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Xcelsius Archive

Becoming an “Iron Chef” Dashboard Creator

By
Paul
Published: January 22, 2013Posted in: Blog Featured, Business Intelligence, IBIS, XcelsiusTags: , , ,
Becoming an “Iron Chef” Dashboard Creator

When I was 19 years-old, I decided I wanted to learn car mechanics. I could have gone to a training college but I wanted to “learn by doing” and from a real professional so I walked into a car service company that specialized in Rolls Royce’s and Bentley’s. I figured these were some of the most advanced and exclusive vehicles around so I would learn a lot.

The owner took one look at me and said he was not hiring anyone. I told him I would work for free because I just wanted to learn and I did not mind doing all the grunt work. He was impressed by my offer and told me he would take me on a trial basis and to start the next day.

I was teamed up with their top mechanic who had been there for 6 years but told me that he also knew nothing when he started. For the first three days, he showed me everything involved in the mechanical service of a Rolls Royce. He explained what he was doing as he was doing it. Then it was my turn. I made plenty of mistakes but that helped me to learn

Within a week I was doing oil change and check-up services on my own, within 2 weeks I was replacing brakes and after a month I was doing major services and clutch replacements.

It was hard work but watching my mentor in action, not only did I learn how to service and repair these magnificent vehicles but I learned all the pitfalls to watch out for, all the shortcuts and the best practices.

I passed my trial period with flying colors but I had to leave after two months to go to university. The contrast could not have been starker as I moved to a world of attending lectures, learning from books and participating in philosophical discussions. I can honestly say that I learned more in my two months as a car mechanic apprentice than I did in my entire first year of university.

While some people can learn through the more traditional academic methods, I have always found it to be more effective using the learning by doing approach.

When we look at designing and developing Xcelsius Dashboards, it is easy to learn the basics from a traditional course but if you want to design and develop true Business Intelligence dashboard applications, you will learn a lot more effectively by working alongside an expert.

Dragging and dropping components onto a canvass, defining their properties, connecting the components to data sources can look simple but when you want to add dynamic visibility, include over a hundred metrics, access millions of rows of data, include complex “What If” scenarios and write back to the database while creating the most awesome looking visual interface, it becomes more challenging.

However, experienced dashboard designers and developers who have learned by repeatedly doing can help both new people and those who have learned through traditional training to take their skills to a whole new level in a very short period of time.

It is for this reason that a combination of Xcelsius dashboard boot camps and hands-on knowledge transfer has proven to be the best and fastest path to becoming a top notch dashboard creator.

Boot camps are hands-on immersion training delivered by an experienced Xcelsius Dashboard expert and quite different to regular training – see blog http://limitlessbi.com/why-are-ibis-boot-camps-different-to-regular-training

InfoSol has been offering both beginner and master Xcelsius Dashboard boot camps for several years and as the experience of the InfoSol dashboard experts has evolved so have the boot camps. After the boot camp, the best way to fully absorb everything you learned is to work on a dashboard project side-by-side with an Xcelsius Dashboard expert who will both mentor you and help to create a first class dashboard application that you can use as a template for others going forward.

iron-chef---cooking-up-dashboardsThis year a brand new boot camp has been developed that focuses more on developers who have been creating Xcelsius dashboards for a while. The boot camp is entitled, Dashboard Design Iron Chef Bootcamp – Using SAP Dashboards 4.X. As the name suggests, it was conceived and created around the idea of how to help dashboard developers become “Iron Chefs” of their craft by designing dashboards that both stand out and attract user adoption.

Dashboards remain the most popular and effective way to deliver Business Intelligence solutions and will remain so for a while to come. Dashboard “Iron Chefs” creators are in demand and there is no better time than to seize the opportunity and become one.

Xcelsius : The Lego of Business Intelligence Dashboards

By
Paul
Published: October 15, 2012Posted in: Business Intelligence, Highlights, Paul Blogs on BI, XcelsiusTags:
Xcelsius : The Lego of Business Intelligence Dashboards

I was just visiting a healthcare organization in Michigan and talking to a person in their HR department who recently attended an InfoSol Xcelsius immersion boot camp. He was so excited about what he had learned but even more elated about Xcelsius itself. He said, “It’s so logical and yet so limitless in possibilities, It’s like Lego , you can take the pieces and easily put them together anyway you want”.

I love this analogy!

Yes, Xcelsius is so like Legos. You can create amazing and dazzling business intelligence dashboards just by putting the parts together almost any way you want and, just like Legos, it has moving parts too!

All my kids grew up with Legos and always floored me with the incredible things they built – not only were they inventive but also functional and beautiful. It was remarkable how quickly they built their creations and then just as quickly transformed them into something else.

Well, Xcelsius is just like that. Every day, I see fantastic dashboards created by people everywhere, put together in just hours and then, just by changing a component, a background or an animation, turned into something equally sensational.

Xcelsius has been the premier BI dashboard solution for the last 10 years and it’s hard to see anything else out there that even comes close in terms of pure simplicity, versatility and capability. I look at the so called newer generation of BI dashboard tools like Tableau, Qlikview, Exploration Views or Visual Intelligence but none of these are anything like Legos! Not only are they not simple, they are restrictive and they are certainly not fun to use like Xcelsius.

You just never get tired of Legos because you are only limited by your imagination which for most people is limitless. You only have to visit one of the Legoland’s around the world and spend some time looking at the amazing creations as well as sitting in one of the many areas where you build your own masterpieces. Xcelsius is just the same. In fact, I think we should create an “Xcelsiusland” – a theme park full of amazing Xcelsius dashboards and virtual reality dashboard rides!

So what about the future of Xcelsius?

Well it has never looked better. Advanced caching capabilities like InfoBurst XDC and usage of universes against in-memory databases provide amazing performance against large sets of data. A new version of Xcelsius due for release this quarter allows most components to be generated in HTML5 for deployment on mobile devices. The Xcelsius component ecosystem continues to thrive with cool new components appearing everywhere like the new Dash Printer from DataSavvy that allows you to easily capture, manage and print Xcelsius dashboard content.

Lego just celebrated its 80th anniversary this year and continues to be as popular as ever and Xcelsius is hot on its heels!

 

Venn Diagrams in Xcelsius – Follow Up – Pros and Cons

By
Adam
Published: October 10, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Tech Tips, XcelsiusTags: , ,
Venn Diagrams in Xcelsius – Follow Up – Pros and Cons

In my last post, I demonstrated two methods of constructing a Venn diagram in Xcelsius. The first method used a manipulation of the Bubble Chart object and the second method used the free Google Charts API. In this post, I will discuss the pros and cons of both methods.

Let’s begin with the Bubble Chart method. Recall that the Bubble Chart is identical to the XY Chart, except it allows for a third variable to define the size of each point. When I first began investigating Venn diagrams in Xcelsius, the Bubble Chart seemed like a natural starting point since it already does half the work for you. That is, it automatically resizes the “bubbles” to reflect the proportional difference between the two groups. The only thing I had to do was build Excel formulas to shift the bubbles together in order to show the correct amount of overlap. Unfortunately, that second part is very complex and makes for a big disadvantage compared to the Google Charts API.

It turns out the Bubble Chart object is not exactly consistent or easy to predict. Its movement and behavior varies depending on the overall size of the object and the size of the individual bubbles. Therefore, it takes some work to force the chart to display the correct overlap. What I did was arrange a series of experiments where I changed the parameters of the Venn diagram and then measured how much shift I had to apply in order to achieve the right overlap. I then took that data and used it to build a regression model. Then I plugged the model equation into my Excel spreadsheet and used it to calculate the amount of horizontal shift I needed in order to see the correct “bubble” overlap. Sure, it works, but it’s a lot more effort compared to calling up a simple Google Chart URL. Also, this only produces a Venn diagram with 2 sets, while Google Charts can easily produce a 3-set Venn diagram.

However, the Bubble Chart approach does have some advantages over Google Charts. Perhaps the most significant advantage is that Bubble Charts do not require an internet connection and can be used in a fully offline mode. When using Google Charts, your user must be connected to the internet and have the ability to access http://chart.apis.google.com

There’s also a potential security advantage to using Bubble Charts. If your organization has strict security protocols, it may not be permissible for you to pass information to an external party (i.e. Google). However, you might be able to get around that by opting not to pass data labels through the Google Charts URL and instead handling the labels from within Xcelsius. This means that you would only be passing simple aggregate numbers to Google without a corresponding label to indicate what that data is or where it came from.

In my opinion, you’ll always want to lean towards using the Google Charts API. It’s more flexible, easier to use, and it has more features than you could produce using a hacked Bubble Chart. However, if you need your dashboard to run offline or you have a security rule which prevents the transmission of any data whatsoever to a 3rd party, then you’ll need to use a Bubble Chart.

Venn Diagrams in Xcelsius

By
Adam
Published: September 15, 2011Posted in: Tech Tips, XcelsiusTags: , ,
Venn Diagrams in Xcelsius

Venn diagrams provide an elegant and powerful visual display of information. In essence, a Venn diagram compares the size of two or more groups while simultaneously presenting the level of overlap that exists among the groups. Just for the sake of review, let’s look at a simple business example. The chart below compares the number of customers who purchased Product A (orange) against the number of customers who purchased Product B (green). The overlapping section in the middle represents the number of customers who purchased both Product A and Product B.

It’s hard to imagine producing a better display of that information using any other charting method. In other words, if you’re creating a visualization to compare overlapping groups, the Venn diagram option is probably at the top of your list. What makes a Venn diagram so powerful is its simplicity. It’s very easy for both technical and non-technical groups to view the chart and interpret the information. Yet, in spite of all this, Venn diagrams are almost always absent in reporting tools. Certainly this is true for the three major Business Objects reporting tools – Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, and Xcelsius – which have never offered an out-of-the-box Venn diagram charting feature.

I recently became interested in building Venn diagrams using Xcelsius. I knew there would be significant value in providing this type of visualization to report users, especially executive level users. I also felt it would create a new analytical perspective since Venn diagrams show the type of metrics that are not often presented well in business reports. I thought there had to be some trick or workaround I could use to get the job done, so I began tinkering.

The first thing I learned along the way is that Venn diagrams are not as easy to build as you might think. They look simple on the surface, but there’s actually some fairly complex geometry going on behind the scenes. (Do a Google search for “circle-circle intersections” to see what I’m talking about.)

After some testing, I developed an initial solution using the Bubble Chart component in Xcelsius 2008. The Bubble Chart is identical to the XY Chart, except there’s a third variable that defines the size of each point. Look again at my simple example above. You’ll see that the chart basically did two things. First, it sized the circles to reflect the proportional difference between the two groups and then it moved the circles together to reflect the overlap. Well, the Bubble Chart already does that first part by itself. So my solution used the existing Bubble Chart functionality to automatically determine the correct dimensions for each circle. Then, I set up Excel formulas to dynamically calculate the X value (horizontal position) for each circle so that the correct amount of overlap was displayed.

Overall, I was happy with this solution, but there were some drawbacks.   It was a bit clunky due to the math required to control the movement of the  Bubble Chart and to calculate the overlap. Also, as you can see from the  screenshot above, Xcelsius has a limit on how big it allows the individual “bubbles” to grow in a Bubble Chart. So the end result is a very small SWF file that you would need to import into another document (e.g. another Xcelsius dashboard or a PowerPoint presentation) and then re-size from there.

Shortly after that initial experiment, I set about improving the process.  That’s when I stumbled across the Google Chart API. The Google Chart API is a simple, easy-to-use web-based chart creation tool provided free by Google. The API allows you to pass a few parameters via an HTTP request which prompts Google to return a PNG image containing your requested chart. Several chart types are supported, including Venn diagrams.   Check out the Google Chart Wizard for more information on the supported charts and formatting options.

Remember the simple Venn diagram example I showed at the beginning? That was actually created using the Google Chart API! The URL string below shows the HTTP request that was used to produce the chart. To see how it works, copy and paste the URL into your browser. You should get the same chart that was shown above. Just for practice, try to adjust the parameters defined in the URL string, refresh the page, and watch how the chart changes.

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=600×400&cht=v&chds=0,5000&chd=t:66,100,-1,33,-1,-1,-1&chdl=Customers+who+purchased+Product+A|Customers+who+purchased+Product+B&chdlp=b

Here is a breakdown of the parameter segments shown in the URL string above. All of these parameters are completely adjustable.

  • chs=600×400: Dimensions of the PNG image file.

    •  

  • cht=v: This tells the Google Chart API that you want to create a Venn diagram. Other chart types include Line Charts (cht = lc), Pie Charts (cht = p), and so on.

 

  • chds=0,5000: he minimum and maximum values allowable for charting. Keep the minimum at zero. Depending on your data, you may need to increase the Maximum value.

 

  • chd=t:66,100,-1,33,-1,-1,-1: These numbers specify the size and overlaps for all groups. The ordering is as follows: Group 1 size, Group 2 size, Group 3 size, Group 1 & 2 overlap amount, Group 1 & 3 overlap amount, Group 2 & 3 overlap amount, Group 1 & 2 & 3 overlap amount. In this case, we only had two groups to display, so all of the parameter slots reserved for the third group were set to “-1”. If you have a third group, then those “-1” values would be replaced with actual amounts. The Google Chart API provides for a maximum of 3 groups in Venn diagrams.

 

  • chdl=Customers+who+purchased+Product+A|Customers+who+purchased+Product+B: This defines the group labels that will be displayed in the legend. If you have a third group, you’ll add another pipe delimeter at the end, followed by the desired group label.

 

  • chdlp=b: This tells the Google Chart API to place the legend at the bottom of the chart. “b” is the code for “bottom”. The other codes are “l” for left and “t” for top. If you exclude this parameter from the URL string, the legend will be displayed on the right by default.

In addition to those parameters, there are even more you can use to further customize the look and feel of your Venn diagram. You can adjust the margins, change the colors, add a title, and so on. If you’re interested, the Google Chart API links above describe all the options.

So how can you display Venn diagrams in Xcelsius using the Google Chart API? Actually, it’s very simple. You’ll need your Excel data model populated with numbers showing the size and overlap for all groups you wish to chart.  Then create string concatenation formulas in Excel to build the URL string piece by piece. Finally, add a Slide Show object to the canvas and bind it to the cell containing your URL string. And that’s it. You should now have a fully functional, dynamic Venn diagram in Xcelsius.

The dashboard below is a sample I created to demonstrate this functionality. It allows you to adjust the group sizes, overlaps, and labels.  As you adjust the values, notice that the chart changes dynamically just as you would expect from any other Xcelsius component. Also, the dashboard displays two groups by default; however, you can click the checkbox on the left side to incorporate a third group. Also, keep in mind you cannot use this approach in a completely offline format. Your dashboard user will need a connection to the internet and the ability to call the Google Chart URL.

Here is the working dashboard.  You can change the values and see the chart change.

There are certainly pros and cons to both solutions – the Google Chart API and my original Bubble Chart solution – and I hope to blog about those in the future. However, I think the Google Chart API provides a better overall solution. It’s clean and simple and it provides the functionality to incorporate a third group.

Finally, I encourage you to experiment with Venn diagrams in your own Xcelsius dashboards. Play around with the options to see what works best for you. Feel free to share your experiences and feedback in the comments.

Regional BO Crystal User Groups Alive and Thriving

By
Paul
Published: August 25, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Crystal Reports, Xcelsius, Xcelsius End UserTags: , ,
Regional BO Crystal User Groups Alive and Thriving

In the last two months, I have attended three regional independent BusinessObjects and Crystal User Group Meetings that have simply been amazing both in terms of their content and user participation. One was in Pennsylvania, one in Michigan and one in Arizona. Each one had between 50 to 70 attendees, was hosted at a customer site and was free to attend.
More significantly, each one had real world case studies and live demonstrations of solutions, many presented by customers, that were both educational and useful.
A gentleman from the State of Michigan presented his experiences in using Xcelsius while teaching the do’s and don’ts to novice and new users that was as entertaining as it was informative.
A demonstration of the new Web Intelligence 4.0 brought rounds of applause when showing the new graphics and “print to page” features.
A session on converting Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence documents had attendees captivated and taking copious notes on their iPads.
A manager from a Fortune 50 company presenting and demonstrating a case study of a new distributed dashboard they developed for one of their clients that has both saved them and their client significant time and resources was just sensational.
However, there was one presentation that just completely blew me away and left the audience awestruck. It was about advanced data visualization in BusinessObjects and how to create more visual graphic representations in Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence and Xcelsius. Creating heat maps in Crystal Reports was pretty cool, but creating animated Venn Diagrams in Xcelsius was just phenomenal. If everyone’s jaw had not dropped far enough, the presenter then shared a small personal project he had been working on that left us all speechless.
He kept a betta fish in a tank in his office and he used a web cam along with some software he downloaded from the internet to track the movements of his fish over a 24 hour period. The software allowed him to load all these coordinates into a database. He then accessed this database through Xcelsius to create a playback animation of the movements of the betta fish that could be sped up, slowed down and even add in a 5 second bubble trail to show more precise movement! The audience was stunned and I was so completely lost for words that the only question I could ask was “What was the name of his fish?”. It’s name was “Betta” as simple and as brilliant as the solution itself!
So I have to say that these BusinessObjects Crystal regional user group meetings are just the best thing going on out there right now in the BusinessObjects community. The education, innovative ideas and uniqueness of these gatherings is just unparalleled . I can’t wait till the next one!

Web Intelligence vs. Xcelsius vs. Explorer

By
Paul
Published: July 31, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Paul Blogs on BI, XcelsiusTags: , , ,
Web Intelligence vs. Xcelsius vs. Explorer

I was recently at a BusinessObjects user group meeting in Pennsylvania and a representative from SAP who was presenting asked the audience of about 50 attendees if any of them were using SAP Explorer. Not a single person raised their hand. He then asked how many of them had seen Explorer and about 10 people raised their hands. The presenter appeared surprised but I was not.

Although SAP has been very heavily promoting the Explorer product for the last couple of years, the adoption of this newer search based query tool has been slow. There are many reasons for this but the one that stands out the most is, that as a Business Intelligence tool, it is limited.  While SAP BusinessObjects offers a number of Business Intelligence tools for different functions, the majority of customers prefer to pick just one or two for mass user consumption and they will tend to pick tools that can provide the widest range of functionality.

I recently conducted an ad-hoc survey of about 200 BusinessObjects customers in the U.S. encompassing small, medium and large companies and found that the top BI tools in use were Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, Desktop Intelligence and Xcelsius. When looking at which tools they had most recently added in the last 3 years and were strategic for their future BI initiatives, it was Web Intelligence and Xcelsius.

Web Intelligence is seen as an end-to-end BI reporting and query analysis tool. It has both a web based version and a rich client version to be used off-line. It has good integration with Microsoft through Live Office and use of web parts and overall it has a rich array of functionality for self-service BI.

Xcelsius is probably the best BI data visualization and dashboard tool on the market today. It allows customized development of complete end-to-end BI solutions. It integrates with Microsoft, Adobe, Email, Google, Web as well as a host of other BI solutions. It also has a rich offering of add-on components and functionality to enable write back, alerts and mobile integration.

When we look at SAP Explorer, it is not really in the same category as Web Intelligence and Xcelsius. Explorer is a search web-based query tool for simple end-user ad-hoc analysis with limited reporting and customization ability. It can integrate with other BusinessObjects tools like Web Intelligence and Xcelsius and allows export to Excel but there is no real integration with other applications. It is a great solution for “one off” BI applications but not for end-to-end solutions.

SAP has been previewing the next potential edition of Explorer known as Exploration Views since the beginning of the year and this allows more end-user control and customization of the views.

Both Explorer and Exploration Views demonstrate very nicely and it is easy to get excited when seeing them but then the same could be said for Web Intelligence and Xcelsius.

I am sure we will continue to see more of Explorer but I see the future strength of the SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions remaining with Web Intelligence and Xcelsius for the foreseeable future.

Image Credit: http://www.presentermedia.com

Best Xcelsius Dashboard Award Winners Receive Accolades at IBIS 2011

By
Paul
Published: June 27, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBIS, XcelsiusTags: , ,
Best Xcelsius Dashboard Award Winners Receive Accolades at IBIS 2011

The winners of the highly coveted InfoSol Best Xcelsius Dashboard awards were announced on Monday at IBIS 2011.  After each of the dashboards in the four categories was explained and demonstrated, representatives for the companies received the etched glass pyramid accolade that has become synonymous with the awards.

This year’s “Best Business Dashboard” award went to Rural Metro Corporation for their Daily Business Insight dashboard which was developed to show daily insight into operational, billing and financial data from different systems delivered in a simple and effective way. The interface was designed in a format that made sense to management and provided the ability to coordinate the distribution of matching Web Intelligence reports to their mobile devices. One of the key benefits of the dashboard was that it helped to create a consistent means of communication across the business.

The “Most Innovative Dashboard” award was won by McKesson Specialty Care Solutions for a dashboard they developed to provide a single view of all program enrollment and fill activity for a key client to quickly access the data they need in order to respond to internal data requests, in a timely, efficient and accurate manner. The dashboard made great use of different Xcelsius components including color coded maps, selection tables and a variety of different charts while using tabs and selection buttons to make the navigation both simple and powerful. The dashboard resulted in timely and accurate turnaround to requests that benefitted both McKesson and their client.

The “Most Valuable Dashboard” award was claimed by Banner Health for their automated dashboard used to analyze and monitor patient throughput within designated Emergency Departments within the Banner Health system. The dashboard is able to access a large number of key operational and clinical metrics providing standardization and trust in the data throughout the organization. One of the key benefits was an improvement in overall patient satisfaction by reducing the wait time between a patient’s initial arrival time and examination by a physician.

The fourth award this year was renamed the “Most Inspired Dashboard” award and was won by Sohar Aluminum from Oman for their dashboard to bring about accountability, transparency in daily work and ultimately consistent, accurate data. The dashboard was inspirational in both its design and functionality by making use of write back functionality enabling supervisors to enter their actual and target results through the dashboard itself. In addition, other alert dashboards were created that are automatically scheduled and emailed to supervisors who are late entering their data. The dashboard has been so successful that it has actually brought about a culture change in the way people look at data and processes at the company.

After the awards, many companies present vowed to enter even more amazing dashboards for the 2012 awards and I can’t wait to see them.

Xcelsius on iPad and iPhone Wows Attendees at IBIS Welcome Reception

By
Paul
Published: June 20, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, IBIS, InfoSol, News, Xcelsius, Xcelsius End UserTags:
Xcelsius on iPad and iPhone Wows Attendees at IBIS Welcome Reception

IBIS 2011 kicked off last night with its welcome reception and solutions showcase demonstrating some of the latest business intelligence solutions and one solution in particular created quite a buzz – MyBI Mobile.

As I walked around the showcase showing Xcelsius dashboards running on an iPad, people stopped with looks of disbelief mixed with wonder.

“How are you doing that?”

“Xcelsius doesn’t run on an iPad or an iPhone”

Well, I am happy to report that with MyBI Mobile, not only does Xcelsius run on an iPad and an iPhone, but also on an Android. And it not only runs but it sings too! It has a fabulous simple menu system to serve up different content on the device and that content can also be Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Desktop Intelligence in addition to Xcelsius. With Web Intelligence you can also create new reports from the mobile device – that’s cool! When viewing and interacting with the content, you can perform a “pinch and zoom” action on any part of the screen to automatically enlarge that area of the dashboard or report.

While many companies have invested in building both dazzling and effective Xcelsius dashboard business intelligence solutions, they have often been challenged when trying to find ways to move these to mobile devices. The operating system for the IPhone and IPad (iOS) does not support Flash and SWF outputs natively but with MyBI mobile the barriers have been lifted. You can now take your key Xcelsius dashboards and just serve them up on iPads, iPhones and Androids without changing them and interact with all the features just the same as on the PC.

I cannot express enough how incredible this is and what it means to the millions of Xcelsius users around the world who want to take their dashboards mobile  - you are free of your shackles and you can now deliver Xcelsius to the most popular mobile smart devices out there.

I recently heard there are an estimated 200 million iOS devices in use today and now all those users can enjoy the full functionality of the amazing data visualization of Xcelsius through MyBI Mobile.

If the excitement at IBIS is anything to go by, you will certainly be hearing and seeing a lot more of this solution in the coming months so stay tuned.

To Cache or not to Cache – Boosting performance in Xcelsius Tech Tip

By
Roxanne
Published: May 23, 2011Posted in: InfoBurst, Products, Tech Tips, Xcelsius, Xcelsius End UserTags: , , , , ,
To Cache or not to Cache – Boosting performance in Xcelsius Tech Tip

I was recently asked this question on how best to handle a 13 month dataset when in the dashboard the goal is to only display monthly detail and summary data.  This is a good question and in my opinion worth sharing here because it is dealing with boosting Xcelsius backend performance.

Question:  Working with a data set consisting of 13months of data with one row for each day (so max 380 rows) and needing to show only monthly detail/summary data in the dashboard, which of the following would you consider to be the better approach to yield the best performance?

1.  Pull 380 rows in cache with date in one column -> pass STARTDATE and ENDDATE from the dashboard and pull every month’s data by writing a cache query.   When the user selects a month for display in the dashboard, Excel will calculate the start and end date of the month and pass those to the cache query with a WHERE clause specifying BETWEEN ‘@STARTDATE’ and ‘@ENDDATE’

Or,

2.  Load 380 rows in the dashboard Excel backend -> calculate the month from the date column within Excel then use a hidden filter to filter the month’s row based on the calculated month in the previous step and calculate the sum and average within excel?

Answer:  As a general rule, if the data set is 200 rows or less, I would say to go with Option 2.  If it is more than 200 rows, I would say you will get better performance with the cache query.  Of course, this also depends on the cumulative total # of rows being loaded into the dashboard.  For example, if you are planning on adding 10+ additional 200 row data sets, then I would definitely go with Option #1.

With too much data in the backend, Xcelsius performance suffers.    InfoBurst allows us to cache a large set of data, and then use a Cache Query to extract just the portion we need to view on the dashboard, as the user makes selections.  This is a tremendous help to the developer who wants to boost Xcelsius dashboard performance.

Oh the Places You will go … with Xcelsius

By
Roxanne
Published: April 25, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, InfoBurst, InfoBurst Dash, XcelsiusTags: , , , , , ,
Oh the Places You will go … with Xcelsius

From the cobblestone streets of The Netherlands, to the beaches of Australia, to the exotic sands of Oman, Xcelsius knows no borders, has no hidden political agenda, but offers innovative business solutions for a diverse range of customers around the world.  Little did I know when I started using Xcelsius 5 years ago that I would have the opportunity to travel around the world providing exciting dashboard solutions in such interesting locations. 

My most recent opportunity was spending a month in the exciting country of Oman, which, despite the recent unrest in the Middle East, proved to be a welcoming, progressive and abundantly interesting country.  Apart from the opportunity to explore this part of the world, it also proved to be an exciting work project, as the dashboards I developed for my customer there included several innovative solutions. 

Upon arrival, I found that the customer had 52 KPIs that were being tracked weekly & monthly in over 60 different Excel spreadsheets, maintained by dozens of people in various locations.  The solution we put together for the customer allowed them to begin maintaining all the KPIs in a database (as it should be), by using InfoBurst to write back values to a database table.  Using Xcelsius as a data entry tool, we created two different dashboards for entering metric values which, with the push of a button, ran update queries back to our database table, which immediately refreshed and presented the data in the main dashboard for the General Managers to view.  This solution provided a new precedence for accountability and consistency across the board.

 There were two additional innovations to this solution which I am excited about.  Both of these involved automatically emailing a mini dashboard as an Event based Alert.  The first mini dashboard was emailed to the project team if a user modified one of the KPI targets.  Key users were allowed to change a target, but the team wanted to be aware when this happened.  Using InfoBurst, we created a query based event that checked every 30 minutes for a condition to be true (a target change).  Whenever that condition is true, InfoBurst initiates a burst of a mini dashboard (.swf file) to the project team, with the following information:

·         Which KPI target was changed

·         What is the new KPI target value

·         Who changed the target

·         What time did this change occur

The second innovative Alert notification mini dashboard involved the time sensitive nature of getting all the KPIs entered by given dates.  Schedules were created in InfoBurst to query for any KPI’s that had not been entered by noon on the first day of the week.  This initiated an email Alert burst of a mini dashboard to the appropriate person responsible for updating the missing KPIs.  A second schedule ran 4 hrs later and emailed the Alert mini dashboard to BOTH the responsible party AND their manager!  This process ensured accountability for getting these Key Performance Indicators entered in a timely fashion for all the General Managers to be able to review in their meetings the following days.

I foresee exciting possibilities that this solution opens up for other customers as well.  Imagine being able to automatically email a dashboard to the VP of Finance when Sales Revenue  falls below a certain level, or ….  Think of the possibilities!

It’s not just that Xcelsius is going places globally but wherever it goes, it is creating new Business Intelligence applications that are slowly but surely changing the world.  

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