To get to graphs/charts, go to the Insert menu and select "Chart" and put the chart where you want it. Right click on it and select "Options" to reformat it. If you click on an object on the inside of the chart, then right-click in the white space in the chart, you can select the Chart Expert option to change the type of graph that's displayed.
By Refresh, I mean that the report doesn't automatically update when the data changes, only when the page is reloaded or the report is refreshed (there's a "Refresh" button in the viewer or you can refresh the data in code).
Web Intelligence (WebI) is another report creation tool that is available only within the BusinessObjects Enterprise software. It's much easier for average users to use for ad-hoc type reporting. The main reason that it's easier is that the users don't link directly to the database tables. Instead, they build reports based on a "Universe" which is a meta-data layer, usually set up by someone in IT, that contains the tables, all of the links between the tables, pre-defined calculations (measures), and the fields (dimensions) from the tables with descriptive text names instead of the field names. There's a lot of work that goes into building a uninverse, but in our situation it's been worth it to give our users access to the data in a controlled, fairly easy-to-use manner.
-Dell
Edited by hilfy - 19 Mar 2007 at 10:31am