The Problem

You have created and exported a universe in BO XI R2.  Everything is working great.  However you (or someone else) accidentally delete the universe from the CMC (mea culpa - I did this recently, hence this posting).  You think to yourself "this isn't good, but at least I have a copy on my local computer that I can just open and re-export."  This seems a lot more straightforward than doing a restore to the CMS database and the filesystem, since users are continuing to create and save queries and reports in the interim.

The problem is when you go to open your universe on your computer you receive an error that "You are not authorized to use this document."  This is a rather interesting "feature" of Business Objects.  Because the universe hasn't been saved "for all users" with a shared connection it is tied to the CMS that it was exported to.  Since it no longer exists on the CMS it won't even let you open a local copy.

The Solution

Thankfully, there is a way around this problem, although it feels a little bit like a hack.  It has been documented on the BOB user forum but I wanted to add a couple of additional steps here in the interest of clarity.  So, let's begin restoring our universe.....

1.  First, find the universe on your computer (often located at %drive%\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Business Objects\Business Objects 11.5\Universes) and make a backup of it somewhere on your system.

2.  Log in to the CMC and go to the Universes section.  Make sure that any references in all your universe folders to the old universe are removed.

3. Next, create a new blank universe.  There are three things you need to make sure you do here: 

• Make sure the universe name in the parameters is the same as the one you just deleted
• Make sure you use the same Connection in the parameters as the deleted universe
• When you save the universe, make sure the filename is the same as the one you deleted 

4.  Export the universe to the same universe folder that your original universe was in

5.  Go back to the CMC and find the universe in the Universes section.  View the properties for that universe and you will see something like "File Name: frs://Input/a_067/227/000/58179/youruniverse.unw"

6.  Copy your original file to the same directory on the Business Objects server where your Input Server is storing files and overwrite the universe there.  Make sure to modify your filename slightly to match what is there.  For example my universe has a mixed case filename while it was all lowercase in the filesystem.

7.  Import the universe in Designer and re-export it

Voila - your universe has been restored.  The last step may not be absolutely necessary but it forced the changes to appear in WebI right away without having to restart any services.  I haven't tested this in XI 3.1 yet to see if this bizarre process still needs to happen there.  I'm hoping that the versioning tool that is an add on will help.  In the meantime a good practice is to keep a local backup of your universes with a shared connection saved for "all users".