Timeout settings in SAP Live Office 4.x

In one of my previous documents i have written several words about the Timeout settings on the BI Platform 4.x version. Of course this document is not complete, since it is not contains all the possibilities of the timeout settings.  In this document I am giving guideline for SAP BusinessObjects Live Office users to check/troubleshoot timeout errors of the application. Before you do any changes in the timeout settings, we have to answer minimum the following questions:

• What is the BI Platform version? Is the Live Office application version the same as the BI Platform version?

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform version must be the same as SAP Live Office version.

Different versions use different backend processing methods. SAP BI Platform 4.x has 2 different workflows when working with Live Office documents:

• version 4.0 and 4.1 up to SP5 P5 uses the dswsbobj web application
• from version 4.1 SP5 P5 and version 4.2 uses the RESTful web service

• What is the proper error message when we facing timeout issue?

The root cause of  various different error message can be timeout. Some examples:

• "The operation has timed out."
• "An error occurred when the report is refreshed. Detail: the operation has timed out"
• "Unknown error (0x8013500)"
• "GetDocumentInformation exception (Error: WRE 99999) The operation has timed out."
• "Failed to upgrade this document (LO 01400) - Invalid pointer"

• What business workflow is being executed by the user when the error message displayed?

"Refresh All" objects workflow requires more time and effort for each the client application (preparing and displaying prompts) and also for the server application (to execute all the reports) than refresh a single Live Office object; of course requires a different troubleshooting steps.

Also important to understand the technical process of the Live Office application, since different settings are related to different tiers and requires different places to perform these settings.

Understanding the technical process

Let's review the technical process. I would go for the following example: when refreshing a single object, which is a part of an existing WEB Intelligence report. The interactive version can be found in the following document: 4.x Platform: Refresh a Web Intelligence part using Live Office

As you see, each tier is affected in the refresh process, and there are different setting for timeout for each tiers.

1. The client tier the Live Office application itself, which is connects to the web server via the http://<servername>:<port>/dswsbobj/services/session url .
2. The Web tier, the web server (tomcat) forwards the request to the Web Application Server and creating an enterprise session after the CMS  successfully validated the given credentials for the connection.
   
   
3. Now the process can continue on 2 different ways, pending on the BI Platform version. If you are using BI Platform 4.1 SP5 P5 or newer, the Web Application Container Server will process the requests of Live Office application via RESTful service, and calls the WEB Intelligence processing server to refresh the report.

As we have 3 different tiers in the technical process, we can modify the timeout properties for each 3 different one. Before we go for the details, please note the golden rule:  Keep it simple!

To modify a timeout without modification of other parameters not always not solves the issue. Example: increasing a Live Office application timeout  more than a enterprise session timeout is not a valid case in production environments, since the session will expire earlier than the Live office application would reach the timeout value, but this technique is candidates for troubleshooting without generating traces about the full workflow.

Timeout settings in Live Office application

The Live Office application installed on client PCs and used as an Addin in the Microsoft Office applications (Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Outlook) , in windows environment, and the timeout value stored in the windows registry, so can be modify via the registry editor. To do this change, you need local administrator rights on the windows machine.

1. Open the registry ( Start -> RUN -> Type regedit) .

2. Locate the following path:

- for a specific user: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SAP BusinessObjects\Suite XI 4.0\Live Office\ENTERPRISE

- for all users on the same machine: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\SAP BusinessObjects\Suite XI4.0\Live Office\ENTERPRISE

3. Create (if not already exist) a new DWORD key named DefaultTimeOut

4. Set the default timeout (Decimal) value to 3600. The value is in seconds, which is 60 minutes so basically it is the same as enterprise session timeout of the WACS server.

After restarting the MS Office application (Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Outlook) the new timeout value will be used from the client side. If you have more than one Live Office client application installed on your environment, you must do this change on all the effected machines.

Timeout settings for WEB services