT to be self-contained and sufficient for me to be able to benefit from it. This question would apply to both the Webi and Universe design CBTs

The author is very intelligent in using VIDEO to show us how to create report in this CD. Besides being the most efficient training resource on the market, I found it very convenient 1- you choose a specific topic and get your question answered. 2. you can always review as many time you need since it is yours unlike online course with a expiration date. Also another reason I like this book is it has instructor's sound now !

Thanks Rob for making our job much easier by providing this book.

I just hope to see more and more books by the same author, now with SAP
And BO merger, is Rob writing more books in the same format?