I have been getting some questions about it recently so I decided to write a few lines in addition to what’s now available on the Power BI site. Here is a list of some key points about the tool:
- No middle-ware components are necessary to provide the connectivity between Excel and the Business Objects server. In order to connect, a user will only need to provide the URL to Business Objects and be able to be authenticated by it
- Only the latest version of Business Objects is supported (4.1 SP2)
- Only UNX type of universes are supported (must be created with the Information Design tool), the older version of universe (UNV) that typically was created using a Universe Designer, is not currently supported
- Any universes on Business Objects 4.0 or 3.x are not supported
- Only relational universes are supported, multidimensional universes are not supported. However, a relational universe that exposes Hana or BW data is supported
- Universes cannot contain prompts or parameters
- Power Pivot refresh from the cloud is not yet supported, but supposedly this feature is coming at some point (my assumption is that the generic Power Pivot refresh from Power Query will need to be supported by Power BI first before the SAP Connector can provide Data refresh in the cloud)
business intelligist 