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…

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.

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!

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: 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.

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!

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 3^rd party, then you’ll need to use a Bubble Chart.

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.

• 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.

Thinking that I must have clicked on the wrong link on the download site, I tried again retracing my steps… Yes, I did this several times before I searched the Internet and found that others are having this difficulty as well!

Xcelsius release notes indeed say that Office 2010 was supported. Hmmm!

And, with some effort, I guess it is, but only after you change a lot of security settings within Office 2010!!!
Now, the order in which you install Office 2010 and Xcelsius SP4 still seems to be a toss-up with the majority of users favoring an upgrade to Office 2010 first followed by the Xcelsius upgrade. Either way you will need to do a lot of adjustments to security within Excel 2010 and PowerPoint 2010 in order to get Xcelsius to “play nice” with them!!! If you do not, you will experience bizarre behavior within PowerPoint. For example, if you export your dashboard to PowerPoint 2010 and open it up as a slideshow, you will miss your mouse as you move over the embedded dashboard making it impossible to interact with the dashboard. You will also get a lot of “server busy” messages when opening Xcelsius, as it is talking to Excel and applying lots of security options that are set by default when you install Office 2010.

Below, I have documented the steps I have taken to get Excel 2010 and PowerPoint 2010 to work well with Xcelsius 2008 SP4.

Download Service Pack 4 for Xcelsius

1.) Go to SAP Business Objects software download site

2.) Software product: Dashboard Presentation Design (Xcelsius)
3.) Product Version: Xcelsius 2008
4.) Click on the link that says Xcelsius Present 2008 Service Pack 4….(see screen shot below)…

download Xcelsius SP4

5.) The file will be named: xcelsiuspres2008_sp4.zip (see screen shot below). Save to your computer.

save file

6.) Un-zip the files to your local machine. All files contained within the above zipped file say Service Pack 3. Hmmm! This is not correct, I think it should say service pack 4!

Install Office 2010

Refer to Office 2010 install package…

Install Xcelsius Service Pack 4

7.) Double-click on the Setup.exe file in the extracted file list…
8.) When you actually install this service pack your version of Xcelsius should be:
Version: 5.4.0.0
Build: 12,4,0,116

Install Xcelsius

Configure Office PowerPoint 2010 Trusted Settings
To get rid of missing mouse in PowerPoint…

• PowerPoint 2010: Settings should be under File>Options>Trust Center>Trust Center Settings>
• Active X Settings: Enable All controls without restrictions and without prompting
• Trusted Locations: Disable All trusted locations
• Privacy Options: Un-Click All

Configure Office Excel 2010 Trusted Settings

To get rid of “server busy” message in Xcelsius 2008 SP4

• Excel 2010 settings: File>Options> Trust Center>Trust Center Settings>
• Active X Settings: Enable All controls without restrictions and without prompting
• Protected View: None checked
• Message bar: Never show information about blocked content
• File Block Settings: None checked and Open selected file types in Protected View and allow editing
• Privacy Options: Un-Click All

I welcome your comments and experience.