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Xcelsius Archive

A deep dive into the InfoBurst Connectors

By
Chris Martin
Published: May 23, 2013Posted in: Business Intelligence, Highlights, IBIS, InfoBurst, InfoBurst Dash, ProductsTags: , , , , , , , , ,
A deep dive into the InfoBurst Connectors

Here is a sneak-peek of the InfoBurst® Dashboard Connectors In-Depth talk  to be presented in the Dashboard Data Management, Dashboard Delivery & HTML5 Apps with InfoBurst talk at the InfoBurst User Conference – IBIS 2013.

Back when we were taking another look at InfoBurst, we also wanted to take another look at how InfoBurst communicated with the then BusinessObjects Xcelsius 4.5.  At that time we used the built in XML connector to bring data from InfoBurst into our users’ dashboards.  This would require users to know the ID numbers of the Xml Data Source (XDS) objects in InfoBurst along with the name of the range that you wanted to pull into your dashboard.  This would cause many “silly” errors of either having the wrong ID number, or a slight misspelling of the range name.

When we started to look a fresh on how to do this, we decided to leverage the new Xcelsius SDK.  This meant that we were able to write our own connectors that will communicate with the InfoBurst Enterprise server and take away the “guess work” of referencing the data caches.  Thus the InfoBurst Connectors were born.  With these connectors we were now able to browse the InfoBurst Enterprise system for the object you want to reference in the connector, which eliminates the need to remember object ID numbers.  Next we also enabled the ability to browse for which “data source” you want to reference in your Cache Connector, and even which query you want to get values from in the Database Connector.

In addition to making it easier to setup the connectors, we’ve also added the ability to migrate a dashboard between say a development and production environment.  We built a component called the InfoBurst Connection Manager.  This will allow users to setup multiple connection profiles, say in our case “Development” and “Production”.  As long as the referenced objects are in the same folder locations in both platforms and have the same queries and data sources, then the dashboard will migrate on over to the new environment.  This means a dashboard can be built and tested in a development environment, and then moved over to the production environment when it’s ready without the need for the dashboard developer to “remap” all of the connectors.

By leveraging the Xcelsius SDK we were able to add new connectors which have gone beyond just data retrieval and writeback.  We’ve created three “utility connectors” which came about by requests directly from our dashboard developers.  First, we created a connector called the CrossTab Builder which will allow users to create a crosstab on the fly from a data table that has been built up in the dashboard.  Second, when users have a crosstab in their dashboard, either from the CrossTab Builder or the built in crosstab options for database queries, XDC data sources, and cache queries, they can use the CrossTab Flip connector which will flip the X and Y axis values.  And finally, we have another connector which will allow users to save excel ranges from their dashboard into different sheets of an excel file for analysis.  I will be going into more detail on these connectors during the talk; after all, this is a sneak peek.

At the end of my talk, I’ll get a chance to show something that I’m personally excited about.  I’ll get to show you some advanced debugging.  Debugging which will help you not only find potential data issues going to and from the InfoBurst server, but also detect potential performance issues with how and when the connectors are being fired.  Also, you can use the same tool to replay requests which can simplify reproducing an issue greatly.  I’d suggest taking a look at the tool first to get yourself familiarized with it.  It’s a web debugging tool that Telerik recently took over from Microsoft called Fiddler2.  I suggest downloading the release build for .NET 2.0 as that is currently the only stable release right now.  Telerik is currently working on a .NET 4.0 version.

That’s it for this sneak peek.  And this is my last one for this conference.  I hope you’ve enjoyed reading through them, and I hope it gave you a pretty good idea of what to expect during my talks.  And, of course, I hope to see you there at the InfoBurst User Conference.  Being able to see our customers face to face and to talk in real time about their needs and ideas is what makes our conferences great.  And great not only for us, but for our customers as well.  I’m very excited for our first ever InfoBurst User Conference.  This topic here will be discussed, and many more in a very open format.  Check it out on our InfoBurst User Conference webpage.  I’ll be looking forward to seeing you there!  You can register for the InfoBurst User Conference online just by clicking on the “Register” button at limitlessbi.com.

D is for Dashboards

By
Runali Ghosh
Published: March 26, 2013Posted in: Business Intelligence, Highlights, IBISTags: , , ,
D is for Dashboards

Here is a sneak-peak of some of the 12 Ds to be discussed in the Iron Chef Dashboard track in Limitless BI conference – IBIS 2013.

As I started putting my train of thoughts together for the Dashboards track of IBIS 2013, I was listing the important elements of implementing a successful dashboard project. I was also trying to come up with a way of presenting those key points so our attendees can remember very easily when they go back to develop actual dashboards. In the process I suddenly discovered the interesting recurrence of words starting with D and guess what ? I had a quick D list. Soon the D list became part of the course. I was so excited I couldn’t resist till June to talk about them.  Here are the first five:

Data

D-for-Dashboards-imageData is the most important piece of the puzzle called BI dashboards. Actually it plays a critical role in running modern business, at least it should, and hence it ranks first in my D list.

Data is key. Business acquires raw data which by itself does not generate much significance. But when put into context, relation and interpretation, data results in Information which in turn is collected and processed to identify patterns based on experience; and now we have knowledge. What do we do with this mass of knowledge for it to be useful? Analyze, ask questions, understand the underlying principles and provide answers so business can make more cognitive decisions and gain competitive advantage – in other words, gain intelligence about the business.

Dashboard is one of the vehicles to traverse this journey from data to intelligence. Without a doubt, accessing the right data for your dashboard is an essential and critical step. As simple as it sounds, you will face challenges in every phase of the development to get the right data, sometimes simply accessing the data. You need to ensure the availability, quality, and authenticity of the data. Any failure in those areas will highly compromise adoption and usability of your dashboard. From our years of experience in real world deployments, in this bootcamp, we will guide you on how to achieve this goal and prevent a failed project. There will be more topics related to data – for example how to process, manipulate and optimize them in context of the tool.

Design

Being a visualization mechanism for delivering information dashboards demand extremely high importance on effective visual design. Whether it is a traditional single page summary view dashboard or modern multi-layered dashboard app, it needs to follow all the principles of data visualization. Only then can you successfully provide consistent, easy, intuitive and quick consumption of the most important information. This should not be confused with the mere shiny look and feel of a dashboard. We will cover the process of applying the various best practices, design principles and marketing standards in the context of end user’s requirement, connectivity options, data volume and audience. At the end of the course you will not just be able to display charts but will understand how to deliver a visually compelling and exciting application to your end user.

Device

Dashboards must allow consumption beyond the desktop. Proliferation of mobile devices among business users has mandated availability of dashboards on a variety of devices. While until very recently there were hard limitations on technology for flash based dashboards to render on iOS devices, there are also many mobile-handicapped dashboards merely due to bad design considerations. Now that SAP Dashboards (Xcelsius) has introduced mobility, the importance of following design considerations has become more severe than ever. The need for thoughtful consideration of handheld device friendly designs, various approaches towards going mobile, limitations set by the tool, degree of summarization and connectivity options for mobile dashboards has shot up immensely. You will get to see the various methods available for building dashboards for mobile in addition to detailed discussion of the above considerations, pros and cons of available options against one another with examples and hands on.

Delivery

D-for-Dashboard-DeliveryThis is one very important consideration many dashboard developers put aside until towards end of the project which results into lot of unexpected changes at the last hour – something every developer must do everything to avoid. It is very crucial to ask the end user/ business analyst of the dashboard project very early on how they want their dashboards to be delivered to them – sent via email? Accessed from a portal? Need offline capability once delivered? Sent to mobile device? Need customized data bursting? Non-BOE environment? BOE security enforced? All these questions and more should be asked during requirement gathering and evaluated/re-evaluated at the various phases of iterative development cycle. Not every capability comes out of the box, many of them can be achieved with partner add-ons and integration kits but they are often the burning requirements for our customers. We will discuss different design considerations to keep in mind to meet your end users’ goal.

Dollar

D-for-Dashboard-DollarsWhy should a technical developer care about this? For business what will matter is ROI, but for IT $ will translate to the duration and deadline of the project. BI projects often face scope, schedule and consequent budget creep. Though it is common it is not completely unavoidable. Thorough requirement gathering, timely availability of the right resources, involvement of business, proper change control, mockup building with the decision making team and correct iteration cycle can prevent many unplanned changes and schedule slippage. IT needs to clearly communicate any realistic estimation and understand the consequences of budget overrun. Wise planning will not only stop a project from being scrapped but also gain substantial credibility from business for any future deployment. You can also limit or extend the functionality of your dashboard with use of third-party add-ons available across SAP ecosystem based on approved budget. We are going to discuss several useful add-on features you can enrich your dashboard with and how to conduct the aforementioned activities in most efficient manner.

 

Whether you are wearing a developer, business analyst or project manager hat or all of them, it is very important to understand these key elements of a dashboard project. The goal of this track is not just to help build your technical skills, but capacitate you with all other aspects of an entire end to end project, their pitfalls and how to overcome them. The rest of the Ds focus on the facets that make or break a dashboard project, and will be discussed in a future article. We hope this has whetted your appetite for the upcoming Dashboard Design Iron Chef Bootcamp using SAP Dashboards 4.x.  See you at IBIS 2013.

 

Becoming an “Iron Chef” Dashboard Creator

By
Paul
Published: January 22, 2013Posted in: Business Intelligence, Highlights, 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.

InfoBurst Test Drive – April 19, 2012 – Distribute your BusinessObjects reports easily

By
InfoSol
Published: April 17, 2012Posted in: Events, InfoBurstTags: , ,
InfoBurst Test Drive – April 19, 2012 – Distribute your BusinessObjects reports easily

UK based SAP BO partner, Blueprint Management Systems, will host a test drive of the latest InfoBurst Enterprise solution at its London HQ on April 19.

InfoBurst enables Xcelsius dashboards to handle large amounts of data with fast performance using its powerful XML data caching capability and to deliver those dashboards both connected and off-line to a variety of destinations including mobile devices like iPads and Androids. Some of the InfoBurst Xcelsius features include :

• An XML data cache able to support millions of rows of data for fast access from Xcelsius dashboards
• A write back connector for Xcelsius allowing write back from the dashboard to any database
• A “Save as Excel” function enabling the dashboard contents to be saved in Excel
• Creation , customized bursting and intelligent delivery of offline dashboards

http://www.bpms.co.uk/events/infoburst-test-drive—19th-april.aspx

Excerpt: Infoburst Test Drive – 19th April
blueprint uk performance management, financial planning & budgeting, business intelligence and data warehousing services allow clients to visualise and control the processes that directly affect success with professional…

BI Visionary Santiago Becerra to Deliver Keynote at IBIS 2012

By
Paul
Published: April 9, 2012Posted in: IBIS, Paul Blogs on BITags: , , , ,
BI Visionary Santiago Becerra to Deliver Keynote at IBIS 2012

There have been two majorly inspiring and revolutionary solutions in the world of Business Intelligence in the last decade and one person, Santiago Becerra, has been behind both of them.

The first was Xcelsius, the data visualization dashboard tool that rocketed first Business Objects and then SAP to the forefront of business intelligence dashboard solutions. Santiago once told me that the idea for Xcelsius came about after a casual conversation with one of his sons, who was a computer game developer, about making business applications more visual and interactive like computer games. Santiago had created “Gamification” before it had even become a word (according to Wikipedia it was first used in March 2004 several years after Xcelsius was created). Xcelsius was not only ahead of its time, it was a game changer for Business Objects after they acquired the company from Santiago in late 2005 as within two years it was their hottest selling product and was taking over as the user interface of choice for business intelligence.

Roambi Cardex on iPad

After seeing Xcelsius successfully settled into Business Objects, Santiago moved into semi-retirement but his visionary mind could not stop conjuring up new ideas. After seeing a line of people queuing up for an iPhone, he bought one for himself and became intrigued by its visual display capabilities. This led to inspired, revolutionary BI solution number 2. Gathering together some of the original team that had made Xcelsius successful and some very talented developers, he created the most spectacular BI visualization solution ever seen on a mobile device – Roambi. Today, Roambi is the leading BI visualization solution for mobile devices with a plethora of awards and an ever increasing global presence, Some of the Roambi views like Cardex and Squares have got to be seen to be believed (especially on the iPad) – these are designs of pure genius. You can download demo versions for free off the iTunes store.

Roambi Squares on iPad

Needless to say, I was ecstatic when Santiago Becerra agreed to deliver the keynote address at this year’s IBIS 2012 event. With the theme of the conference being Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0, it is a perfect match-up. Few people have contributed more than Santiago to inspiring the world of Business Intelligence.

Equally as exciting, is a new executive seminar track at this year’s IBIS also entitled Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0 that will consist of 12 customer presented case studies on some pretty cool and inspired BI solutions. The final list of customer presentations will be announced in a couple of weeks so stay tuned.

In the meantime, I suggest you reserve a place at IBIS 2012 very soon as the event is limited to just 250 attendees and seats are filling up fast.

Register now.

The Secret to BI Sustainability – Reuse

By
Paul
Published: March 30, 2012Posted in: Paul Blogs on BITags: , , , ,
The Secret to BI Sustainability – Reuse

I was recently in San Francisco over a weekend and got to be a tourist for a day. I was fascinated by the remarkable collection of old trams and streetcars that I both rode and saw throughout the city. They were original restored trams from different cities like New York, Boston and even Milan, Italy.

What a fantastic idea to restore these masterpieces and put them to the use they were built for rather than send them to a museum or scrapyard. A friend told me that the city was able to do this because the tram track gauge was standard and as long as the trams came from cities that used the same track standard they could be used.

After the weekend, I was visiting a software company in Silicon Valley and talking about Business Intelligence solutions on mobile devices. One of the options we discussed was using Xcelsius dashboards on mobile devices.

Now, Xcelsius is undoubtedly one of the best and most popular data visualization tools for the PC but it was designed and developed for the PC using a mouse to navigate. A mobile device like an iPad, iPhone or Android has no mouse and navigation is through touch gestures. The standard dashboard components that ship with Xcelsius were never designed for touch gesture usage and often come up short when used on a mobile device.

Yet Xcelsius is such a versatile and great tool for developing customized dashboards so wouldn’t it be great if you could use it to create dashboards with components that are designed for mobile devices including touch gestures?

Well, that has recently become a reality thanks to a truly innovative solution from Xcelsius component developer, Inovista. They have created a whole set of Xcelsius add-on components designed for mobile devices and touch gestures along with a mobile application that transforms the resulting Xcelsius dashboard into a native iOS or Android application. This allows you to use the Xcelsius toolset you know, love and have invested in and build dazzling mobile dashboards. The resulting dashboards can also be used on the PC.

To make the solution even richer, it also supports the popular and powerful InfoBurst Xcelsius connector options. This includes the direct database connector for fast direct access to databases, the XML Data Cache connector for accessing large amounts of cache data for improved dashboard performance, the XML Data Cache Query connector for using SQL from your dashboard to access selected data from the cache and the Write Back connector that allows you to write back to databases from your dashboard.

Another cool thing about this solution is that the dashboards can be either offline on the mobile device itself or connected to live data giving you the best of both worlds.

I have some of these mobile dashboards running on my iPad and they are both compelling and fast. Some of these will be featured at IBIS 2012.

As we hear more about HTML5 being the future direction for dashboards and mobile business intelligence, it is still evolving and the toolsets that are equivalent to Xcelsius are yet to emerge. The recent announcement that Xcelsius will move in the HTML5 direction is also some way off in the future.

Businesses need solutions today built with tried and tested tools. The idea of using Xcelsius to build mobile friendly dashboards with the Inovista and InfoBurst components allows you to leverage your Xcelsius investment and create easily maintainable and sustainable mobile BI solutions. It’s almost as cool as San Francisco using restored classic trams on their streets!

Looking for Inspired Business Intelligence Solutions

By
Paul
Published: March 1, 2012Posted in: Business Intelligence, IBISTags: , , , , ,
Looking for Inspired Business Intelligence Solutions

Last week I was visiting a customer in the transportation business. They were showing me a new safety business intelligence dashboard they were working on to analyze accidents and crashes. The first phase of the project focused on all accidents and crashes over a three year period. With more than 16,000 commercial vehicles on the road every day, this is a lot of data to analyze. However, what really struck me was the incredible number of ways they were able to slice, dice and analyze this data in the dashboard looking visually at data by region, depot, type of vehicle at the same time as looking at personnel and all the different categories of accidents and to compare all this at different time periods.

I was floored by the incredible amount of detailed information available at the click of a button and had to ask the question as to how much data was actually available to the dashboard. The customer explained that they had reduced the amount of data from about 500,000 rows to about 300,000 rows by organizing it as a cube in their Teradata Data warehouse and were loading it daily into the XML Data Cache (XDC) and using their XDC connectors in the Xcelsius dashboard solution.

They then showed me phase 2 of the project where they had placed a series of bubble charts on top of a geographical map to show location and type of accidents. They had built in the ability to zoom in on different regions of the country which was really cool.

But what really blew my mind were their plans for phase 3 where they are looking to collect geographic location information from the vehicles which are all equipped with satellite navigation systems that would transmit the location of the accident. The Business Intelligence dashboard would then display where most accidents and accidents of the same type were happening down to the exact street location so they could look for patterns and trends.

This is a truly inspired business intelligence solution and one of many that I am seeing these days. It is for this reason that at this year’s IBIS 2012 event in Dana Point, CA in June, there will be a 3-day Executive Track dedicated to “Inspired Business Intelligence Solutions”.

The track will consist of 12 inspired BI solutions presented by the customers themselves that created them. We have already encouraged several customers to present their solutions but we are still looking for a few more.

Inspired people with inspired ideas create inspired BI solutions so if you would like to submit your solution for this year’s IBIS and receive a $500 discount if selected then Just email ibis@infosol.com  a description of your inspired solution focusing on the following points :

- Why did you create it?

- How did you create it?

- What were the benefits?

Please include any additional diagrams, screenshots, documents, quotes , photos or anything else that will help to further explain your inspired solution. Also provide your contact information and the best times to call you to discuss your entry.

Of course, if you would just like to come along and listen to 12 highly informative inspired business intelligence customer case studies and save $400 then be sure to Register by March 31 to take advantage of the early bird discount.

 

IBIS 2012 Announced: Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0

By
InfoSol
Published: February 6, 2012Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBISTags: , , , ,
IBIS 2012 Announced: Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0

IBIS is well known for offering the most effective BusinessObjects learning available along with intelligent and inspirational ideas on how to maximize your Business Intelligence usage and investment.

IBIS 2012: INSPIRED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 2.0, June 10 – 13, 2012, has just been announced and offers an amazing selection of Hands-on Pre-Seminar Workshops, Immersion Training Boot Camps and Executive Seminars on the most popular and latest BusinessObjects solutions delivered by top BI specialists.

The seminar includes 3 full days of learning and peer experiences, and is packaged together to include 3 nights’ accommodations at the luxurious Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa in Dana Point, CA. Along with group meals, resort fees and scheduled events, IBIS 2012 is an incredible value and the most important BusinessObjects event to attend this year.

We invite you to join us for INSPIRED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 2.0. Register by March 31 to take advantage of the early-bird $400 discount.

June 10 Pre-Seminar Workshops

• Advanced Report Bursting, Scheduling & Delivery Using InfoBurst (Hands On)

• Migration to BI 4.x (Hands On)

• Conversion of Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence (Hands On)

• Building Xcelsius Dashboards for Mobile (Hands On)

• InfoBurst Administration Certification (Hands On)

• How to Develop KPI’s

June 11 – 13 IBIS Main Conference

Hands-On Boot Camps

• Xcelsius Beginner Boot Camp

• Xcelsius Master Boot Camp

• XML Data Caching Boot Camp

• BI 4.0 Developer Boot Camp

• Web Intelligence Boot Camp

• BusinessObjects Administration Boot Camp

Executive Seminar Tracks

• Business Intelligence for Executives

• The Tao of Business Intelligence

• Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0

 For more details, view the IBIS 2012 Agenda.

Dashboards Making Big Waves at Omani Aluminium Company

By
Paul
Published: November 21, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Paul Blogs on BITags: , ,
Dashboards Making Big Waves at Omani Aluminium Company

Oman is known for its camel racing. It’s quite fascinating to watch as there are no jockeys – just a bunch of brave and skillful people to get the camels lined up and started and then the rest is up to the camels to gallop to the finish line. Watching them, they have this easy loping stride and they don’t appear to be going fast but they cover a lot of ground quickly.

The high speed ferry boats in Oman are very similar. Sitting at the front, you do not think you are going fast but if you go to the back of the boat and see the giant wake being left by the multiple powerful engines, you quickly realize you are moving faster than most speedboats.

So I find myself on this super fast ferry on my way to the port of Sohar in the North of Oman to visit the Sohar Aluminum Plant, one of the largest in the Gulf region. We are taken on a fascinating tour of the entire manufacturing process producing tons of aluminum ingots as its end product. The plant is only about three years old and is fully automated, efficient and clean.  It employs over a thousand people and boasts an impressive track record of productivity. The company puts safety first as its top priority and has not recorded a single injury in over 730 days – impressive. In addition, the company has put together a Corporate Social Responsibility program that both encourages input from the workers and gives back to the local community.

In the middle of the tour, one of the Sohar Aluminium supervisors is explaining the key metrics that their particular area is measured by and one of the other visitors makes a remark that management never really looks at that type of detail, they are just interested in the final production numbers. The supervisor immediately responds saying that is definitely not the case at Sohar Aluminium because they have a Business Intelligence dashboard that is viewed daily throughout the company by everybody which shows all their key performance indicators and how they are doing against their daily, weekly, monthly and annual goals.

Everybody in the organization is looking at the same data and they can see the metrics for other areas. This has created a remarkable culture change in the company as everyone has visibility to these metrics and realizes that their daily actions actually influence the numbers and values that they are seeing every day.  The fact that the dashboard is built in Xcelsius with visually compelling dynamic visibility features and is simple and intuitive to use has also played a big part in the successful user adoption.

Displaying the metrics was only a part of the Sohar Aluminium dashboard solution.  One of the biggest challenges facing the company was getting the shift supervisors and others responsible for the metrics to enter the actual values into the system in a timely fashion. They solved this problem by extending Xcelsius using InfoBurst to create a data input dashboard so the data can be entered through the dashboard itself. This dashboard not only displayed what metrics were missing but it also triggered an alert email that was sent to the supervisor if the data was not entered within 15 minutes of the end of the shift.  If the data had still not being entered within 30 minutes, then a second alert in red was sent to the supervisor again and the General Manager for that area was automatically copied.  This has been incredibly effective as the company has seen almost no late entries since the system was implemented earlier this year.

The dashboard is packed with many more innovative features and you can read about many of them in this PDF of the case study.

Sohar Aluminium was so happy about its KPI dashboard that they have continued to add to it and have even created an operational dashboard that takes direct feeds from temperature and wind speed gauges that are dynamically refreshed every minute. If the recommended thresholds are exceeded, which is not unusual since their plant is located in the Omani desert, then alerts flash up on the dashboard as well as sent directly to the relevant supervisor’s Blackberry phone to tell them to stop certain operations that would be unsafe.

So just like the racing camels and high speed ferry, Sohar Aluminium has covered a lot of distance in a very short period of time. Their initial dashboard solution was developed and operational in just four weeks.

When I presented this case study in a keynote at a conference this week sponsored by large Gulf Aluminium industry leaders, there was a lot of interest and I would not be surprised if, in the future, Oman will be as well known for its innovative dashboards as for its racing camels!

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.

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