Link: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/23176
Take a look a this great Preview of Xcelsius (Next Generation) aka. Dashboard Design. The following Video shows the new Query Browser to query and filter a universe and populate the underlying excel or the charts, without excel data-ranges.
IMHO this is a really cool and valuable improvement of Xcel.... 
Dashboard Design.
Link: http://www.graphomate.com
Based on the SUCCESS rules of Hilchert+Partner there is a new innovative Xcelsius Visualisation Add-In from Graphomate GmbH(currently german only website) available.
The graphomate Add-In provides new visualisation components in Xcelsius, which improve the look and development of complex combined charts.
The protected SUCCESS notation concept provides the basis for successful business communication by clear messages, systematic standardization, and reduction to the essential.
The graphomate visualisation components provides a powerful set of easily configurable components to build complex charts especially for the presentation of financial KPIs. It combines plan vs. actual and absolute vs. relative views in one chart and helps to provide better insight into business KPIs.
The following picture compares a visualisation of graphomate components vs. the use of layered and combined xcelsius standard components. (the scalability of the combined components is limited and the development effort is much higher!)
Although the customisation capabilities of the free version are currently very limited (custom colors, alerts) this add-in provides a real value for dashboard design and the xcelsius community.
IMHO: The correct use of components and underline the context of information is "real BI". For more information please contact the graphomate team at info@graphomate.com.
With the upcoming Release 4 of SAP Business Objects, the term "XI" will be removed from the BO Toolset.
The following table points out the future name change (grey background = no name change):
| Old name | New name |
| SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise Premium | SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform |
| Crystal Reports | SAP Crystal Reports |
| SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius Enterprise | SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards |
| SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence | SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence |
| SAP BusinessObjects Voyager (aka Advanced Analysis Web; Pioneer) | SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAP |
| SAP BusinessObjects Advanced Analysis (aka Advanced Analysis Office; Pioneer) | SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Microsoft Office |
| SAP BusinessObjects Explorer | SAP BusinessObjects Explorer |
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