Solution: Set a manual calculated maximum

{ =IF(MAX(AE15:AE26)<100,100,MAX(AE15:AE26)) } and then set the division number to 1.  With the division number to 1, it often also looks better to remove the grid lines (in case the data for the charts sometimes is much higher).

  Problem B:  I want to display a line chart on top of a stacked bar chart because there is no combination chart with this option.  My data for the stacked bar chart, however, is sometimes over 100 and sometimes under 100 and the extra space shifts the chart so that the two do not align.  How can I make the layered charts always align? 

 (Layered line chart does not line up with stacked bar chart when maximum is less than 100)

 (Layered line chart lines up with stacked bar chart when the maximum is over 100)

Note: If the charts are less than a magnitude different, the following method is a not-so-elegant-but-perhaps-acceptable workaround.  In the example above, I have emphasized the issue of alignment by making the different much greater in which case a more-involved display control of multiple charts may be the only acceptable option. 

Solution: Set a manual calculated maximum within an if() statement so that the maximum is always 100 or greater even if the stacked bar chart total is less than 100. (See above note for exception) 

This “fix” may not be acceptable for the right visual consumption. What may need to be done when the data is more than a magnitude of 10 different is to work with display properties for two charts with different widths based upon the maximum chart height formula instead.

Some products have not only become defined by their name but have been so successful they end up defining all products of the same type like “Kleenex” and “Band-Aid” .  Others have found out that their product name can end up portraying the wrong image like Chevrolet’s Nova car – “No va” meaning “it doesn’t go” in Spanish! The French company Bull Computers also had a hard time with its “Bull” named products in North America.  However, Bull also launched a clever marketing campaign around the ambiguity of its name entitled “Know Bull” which did get some attention.

At this year’s Sapphire, Sir Richard Branson told this great story of how when he went to register the name “Virgin” for his company in the UK, the company registration official turned it down because they deemed the name as rude. So Branson returned the next day with a dictionary showing the definition of “virgin” as being pure and they accepted it.

So I have been somewhat intrigued about recent forum discussions surrounding SAP’s decision to rename Xcelsius – their amazing and very popular dashboard product.

Xcelsius already had some name recognition when Business Objects acquired Infommersion (the original developers) in November 2005 but then proceeded to rename it Crystal Xcelsius. This resulted in a lot of confusion as people started to relate the product to Crystal Reports and thought it was an add-on to this report writer product.  So when the next major release was developed, the decision was made to drop the Crystal name and so Xcelsius 2008 came to market.

For the last two years Xcelsius has become one of the most popular and prolifically used BI dashboard products in the marketplace and its name has become synonymous with data visualization and dynamic dashboards. 

So why would you take this very well known product with such a cool and catchy name as Xcelsius and rename it SAP Crystal Dashboard Design or SAP Enterprise Dashboard Design?

Well apparently this is because SAP uses a “master brand strategy” where SAP is the master brand and the product brand name takes a back seat. 

So why not SAP Xcelsius?

Well this is because SAP also uses “descriptive naming” for all its products so in the case of Xcelsius, the back seat has been completely removed!

Since “SAP Crystal Dashboard Design” is so long, it is bound to become abbreviated. However, I doubt this will be shortened to “SCDD” since a Google search points you to the “California State Council on Development Disabilities” .  It is more likely to become “Dashboard Design” since that is the new descriptive product name.  A Google search on “Dashboard Design” comes up with about 2.5 million results starting off with Qlikview, followed by Tableau Software then Corda and SAP Crystal Dashboard Design comes in at about number 14.  Interestingly, there is little ambiguity when you search on “Xcelsius”.

Translating Dashboard Design into other languages may also prove interesting.  Xcelsius will always translate into Xcelsius in all languages and I have a feeling the name will persist. At the end of the day, it is not just the name that counts, it’s the product itself. Xcelsius is as unique as a product as it is as a name. I will never forget that day in 2005 when I first saw it and was totally blown away. Infommersion created something truly amazing and ahead of its time. It remains top of its class and, for me, Xcelsius will always be Xcelsius.

IBIS 2010 Winners

SPX wins Most Valuable Dashboard

This year’s winner of the Most Valuable Dashboard was SPX Service Solutions who developed a series of complex dashboards to provide on-line interactive views of Global Strategic Customers and Line of Business P&L’s for company executives and financial managers. The data was retrieved from an SAP BW (Business Warehouse) and delivered comparisons and analysis never previously available.  The number of possible comparisons and drill-downs is huge and created some real challenges for the BI/BW team at SPX in terms of the amount of data to be retrieved. However, SPX overcame the data quantity and performance hurdles by using InfoBurst XDS with its Intelligent Caching.

The Most Innovative Dashboard Award is for the dashboard that is designed and developed in an innovative way or for an innovative solution.  United Educators, who provide insurance to educational institutions, needed a solution to enable their clients to Self-Serve and Leverage Policy Data to make informed decisions.  The United Educators dashboard application was certainly an innovative solution with its peer selection function that retained anonymity of the institutions being compared. Also, the design using selection /de-selection of multiple peer groups and write-back to prevent users “gaining” the system was unique and creative.

Best Business Dashboard won by Aluchemie

The Best Business Dashboard was awarded to Aluchemie, a manufacturer of anodes needed for the electrolysis process by which aluminum is extracted from ore, based in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. They were looking for a way to get Team Leaders, Production Managers and Executives excited about the roll out of their Manufacturing Execution System software, used to manage and monitor work-in-process on the factory floor. Xcelsius was the answer and they created a comprehensive set of options in a multi-tab dashboard with more than 120 different dynamic graphs showing trend analysis along with shift-by-shift and day-by-day comparisons of key production line metrics. The dashboard revolutionized their manufacturing reporting and brought to light critical production issues that could be seen clearly for the first time.  As one Team Leader put it, he felt like they were finally, “coming out of the Stone Age”.

ARI receives Most Xcellent Dashboard Award - IBIS 2010

Last but not least, the Most Xcellent Xcelsius Dashboard was won by ARI, an international fleet Vehicle Leasing and Management Company.   ARI already had the ability to compare and analyze key life cycle metrics of any vehicles through their existing customer portal but they wanted to make it more visually dynamic and add even more useful functionality. They used Xcelsius to create a visually intuitive interface with picture icons, dynamic sliders and a lot of pizzazz.

ARI’s Dashboard Prototype was shown at a key trade show and received rave reviews.

Representatives of the winning companies received their prestigious glass pyramid awards and also participated in a customer panel to explain how their dashboards were conceived and how their respective businesses are benefitting from them.  In addition, three of the winners also presented insightful case studies on their dashboards.

Answer: Flash Variable connection is used to pass a variable from one dashboard or interface to the second dashboard.    

Let us consider two dashboards here:
a) Parent dashboard  – from which you will be passing a variable to the Child dashboard
b) Child dashboard – this will consume the variable passed from the Parent dashboard
“State name” is the variable that is passed from the Parent to the Child dashboard.    

“California” is passed as a variable from the Parent dashboard to the Child, and the Child dashboard now shows data for California.    

The data for Child dashboard is fed through Live Office and the WebI report that is feeding the dashboard has a prompt on State.    

Parent dashboard     

Fig. 1

After selecting State, click on the button on the right, in the Parent dashboard, which will open the Child dashboard as shown below:    

 Child dashboard    

There are 2 aspects to this:    

1. Creating a Live Office connection – where the data is coming from a prompted WebI report; the WebI report in this demo has prompts for State as seen below.
2. Setting up the Live Office piece.

Fig. 4: Live Office connection in the Excel sheet

Cell E3 is where you have prompts being provided for the WebI report, so if you change the states in this cell then the data (E16:H26) will change and will reflect the changes for the corresponding state that is in cell E3.    

The purpose of this Flash variable is so that we can pass the value of state from the Parent dashboard, or any web interface, to another dashboard.  

a snapshot of the Parent dashboard   

Fig. 5

On the left side, you have a selector which is dropping state value in the blank cell; below is a snapshot from Excel:    

Fig. 6 (The link “completevm” refers to your server name)

Cell E3 is where the labels are being dropped, note that I have a URL button in Xcelsius, and I am pointing the URL to Cell E20. Cell E20 is the concatenation of E19 & E3.    

In this URL “completevm” is the name of your server and Child is the name of your main dashboard. In the Child dashboard, we will create a Flash Variable. Go to Data Connections.    

Fig. 7

Add a connection Flash Variable:    

Fig. 8

Provide a suitable name for the range. Notice that the Range is pointing to cell E3, which means that the name of the state will come from the Parent dashboard through the Flash Variable to this cell, this is also the cell which is acting as the prompt for the WebI report for Live Office (refer to Fig. 4).    

For the Live Office connection, in the usage tab, I have made the trigger based on a change of cell E3, since Live Office should refresh based on the change in this cell.    

Export this child dashboard in html format to the inetpub folder. Publish the dashboard in this path: C:\Inetpub\wwwroot.    

Put the crossdomain.xml file in this folder.    

In this folder, you should now see 2 files – Child.html and Child.swf. Right click on the Child.html file and change its extension from html to aspx. Your file will now be Child.aspx. Right click on it to edit this file, here is how the file looks before editing:    

Fig. 9

Notice that “Enter value(s) for state: = California appears in 2 places. In this case, California is the default value. This is our Flash Variable, and to make it dynamic, replace California with <%=Request.QueryString%>. Save the file after making the changes.    

Fig. 10

To see how the data is changing, drag a spreadsheet component onto the Xcelsius canvas, so you can see the changes. Whenever the State changes in the Parent dashboard, you can see the corresponding changes in the Child dashboard as well.

Answer: There are a few application variables that BusinessObjects provides for use when a user logs into InfoView, one of which is BOUSER.  BOUser is the variable for the userId that is logged in and can be used when Xcelsius is aware of the user session.  The user session is passed to Xcelsius via a flash variable that has been made available in XI for this purpose.  It is called, CELogonToken.

BOUSER contains the value of the userId of the user logged in.  It can be used to provide user-specific row-level security through the universe design by adding a self join to a field containing the userIds in your data.  With XI3.1 Designer, this can be applied at the class level (across all objects in a class), or through the traditional method of being applied just when objects from that specific table are used in the query.

Here is an example of how this variable is applied:
Note that the self join is applied against the Manager field.

The Manager field for eFashion contains usernames like “Queen” and “Tuttle”.  For this example, we have added these as users into our CMC.

In QAAWS, I have created a web service to return Manager and their corresponding Store.  This query automatically prompts for the BOUSER since the SQL contains the @Variable(‘BOUSER’) restriction.

In Xcelsius, I have referenced this QAAWS with the appropriate connection defined and entering Name of Manager and Store name results into cells that are viewable through a spreadsheet component.

IMPORTANT: QAAWS will return a promptValue invalid error message if a valid value is not declared as a default for bouser.  Make sure you point bouser to a cell in the Excel spreadsheet of your Xcelsius design and input a valid userId as a default.

In order for Xcelsius to know the BOUSER userId of the user logged into BO, Xcelsius needs to be aware of the session.  If you enter a login and password to the QAAWS connection, that username will be used all the time.  Instead, these entries should be left blank.

If they are left blank, then the users will be prompted to log into QAAWS when they attempt to refresh the QAAWS query from the dashboard. 

For both performance and ease of use, it is usually desired that the users continue using their existing session for a single-sign on method.  To do this, a flash variable connection should be added which includes the range name CELogonToken.  This hands the existing session token over to Xcelsius seamlessly.

The BOUSER or userId is not viewable in the token value as displayed.  The token, however, makes this application variable available for use as the Login value passed to the QAAWS connector upon refresh.

In the end, my excel spreadsheet design looks like this:

I export the Xcelsius dashboard to the SAP BusinessObjects Platform (note that an Enterprise license is required for this functionality).

Then, I log into InfoView as Tuttle and view the dashboard. When I click the refresh button, the Manager Tuttle and his/her store gets returned.

Incidentally, the default value of Queen is never used.  The default is only to allow the bouser variable to load with the QAAWS definition, but only the actual user logged in ever gets passed to the query.

The one technology in recent years that has managed to captivate the business users in organizations across the globe is undoubtedly – Dashboards.  Dashboards speak to them in a language which they are familiar with, the language of graphs, charts and metrics.  The BI Dashboard serves as an abstraction layer that shields the business users from the intricate and unwelcoming world of the ‘Data Churners’.  It is this instrument therefore, that should be leveraged to enlighten the management of financial losses that are incurred due to a seemingly trivial typo error or a misplaced digit in the sales figures.  Although this may not be the panacea one is looking for, creating a real-time dashboard which attaches a price tag to every data quality issue and extrapolates the figures to demonstrate their long term impact, may just act like a sip of coffee that will stimulate their business senses.

 Here’s an example of a Data Quality Dashboard

 This dashboard was the outcome of the convergence of three technologies: BO Data Quality,  InfoBurst 2009,  and Xcelsius.  Bundling a DQ dashboard with DQ Services benefits in the following ways: 

• Getting the initial buy in from the senior management
• Understanding the DQ issues that are creating havoc
• Tracking the performance of the DQ initiative itself
• Displaying the relevant financial metrics to answer the ROI question

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Photo Credit: Sieve photo in this post from Wikimedia

I checked in at the Kong Arthur Hotel (Kong being King in Danish) and made it to my room where this huge modern painting hung above my bed. I have included a picture since it will have different interpretations to each viewer.  At that time it was saying to me “No matter how tied up in knots you are, come to bed”. In the morning, I noticed there was both the outline of a man and a woman in the picture and I had a totally different interpretation.

Although I did not see a lot of Denmark in one day, I did get to meet quite a few Danish people in my meetings and learned that Denmark is the home of Lego, Lager beer, ham and Vikings. I also noticed that the average Dane is significantly taller than the average European – must be that special beer and ham! 

I was visiting one of the largest companies in Denmark where a couple of the divisions use BusinessObjects for their Business Intelligence. They were interested in finding a better way to schedule, publish and distribute their reports so I showed them a demonstration of the new InfoBurst 2009 along with presenting a few customer case studies. They were particularly excited about the ability of InfoBurst to apply Excel macro post processing. It seems they, like many other companies, have large numbers of Excel users that want all their Business Intelligence reports delivered in Excel format but publishing reports directly from BusinessObjects to Excel does not provide all the features in the Excel output that they want delivered to the user. For example, one customer wanted to make use of data grouping and outlining within Excel for one-click collapse and expansion of individual data groupings in the report. In addition, they wanted each and every data group and outline to be automatically collapsed in the initial delivery of the report – keeping the report compact and easier to view. This simply cannot be done publishing from BusinessObjects to Excel but with InfoBurst 2009, you can execute a VBA macro following report production and produce a revised version of the report for publishing.

This caused great excitement amongst my Danish audience and there were smiles and vigorous hand shaking at the end of the meeting.  I think they really appreciated the logical building block of adding the Excel post-processing – just like Lego!

This leads to some interesting situations as I discovered when meeting with perspective partners there. The first partner was primarily based in the French region and most of their clients were also based in the French region whereas the second partner was from the German region as were most of their clients. Even more fascinating was that the French Swiss prefer not to speak German to the German Swiss and vice versa even though they learned the respective languages growing up. Ironically they often end up speaking to each other in English which is not a native language to either of them!

When I enquired about the Italian region of Switzerland, I was referred to another partner that is Swiss Italian based!

In the world of Business Intelligence, we find a similar situation with the different vendors’ product suites. BusinessObjects, Cognos, Oracle and Microsoft BI all have their native tools that communicate very differently and there is no easy way to dialog between them.

In many customer situations that is changing as the demand and desire to use multiple vendor tools has become a necessity for many businesses.  The common dialog in this case is the portal or the main application where the user first logs in.  The most common portals I encounter are either the homegrown kind or Microsoft’s SharePoint. Through this portal, it is possible to seamlessly connect with different applications and different vendors Business Intelligence tools. Reports, dashboards and ad-hoc queries can all be accessed and viewed as if they were coming from the same application. Utilizing single sign-on also makes it possible to transparently pass authentication credentials to the various applications and tools without the user having to tediously log on to multiple systems and applications.

I end up discussing with my perspective Swiss partners how many corporations in North America are using mixed Business Intelligence tools through portals like SharePoint and how key solutions like Web Intelligence, Xcelsius and InfoBurst integrate easily.

As I head to Geneva airport, I spot a chocolate store and have to go in to browse and inhale the smell of heaven (I have a weak spot for chocolate). As I float through the store in my element, I cannot help wondering that while the Swiss may speak different languages, they have their chocolate as their portal to universal communication!

After spending 20 minutes putting on all the protective equipment and some bright purple pants that my son insisted were an essential part of any serious snowboarder’s attire, we headed for the slopes where he showed me how to strap my boots to the snowboard.  The next part was significantly more challenging, namely how to stand up when attached to your board. After scores of failed attempts that amused the groups of youngsters watching to no end, my son finally showed me that if I rolled on my belly and then pushed myself up while facing up the mountain, I could actually stand up without immediately falling over again! Of course, this made me look like a beached whale, but it did work!

My first run down the slope was not very graceful and ended with a spectacular head first crash into the snow.  On my second run I collided with my son who bravely tried to slow me down and paid the price as I simultaneously wiped us both out.

The third and forth runs were not actually bad as I completed a couple of 50 yard runs at some speed. Amazingly, I survived my first ever 90 minutes of snowboarding with no broken bones or serious bruises but I was so exhausted from all the falls and attempts to stand up, that I could barely move a muscle.

As we sat and ate lunch, my son explained that I did better on a snowboard than I did on skis because my feet were locked in a position on the board and I could not move them like I can with skis.

Sometimes when there are less options or steps involved, we tend to master them quicker.  The same is true in Business Intelligence. If you give a user a Universe or View with access to hundreds of objects in different databases and a tool like Web Intelligence for self-service query and analysis, they will usually struggle to create any type of useful report, get themselves tied up in knots and become frustrated to the point of blaming the tool and not wanting to use it again.

If, on the other hand, you create a small specialized universe or view for a user with just a few relevant objects and a pre-made report that with which they can start, they have less options and directions to choose and they can master the tool a lot easier. They can still add, delete, modify, sort, filter and save in different formats but they are working from an already created report and do not have an overwhelming number of choices to select.

While many Business Intelligence tools have become more powerful, feature-rich and versatile, most users just want information delivered in a simple, easy-to-understand way and do not want to spend time learning products and becoming experts in tools that they may not use that often.

InfoSol has developed many self-service business intelligence solutions using Web Intelligence, Xcelsius Dashboards and InfoBurst and applying best practices to allow users to get immediate benefit from them without weeks of training and usage.

Now, not everyone wants to be a casual user and those individuals should take more advanced training.  But, for the novice snowboarders like me, just standing, staying up and gliding for 50 yards is great!

Then it dawned on me that I was supposed to wave the room key card at the door. This, of course, worked and a green light lit up and I was able to open the door. The room was pitch black inside and so I fumbled around for a light switch but to no avail.  However I did see a red glow on the wall on the right which was a square plate about the size of a regular light switch. I tried waving my room key at it but nothing happened. I felt around the plate and discovered it had a slot on top. I put my room key in the slot (I know, a stroke of genius especially after waving at the door with my hand!) and all the lights came on.

Anyway, I had to laugh to myself as I left the hotel to take the train to Lyon at my first encounter with a wave room key. When I arrived at the train station, I had to validate my ticket by placing it in a machine which recorded and stamped it – no human ticket collectors.

I left the train in Lyon and headed straight for my appointment with a partner where I was treated to a demonstration (over lunch of course) of the newest version of 360View Plus. This is the neat security management tool for BusinessObjects XI that allows you to view and manage user and object security access. The tool has this really cool security matrix grid that allows you to modify access rights with a single click on the relevant cell. It can also produce these fantastic reports in Excel that show different security access for users and objects that are really useful for auditing purposes. Anyway, the product has new drag and drop features making it even easier to manage security settings as well as the ability to automatically schedule the security audit reports.

Although in most BusinessObjects environments a small number of people tend to manage security, it is still important to make the task easy and intuitive. 360View Plus allows that and, in addition, makes it just as easy for Help Desk staff to have the ability to reset access so that key BusinessObjects administrators do not have to be involved with these tasks. Best of all 360View Plus provides the capability to manage multiple BO instances (CMS’s) from a single interface enabling remote security management of different sites as well as comparing security rights between environments.

As I returned to the station to take a train to Grenoble, I needed to buy a ticket. I just walked up to a machine with a touch screen and selected my preferences and paid by credit card on the spot. Since the train I was taking left in 10 minutes, the machine pre-validated my ticket prior to issuing it and once again, I boarded without any human intervention.

The need for automated simple user interfaces combined with solid security is a clear differentiator in today’s fast moving world. France certainly appears to be one of the innovators here.

Of course, it may take a little time for us non-French to catch on but you will not see me waving at a door in a hotel ever again!