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So many times I receive emails after I teach a class on SAP Dashboards (Xcelsius) from students eager for next steps. I’ve put together this list of 6 things you can do to continue learning about dashboard development and how you can hone your skills and take them to the next level.
1. Recreate a simple dashboard
Find a dashboard to re-create. Rebuilding a dashboard, especially one built by someone else, will help reinforce concepts of how the selectors work, how to set up your data and how to get dynamic visibility working – the mainstays of Xcelsius – SAP Dashboards. Here is a link to a sample dashboard you could use: Click here!
2. Practice with your own data
Export a current report into Excel or find some of your data in Excel (less than 500 rows of data) and paste it into the Excel model of Dashboards and start thinking through how you could express this data. What would be a logical way to filter the data? What selector would look best for filtering that data? Which chart will work best for visualizing that data? Practice setting up several different charts and re-arranging your data to work best for you.
3. Look for ideas on Google
As far as visualizing your data, there are many ideas available just by searching for “dashboard ideas” and then selecting “images”. Scroll through the images and pick out some ideas to try with your data. Recently I needed to create a dashboard for an income statement, so I went looking for ideas on Google by searching for “visual income statement”.
4. Read Dashboard blogs
There are some helpful blogs out there with Dashboard tech tips , like this one: https://infosolblog.com/category/products/xcelsius/ , and some dashboard tech tips that I have written here: www.infosolblog.com/author/roxanne
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InfoSol has now just released a further new enhancement for Xcelsius called dCode which provides a way to take the HTML5 output generated from Xcelsius and enhance it so that your Xcelsius HTML5 dashboards can be deployed on mobile and … Read more… Xcelsius | InfoSol Blog |
5. Look for more learning opportunities
Expand your knowledge by getting more training! At our annual conference we have seminars, workshops and bootcamps focused on Dashboards, as well as plenty of opportunities to rub elbows with experts and glean ideas from other dashboard developers from showcased case studies. One of the highlights of the events is our annual Dashboard Award ceremony, where we honor distinguished dashboards submitted from around the world. Come join us this year at IBIS 2016 http://events.infosol.com/ibis/
There is also the option for attending our advanced course – the Dashboards Iron Chef course as a virtual training or onsite if you gather several coworkers to join you! Check out our training options here: http://events.infosol.com/bo-dashboards-xcelsius-training/
And, my personal favorite is this one because it happens every two weeks and the content is new. The time commitment is only one hour to attend the webinar… http://events.infosol.com/lets-speak-bo/ This covers various relevant Business Objects topics, including Dashboards.
6. Check out BOB
There is a helpful forum for Xcelsius – SAP Dashboard users called BOB – BusinessObjects Board: http://www.forumtopics.com/busobj/viewforum.php?f=99. It is a forum for all Business Objects products, including Dashboards, and it is a very active forum. One of the things I love about this site is that it the questions are answered by real users who have practical experience. When I have free moments I also answer questions here. If you get stuck and are not sure how to do something in Dashboards, you can either search the forum to see if that questions has been answered already, or post your own question.
And … if you do take these next steps and build an amazing dashboard, please submit it to Infosol for consideration for one of the prestigious Dashboard awards! The next round will be part of the IBIS 2016 conference.
Happy Dashboarding! And, if you have any of your own tips, comment below.
~Roxanne
Very helpful for beginners!