Smartview can be a bit of a pain when it doesn’t work. The error messages tend to be both very vague and user-hostile with phrases like “Logon Error!” and “jbips.common.jbipsexception”.

My first port of call is usually to check the server side log, located at <>/servers/bi_serverN/logs/jbips.log. Often this will contain some further information for example if the user has provided an invalid username/password or is using an incompatible version of SmartView.

This doesn’t always help though, as the error might not get as far as the server. In that case the client log is useful, though when I just looked for mine and couldn’t find it, until I realised that logging was disabled on my client (therefore that’s likely the default).

To find the SmartView client logging settings, look under the Smart View pane in the Office ribon, and select Options. Then the logging settings are under Advanced. Check the box to route messages to file, and set the log level to something appropriate (Errors or Warnings sound like a good place to start, increasing from there if necessary).