Recommended Reading for Upgrading from Business Objects XI R2 to XI 3.0

Customers upgrading from Business Objects XI R2 to Business Objects XI 3.0 may have been frustrated by the seeming lack of documentation about moving between one environment to another. Some of this frustration would be a result of last July’s abrupt move from the old Business Objects support site to the new SAP support site.

There is a lot of Business Objects XI 3.0 documentation available on the SAP Help Portal. The SAP Help Portal is easy to get to and does not require an S-ID or password. Some useful documents here would include the What’s New in BusinessObjects XI 3.0 guide, BusinessObjects XI 3.0 Feature Evolution, BusinessObjects Enterprise Administrator’s Guide, and BusinessObjects Enterprise Import Wizard Guide.

For whatever reason, migration guides are not available from the SAP Help Portal, although there are links. For these guides, you’ll need an SAP S-ID to access the SAP Support Portal. Customers migrating from Business Objects versions 5 or 6 will want to download the Business Objects 5/6 to XI 3.0 Migration Guide and customers moving from XI R1 or R2 will want to download the BusinessObjects Enterprise Upgrade Guide.

Overall, the documentation is well written, although in some spots it clearly reveals the rush to ship XI 3.0. Fortunately, we should be seeing revised documentation for XI 3.1 over the next few weeks. And we are all encouraged to provide feedback according to this snippet from the What’s New in BusinesssObjects XI 3.0 guide:

If for some reason you do not find what you are looking for in the product’s online help or the available PDF documentation, please communicate your questions and feedback to Business Objects documentation email address
mailto:[email protected].

I selfishly put together this post just so I’d have an easy way to find these bookmarks, but I hope this post will also be helpful to you. Is there a document or “secret” white paper that has really helped your organization migrate to Business Objects Enterprise XI 3.0? Please share by posting a comment.