Naujasis SAP Crystal Solutions

2010.05.17-19 dienomis vykusio SAP SAPPHIRENOW renginio metu buvo paskelbta apie Crystal Reports ir Xcelsius pavadinimu ir marketingo principu pakeitimus. SAP, ivertinusi Crystal Reports ir Xcelsius sprendimu sekme bei perspektyvas, nutare apjungti šiuos sprendimus i vieninga sprendimu paketa – SAP Crystal Solutions, o kiekviena iš produktu pavadinti jo paskirti ir funkcijas apibendrinanciu pavadinimu:

SAP Crystal Reports (anksciau Crystal Reports) – Crystal Reports ataskaitu kurimo programa SAP Crystal Interactive Analysis (naujas sprendimas paremtas WebIntelligence Rich Client programa) – užklausu pagal poreiki (Ad-Hoc) bei informacijos analizes irankis SAP Crystal Presentation Design (anksciau Xcelsius Present) – vizualiu ir interaktyviu prezentaciju kurimas SAP Crystal Dashboard Design (anksciau Xcelsius Engage) – interaktyviu rodikliu rinkiniu vizualiu ekranu (angl. Dashboards) kurimo irankis SAP Crystal Reports Server (anksciau Crystal Reports Server) – serverine Crystal Reports platforma, leidžianti prie sistemos prisijungti bei analizuoti informacija per interneto naršykle

Naujasis SAP Crystal Solutions apima ataskaitu kurimo, informacijos analizes, užklausu pagal poreiki ir vizualiu ekranu kurimo galimybes, šios informacijos paviešinima placiam vartotoju ratui per vieninga organizacijos analitini portala bei automatini informacijos išplatinima vidiniams bei išoriniams vartotojams naudojant ataskaitu publikavimo priemones.

Sekmes naujajam SAP Crystal Solutions!

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Analytics - out of the box: SAP Business Analytics

SAP finally announced on September 14, 2010 that it was getting onto the pre-packaged analytics bandwagon.  SAP announced ten applications in this first release for six industries (Consumer Products, Healthcare, Financial Services, Public Sector, Retail and Telecommunications) in its BusinessObjects  offering.

Building on the rapid-marts offering that the then BOBJ used to have and leveraging SAP’s industry and line of business expertise, these new applications are based on the SAP Business Objects XI platform – WebIntelligence, Crystal Reports and Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius). Bill McDermott, the joint CEO of SAP, described it as “complete and ready-to-go” and claimed the applications can be deployed in as less as eight weeks.

You may remember the brouhaha created by SAS last year , when it kicked off the controversy on Business Analytics being the future, rather than Business Intelligence. Going back even further, Oracle already had this in its Siebel Analytics pre-built analytic applications for various industries. Therefore, it would seem that SAP is already late in the game, but considering that neither Microsoft nor IBM have similar offerings, it may not be too bad for SAP. Better late than never…

Under the hood:

The pre-packaged analytic applications are based on the BusinessObjects XI platform – with the universe as the semantic layer or metadata model. It can be based on both SAP and non-SAP data, OLTP and data warehouse, relational and unstructured.  SAP would work with its partners HP and Teradata to optimize the analytic solutions on their hosting and data warehousing solutions.

Business Analytics dashboards are Xcelsius flash files which can be used with web services/QAWS to deliver real-time analytics. It may also be possible to use these with SAP Business Objects Explorer (formerly Polestar) and/or SAP BW Accelerator or the SAP high-performance analytic appliance (HANA).

Business Analytics vs. Business Intelligence – Revisiting the controversy:

When SAS created this controversy last year, an important point noted by many was the SAS home page titled:

SAS | Business Intelligence Software and Predictive Analytics

It’s important to see how the rebranding has reflected in a change to the SAS home page a year hence. It now reads:

SAS | Business Analytics and Business Intelligence Software

SAS Institute was always viewed as a niche vendor, operating in the pure-play statistical and predictive analytics space and this marketing was to re-brand SAS’ offerings to move it mainstream.  In effect, it signaled the market assessment by these major vendors, that in tough times, customers were seeking shorter lead times and demanding better tools which are quick and easy to introduce and provide quicker return on investment.  As we come around the downturn, with SAP still focusing on this segment, it is clear that traditional BI is clearly seen as complex, costly and difficult to implement.

Open questions:

There are several questions open at the moment, given that this is an initial launch. SAP plans to offer more applications over the next year-18 months in collaboration with customers and its partners.  The partners include Aster Group, Blueprint, Capgemini, Column5, CSC, Fusion Consulting, The Glenture Group, LSI Consulting and syskoplan and surely it would take quite a while for the ecosystem to develop.  It remains to be seen whether the prepackaged analytics catches on like Xcelsius dashboards did for BOBJ.

It is not clear whether the prepackaged analytics would be positioned at the bigger enterprises or the SME segment only, as its success could cannibalize revenues from the flagship Enterprise XI suite.

There are also questions around the scalability of the framework the analytic applications are built on. The extensibility APIs and reference architectures for partners to build their own add-ons and plugins / applications  of their own is not yet out (planned in 2011), so it’s not quite like the iPhone/iPad app store yet. It is also not clear how customizations to the applications would be supported or to what extent these could be customized.  The long awaited universe rewrite including data federation might be a part of plans if the analytic applications turn out to be truly backend-agnostic and do support future in-memory data structures (SAP’s acquisition of Sybase would indicate likely support for the Sybase ASE in-memory database). If this happens, it would be in line with earlier plans to roll-out in-memory EPM and OLTP solutions.

View the original article here

SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 SP3 naujienos

Pasirode ilgai lauktas SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 Service Pack 3 (SP3) paketas.

Jame yra ištaisyta visa aibe klaidu, kurios iki šiol buvo taisomos tarpiniuose atnaujinimuose (XI 3.1 FixPack 2.x) bei atsirado nauju patobulinimu ir funkcionalumu.

Štai keletas naujoviu:

Itrauktas nauju OS bei duomenu šaltiniu palaikymasWebIntelligence Query Stripping – užklausu optimizavimas eliminuojant ataskaitoje nenaudojamus objektusMerge Dimensions – dimensiju apjungimo ir detalizavimo (drill) patobulinimaiOLAP Universe pre-defined filter editorNauji Xcelsius servisai – Xcelsius Cache ir Processing ServersNajas Crystal Reports duomenu šaltinis – Universal Web Services ConnectorSAP Integration Kit atnaujinimaiKiti patobulinimai

SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 Service Pack 3 (SP3) gali buti diegiamas kaip esamu sistemu atnaujinimas arba kaip nauja pilna versija.

View the original article here

Cool Dashboards from ProMorphics

Although I’ve worked in a number of different industry verticals, I’m currently focused on the Utilities vertical.  I’m always on the look out for great dashboards and I found some!  I want dashboards that combine the best features of Xcelsius together with amazing usability and depth of function.  My latest discovery is from ProMorphics.  ProMorphics is a services organization and they have been a member of the SAP Ecosystem for a number of years.   I recently got a chance to view the results of some of their compelling dashboards  and the results speak for themselves.

When I spoke with ProMorphics they talked about their commitment to listen to the customer and to go the extra mile.  They’ve been extremely successful at using Xcelsius as a prototyping/rapid development tool so that they can get feedback and turn the results around extremely quickly.

Their sample dashboards focus on these three areas:

Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S)Field OperationsSales and Financial Performance (Peek Performance)

If you work in a utility related industry, you may want to engage ProMorphics and leverage their expertise.  It’s not surprising that 70% of their business comes from repeat customers.

ProMorphics Operations Dashboard with Custom Xcelsius Controls

Although ProMorphics does not allow you to download their .xlf files, you can view the dashboards via the following website:
http://www.promorphics1.us/22/interactivedemos/demos

Here is a 10 minute video walk-through of their Peak Performance dashboard with Kasia Szewczyk
http://www.promorphics1.us/29/audiovideo/recording

It’s always good to see partners who exploit all the features within a solution.  In the screenshot above, you can see how they have built Google Map integration as well as a custom calendar control.  These are examples of custom Xcelsius controls written in Flex.  I saw example after example of custom controls, developed to make sure they gave the customer exactly what they wanted.  If you engage ProMorphics in a project, they will also make these custom Xcelsius controls available to you.  Some partners like Centigon Solutions do allow you to buy their Xcelsius controls separately but ProMorphics currently does not.

«Good BI»

View the original article here

Life Cycle Manager and Xcelsius Servers

Some of you who love living on the bleeding edge of technology may be bleeding a bit when installing the latest Life Cycle Manager (LCM) and Xcelsius servers. Of course these servers should be installed when you install LCM or BusinessObjects XI 3.1 Service Pack 3. The only problem is that they aren’t.

They aren’t in the CMC, they aren’t in the CCM, and you can’t add them. For some reason you have to go in and run a script that tells Business Objects to go looking for them. From a command prompt you have to run a script that looks something like:

[BOE_install location]\win32_x86\scripts\addnode.bat -name [NODENAME] -siaport [Port Number] -cms [CMS Name] -user [User Name] -password [Password] -authentication [Type] -platform win32_x86 -update

EXAMPLE:

C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Business Objects Enterprise 12.0\win32_x86\scripts\addnode.bat -name BOXISERV -siaport 6400 -cms BOXISERV -user Administrator -password [Administratorpassword] -authentication secEnterprise -platform win32_x86 -update

For better or worse BOTH the new Xcelsius servers and LCM server seem to be troubled by the same problem, with the same fix.

Please let me know how this works for everyone out there!

Thanks to Dallas Marks and Matt Hawkins at Consultancy by Kingfisher for help with the Xcelsius Server information.

View the original article here

SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 SP3 naujienos

Pasirode ilgai lauktas SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 Service Pack 3 (SP3) paketas.

Jame yra ištaisyta visa aibe klaidu, kurios iki šiol buvo taisomos tarpiniuose atnaujinimuose (XI 3.1 FixPack 2.x) bei atsirado nauju patobulinimu ir funkcionalumu.

Štai keletas naujoviu:

Itrauktas nauju OS bei duomenu šaltiniu palaikymasWebIntelligence Query Stripping – užklausu optimizavimas eliminuojant ataskaitoje nenaudojamus objektusMerge Dimensions – dimensiju apjungimo ir detalizavimo (drill) patobulinimaiOLAP Universe pre-defined filter editorNauji Xcelsius servisai – Xcelsius Cache ir Processing ServersNajas Crystal Reports duomenu šaltinis – Universal Web Services ConnectorSAP Integration Kit atnaujinimaiKiti patobulinimai

SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 Service Pack 3 (SP3) gali buti diegiamas kaip esamu sistemu atnaujinimas arba kaip nauja pilna versija.

View the original article here

How to handle missing data in time series analysis

Posted by Hemanta Banerjee on March 26, 2010

Saw a post today on the clearpeaks blog on ways to display time series charts with missing data. This is something that all of us run into and I wanted to try out some of the suggestions posted on the blog and actually implement those using XCelsius to see whether they can be done in real world.

So here is the situation. As you can see below I have sales for the various months of the year with data for Mar-June missing. If I do nothing and try to draw a chart it is actually misleading since it does not tell

the viewer that some of the months is missing. It is better if we include all the months and show missing data by a broken chart as shown below.

This is better since at least the viewer of the chart knows that the data is missing for some of the months.

This is of course not ideal since we would like to use the data we have to extrapolate and have a better visualization that shows the trend of sales for the full year including the missing months.

So how is done?

We added an excel formula to calculate a rolling average function… we could have used other functionality and even get the backend database to calculate the missing months.

With this new layout we could draw out the chart, and we do not have missing data… however I feel that we are again misleading the user since there is no way for the user to know that Apr to Jun is made up data.

Ideal would be if we could draw that section of the chart in a different color.

This is something that I thought would be easy but turned out to be a little bit complicated.

In the end I ended up doing a hack, which I am not sure if it is a scalable… In the table on the right, the yellow section is the data section. That has all the data from the database as well as the rolling months. Using that I have created 2 series, 1 which contains the real data (red) and another which contains the calculated months (green). For the calculated months series I have also included the boundary months to make sure that I have a continuous line.

Then I setup 2 series in XCelsius, the 1st pointing to the red portions, and the 2nd pointing to the green section of the spreadsheet.

And I have the final chart I need.

If someone has a better way of doing this using XCelsius would love to hear.

This entry was posted on March 26, 2010 at 5:35 pm and is filed under BusinessObjects, XCelsius. Tagged: XCelsius, BOE, BusinessObjects, Missing Data, Visualization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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How to display KPI’s using an Accordion menu in XCelsius

Posted by Hemanta Banerjee on March 26, 2010

One of the questions that came up in the forums the other day was how to display multiple KPI’s for a set of years using the accordion menu. It was further complicated by the fact that some of the KPI’s were absolute figures such as sales and the other KPI’s were percentages such as growth rate.

Seemed like a good problem to solve and I had some free time today, so thought if tackling this. The dashboard looks like follows

What is cool about this is Y axis reflects the nature of the KPI. For sales and Inventory it will show in $’s and for others the axis shows % values. There is a little trick that I used for and I will share it in a later part of this document.

Let us start with the basics. In order to build an accordion style dashboard we need the data in a particular format. The screenshot of the excel file I started out with is below.

For each year I am capturing the trend for the KPI’s. I could have arranged the excel the other way around as well and it would have still worked. Once I have the data I just need to drag and drop the accordion menu and the graph from the pallete and I can be off and running.

For the accordion menu the settings are simple enough. See below

I have set the insertion type as column, which essentially means that when the user selects one of the KPI’s from the menu, the entire column for that year is copied and inserted into the destination (cells C88:C100).

And I also bind each of the years with the category as the source data.

Essentially when the user picks the category, XCelcius knows which data block to go to. Then when the user clicks on the specific KPI, the data for all the months for the KPI is copied to the target.

The chart reads from the target and displays the results. If all the KPI’s had the same scale then that’s all I would need to do.

In my case there is an additional level of complexity. I have KPI’s with very different scales and the chart does not display those correctly (not sure if that’s the way it is supposed to behave). To solve that problem I did a little trick… Instead of

Instead of 1 chart, I have 2 charts… and I set the dynamic visibility of the charts to be driven based on the KPI selected.
I have 2 sections in excel, one to display % values and another to display absolute values and I drive the charts from different sections. Since the accordion can only fill one section, I have used formulas to populate the data in the 2nd region.

Now I define a flag using an excel formula

=IF((C88 = “Sales”), 1,IF((C88 = “Inventory”),1,0)) that controls which chart will be displayed.

Using this approach I am able to hide one chart, and show the correct chart based on the selection. Not sure if there is a better way, but this works J

You can get the XLF file at http://www.box.net/shared/gg9f6lnh90

This entry was posted on March 26, 2010 at 5:37 pm and is filed under BusinessObjects, XCelsius. Tagged: XCelsius, BOE, BusinessObjects, Visualization, Accordion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Under Pressure

Par for the course really. How often do you get told the deadline is tight and cannot be shifted as the media slot has been booked?

When I was told I had 2 weeks to develop the Careers24.com Salary Survey Results Dashboard I thought to myself, “no problem”. The stats guy had 4 weeks to do his thing and I needed to supply him with my data requirements.

Salary Survey 2008

The client contact person came from a project management background and as such she nearly exploded when the data guy came with one excuse after the other for being late. First the data quality was bad because they added the dreaded “Other” field to the survey. This caused most participants to just type in their jobs instead of looking for them on the list. So he had to manually go through 20,000+ records to fix this.
That wasn’t the end of it, his second excuse for not being on time was that his computer was hit by lightning. This meant that while I could do the foundation work on the dashboard I couldn’t integrate the data. We were not sure if he could deliver the aggregated data in the format I required.

So instead of having 2 weeks to develop the dashboard I had 1. Just 1 week to design, populate and test. There was no turning back, I had to deliver and deliver I did.
Squeezing 2 weeks into 1, working round the clock. I had to use Skype and email to communicate. PowerPoint slides with screenshots and annotations were sent back and forth, long hours on the phone and then, right as the client was about to crack I pulled through. The dashboard was finished.

I delivered in 1 week what the previous year’s flash developer took 3 months to do. The client didn’t believe me at the start that Xcelsius could deliver on my promises but it did. I had saved the day and the launch party was a blast.

Using Xcelsius 2008 I could deliver all but one of their requests, I could not display values above the bars of the charts. Now as of SP3 I can

If you think you can’t, you usually can.
Time can slow down given enough Redbull.
Being a report developer can be quite exciting.
Pressure can turn a lump of coal into a diamond.

View the original article here

Cool Dashboards from ProMorphics

Although I’ve worked in a number of different industry verticals, I’m currently focused on the Utilities vertical.  I’m always on the look out for great dashboards and I found some!  I want dashboards that combine the best features of Xcelsius together with amazing usability and depth of function.  My latest discovery is from ProMorphics.  ProMorphics is a services organization and they have been a member of the SAP Ecosystem for a number of years.   I recently got a chance to view the results of some of their compelling dashboards  and the results speak for themselves.

When I spoke with ProMorphics they talked about their commitment to listen to the customer and to go the extra mile.  They’ve been extremely successful at using Xcelsius as a prototyping/rapid development tool so that they can get feedback and turn the results around extremely quickly.

Their sample dashboards focus on these three areas:

Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S)Field OperationsSales and Financial Performance (Peek Performance)

If you work in a utility related industry, you may want to engage ProMorphics and leverage their expertise.  It’s not surprising that 70% of their business comes from repeat customers.

ProMorphics Operations Dashboard with Custom Xcelsius Controls

Although ProMorphics does not allow you to download their .xlf files, you can view the dashboards via the following website:
http://www.promorphics1.us/22/interactivedemos/demos

Here is a 10 minute video walk-through of their Peak Performance dashboard with Kasia Szewczyk
http://www.promorphics1.us/29/audiovideo/recording

It’s always good to see partners who exploit all the features within a solution.  In the screenshot above, you can see how they have built Google Map integration as well as a custom calendar control.  These are examples of custom Xcelsius controls written in Flex.  I saw example after example of custom controls, developed to make sure they gave the customer exactly what they wanted.  If you engage ProMorphics in a project, they will also make these custom Xcelsius controls available to you.  Some partners like Centigon Solutions do allow you to buy their Xcelsius controls separately but ProMorphics currently does not.

«Good BI»

View the original article here

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0

SAP is closing in on their release date of the next major release of BusinessObjects… and as with any release, marketing want to get the name just right.  We’ve seen quite a few changes over the years.

Remember all those changes in Windows naming? Windows 3.1, Windows 95, then Windows XP?  Now finally it’s back to numbers with Windows 7?  There’s probably someone out there that’s written a book about how to name your next software release. 

Here’s a look at where we’ve come from in the last 7 years of BusinessObjects Product Names… starting back in 2003 with the combination of BusinessObjects 6 and Crystal Enterprise 10 into the new XI… Xtreme Insight!

BusinessObjects Product Names

… the more they stay the same.  It is so true… and the upcoming release will include some additional name changes.  Here are some names on the horizon.

XI Product Name4.0 Product NameSAP BusinessObjects EnterpriseSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence PlatformSAP BusinessObjects Web IntelligenceSAP BusinessObjects Web IntelligenceSAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius EnterpriseSAP BusinessObjects DashboardsSAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAPSAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Excel

For more information on the whys check out Jon Reed’s blog post.

It’s amazing how some product names take on a life of their own even before the product is released.  Pioneer is a great example.  It is the first release of the legacy SAP BEx Web Analyzer and SAP BEx Analyzer for Excel.  Pioneer was simply the code name for this yet to be release product.  We can now retire that code name and begin using the actual product name, SAP BusinessObjects Analysis.

Some name changes like Xcelsius were introduced even before a major new release. Earlier this summer, I had someone call me to ask me about SAP Crystal Dashboard Design.  I’d never heard of it. It wasn’t until I googled it that I discovered that we weren’t offering a new product.  SAP had just renamed some Xcelsius packages.  SAP Dashboard Design and SAP Presentation Design had formally been known as Xcelsius Engage and Xcelsius Present, respectively.

Thinking back, Xcelsius has also been through a number of changes:  Xcelsius 4.5, Crystal Xcelsius 4.5, Xcelsius 2008…  It will be interesting to see if the Xcelsius Designer, aka Xcelsius 2008 keeps it’s name and becomes Xcelsius 2010.

Did you know that SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Excel has already been released?  Yep!  The plug-in for Excel is completely stand-alone and can be used without interfering with your existing BusinessObjects XI 3.1 environment.  If you have SAP and want to get the best possible connectivity within Excel without waiting for your entire environment to be upgraded, you can.  Today.

«Good BI»

View the original article here

Analytics - out of the box: SAP Business Analytics

SAP finally announced on September 14, 2010 that it was getting onto the pre-packaged analytics bandwagon.  SAP announced ten applications in this first release for six industries (Consumer Products, Healthcare, Financial Services, Public Sector, Retail and Telecommunications) in its BusinessObjects  offering.

Building on the rapid-marts offering that the then BOBJ used to have and leveraging SAP’s industry and line of business expertise, these new applications are based on the SAP Business Objects XI platform – WebIntelligence, Crystal Reports and Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius). Bill McDermott, the joint CEO of SAP, described it as “complete and ready-to-go” and claimed the applications can be deployed in as less as eight weeks.

You may remember the brouhaha created by SAS last year , when it kicked off the controversy on Business Analytics being the future, rather than Business Intelligence. Going back even further, Oracle already had this in its Siebel Analytics pre-built analytic applications for various industries. Therefore, it would seem that SAP is already late in the game, but considering that neither Microsoft nor IBM have similar offerings, it may not be too bad for SAP. Better late than never…

Under the hood:

The pre-packaged analytic applications are based on the BusinessObjects XI platform – with the universe as the semantic layer or metadata model. It can be based on both SAP and non-SAP data, OLTP and data warehouse, relational and unstructured.  SAP would work with its partners HP and Teradata to optimize the analytic solutions on their hosting and data warehousing solutions.

Business Analytics dashboards are Xcelsius flash files which can be used with web services/QAWS to deliver real-time analytics. It may also be possible to use these with SAP Business Objects Explorer (formerly Polestar) and/or SAP BW Accelerator or the SAP high-performance analytic appliance (HANA).

Business Analytics vs. Business Intelligence – Revisiting the controversy:

When SAS created this controversy last year, an important point noted by many was the SAS home page titled:

SAS | Business Intelligence Software and Predictive Analytics

It’s important to see how the rebranding has reflected in a change to the SAS home page a year hence. It now reads:

SAS | Business Analytics and Business Intelligence Software

SAS Institute was always viewed as a niche vendor, operating in the pure-play statistical and predictive analytics space and this marketing was to re-brand SAS’ offerings to move it mainstream.  In effect, it signaled the market assessment by these major vendors, that in tough times, customers were seeking shorter lead times and demanding better tools which are quick and easy to introduce and provide quicker return on investment.  As we come around the downturn, with SAP still focusing on this segment, it is clear that traditional BI is clearly seen as complex, costly and difficult to implement.

Open questions:

There are several questions open at the moment, given that this is an initial launch. SAP plans to offer more applications over the next year-18 months in collaboration with customers and its partners.  The partners include Aster Group, Blueprint, Capgemini, Column5, CSC, Fusion Consulting, The Glenture Group, LSI Consulting and syskoplan and surely it would take quite a while for the ecosystem to develop.  It remains to be seen whether the prepackaged analytics catches on like Xcelsius dashboards did for BOBJ.

It is not clear whether the prepackaged analytics would be positioned at the bigger enterprises or the SME segment only, as its success could cannibalize revenues from the flagship Enterprise XI suite.

There are also questions around the scalability of the framework the analytic applications are built on. The extensibility APIs and reference architectures for partners to build their own add-ons and plugins / applications  of their own is not yet out (planned in 2011), so it’s not quite like the iPhone/iPad app store yet. It is also not clear how customizations to the applications would be supported or to what extent these could be customized.  The long awaited universe rewrite including data federation might be a part of plans if the analytic applications turn out to be truly backend-agnostic and do support future in-memory data structures (SAP’s acquisition of Sybase would indicate likely support for the Sybase ASE in-memory database). If this happens, it would be in line with earlier plans to roll-out in-memory EPM and OLTP solutions.

View the original article here

Colours and Performance

What makes a Guru? Is it a person that already knows everything on a subject?

I believe it is someone who knows that they do not know everything and is still willing to explore and discover. As I have learned. We’re all quite used to using the RAG / Red Yellow Green / Traffic light approach to performance, but what happens when that fails?

A few years back I was part of a 3 man team involved in a Dashboard development for the Executive Committee of a mine in southern Africa. I was wise in the ways of visualising data, I knew Xcelsius inside out, I could deliver anything they asked for and more. I spent long hours designing and developing numerous different dashboards, from Strategy Scorecards to SHE reports. The main dashboard was the Scorecard and all other dashboards would be accessible from it. The Project Champion (member of Exco) was thrilled with what we delivered, he then presented to the rest of the Exco team…

They loved it, but there was a major issue. 2 Members couldn’t see the KPI performance clearly… Wait what? Our scope was to build the dashboard with large text so the old guys in the back could follow… We couldn’t understand, what had we done wrong? He then continued to explain why, as he himself only just discovered the reason. 2 Members of the 8 man Exco team was colour blind.

This was the first time in my Dashboard Development career that I had come across this particular hurdle. As it turns out, colour blindness is more common than I originally thought, and it’s not as the myth goes, only men that are colour blind.

Visit the Colour Scheme Generator and use the Vision Simulation to see how colour blind people see different colours.

So now we were faced with an interesting problem, since performance is generally displayed as Green – Good / Red – Bad. We needed to come up with a solution and re-present the next day. I thought about it, and the solution was quite simple. We would introduce different shapes along with the performance colours.

As we were using a XY Chart (No Scorecard component back in those days, you whipper snappers have it easy) to show the performance all we needed to do was create a copy and change the shapes, slap in a toggle and Bob’s your uncle.

After presenting the revised Scorecard to the Exco team everyone was happy. This was an interesting lesson to learn and one that I have carried with me for the last couple of years. It has served me well.

My advice to you as my fellow Xcelsius developers is as follows; In the design session with your client raise the subject of colour blindness with relation to performance colours and address the problem before it becomes a problem.

Further more, head over to colour-blindness.com and take the fun Ishihara Test for Color Blindness and the Color Arrangement Test.

Please share your experiences by leaving a comment…

View the original article here

Colours and Performance

What makes a Guru? Is it a person that already knows everything on a subject?

I believe it is someone who knows that they do not know everything and is still willing to explore and discover. As I have learned. We’re all quite used to using the RAG / Red Yellow Green / Traffic light approach to performance, but what happens when that fails?

A few years back I was part of a 3 man team involved in a Dashboard development for the Executive Committee of a mine in southern Africa. I was wise in the ways of visualising data, I knew Xcelsius inside out, I could deliver anything they asked for and more. I spent long hours designing and developing numerous different dashboards, from Strategy Scorecards to SHE reports. The main dashboard was the Scorecard and all other dashboards would be accessible from it. The Project Champion (member of Exco) was thrilled with what we delivered, he then presented to the rest of the Exco team…

They loved it, but there was a major issue. 2 Members couldn’t see the KPI performance clearly… Wait what? Our scope was to build the dashboard with large text so the old guys in the back could follow… We couldn’t understand, what had we done wrong? He then continued to explain why, as he himself only just discovered the reason. 2 Members of the 8 man Exco team was colour blind.

This was the first time in my Dashboard Development career that I had come across this particular hurdle. As it turns out, colour blindness is more common than I originally thought, and it’s not as the myth goes, only men that are colour blind.

Visit the Colour Scheme Generator and use the Vision Simulation to see how colour blind people see different colours.

So now we were faced with an interesting problem, since performance is generally displayed as Green – Good / Red – Bad. We needed to come up with a solution and re-present the next day. I thought about it, and the solution was quite simple. We would introduce different shapes along with the performance colours.

As we were using a XY Chart (No Scorecard component back in those days, you whipper snappers have it easy) to show the performance all we needed to do was create a copy and change the shapes, slap in a toggle and Bob’s your uncle.

After presenting the revised Scorecard to the Exco team everyone was happy. This was an interesting lesson to learn and one that I have carried with me for the last couple of years. It has served me well.

My advice to you as my fellow Xcelsius developers is as follows; In the design session with your client raise the subject of colour blindness with relation to performance colours and address the problem before it becomes a problem.

Further more, head over to colour-blindness.com and take the fun Ishihara Test for Color Blindness and the Color Arrangement Test.

Please share your experiences by leaving a comment…

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How to display KPI’s using an Accordion menu in XCelsius

Posted by Hemanta Banerjee on March 26, 2010

One of the questions that came up in the forums the other day was how to display multiple KPI’s for a set of years using the accordion menu. It was further complicated by the fact that some of the KPI’s were absolute figures such as sales and the other KPI’s were percentages such as growth rate.

Seemed like a good problem to solve and I had some free time today, so thought if tackling this. The dashboard looks like follows

What is cool about this is Y axis reflects the nature of the KPI. For sales and Inventory it will show in $’s and for others the axis shows % values. There is a little trick that I used for and I will share it in a later part of this document.

Let us start with the basics. In order to build an accordion style dashboard we need the data in a particular format. The screenshot of the excel file I started out with is below.

For each year I am capturing the trend for the KPI’s. I could have arranged the excel the other way around as well and it would have still worked. Once I have the data I just need to drag and drop the accordion menu and the graph from the pallete and I can be off and running.

For the accordion menu the settings are simple enough. See below

I have set the insertion type as column, which essentially means that when the user selects one of the KPI’s from the menu, the entire column for that year is copied and inserted into the destination (cells C88:C100).

And I also bind each of the years with the category as the source data.

Essentially when the user picks the category, XCelcius knows which data block to go to. Then when the user clicks on the specific KPI, the data for all the months for the KPI is copied to the target.

The chart reads from the target and displays the results. If all the KPI’s had the same scale then that’s all I would need to do.

In my case there is an additional level of complexity. I have KPI’s with very different scales and the chart does not display those correctly (not sure if that’s the way it is supposed to behave). To solve that problem I did a little trick… Instead of

Instead of 1 chart, I have 2 charts… and I set the dynamic visibility of the charts to be driven based on the KPI selected.
I have 2 sections in excel, one to display % values and another to display absolute values and I drive the charts from different sections. Since the accordion can only fill one section, I have used formulas to populate the data in the 2nd region.

Now I define a flag using an excel formula

=IF((C88 = “Sales”), 1,IF((C88 = “Inventory”),1,0)) that controls which chart will be displayed.

Using this approach I am able to hide one chart, and show the correct chart based on the selection. Not sure if there is a better way, but this works J

You can get the XLF file at http://www.box.net/shared/gg9f6lnh90

This entry was posted on March 26, 2010 at 5:37 pm and is filed under BusinessObjects, XCelsius. Tagged: XCelsius, BOE, BusinessObjects, Visualization, Accordion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Life Cycle Manager and Xcelsius Servers

Some of you who love living on the bleeding edge of technology may be bleeding a bit when installing the latest Life Cycle Manager (LCM) and Xcelsius servers. Of course these servers should be installed when you install LCM or BusinessObjects XI 3.1 Service Pack 3. The only problem is that they aren’t.

They aren’t in the CMC, they aren’t in the CCM, and you can’t add them. For some reason you have to go in and run a script that tells Business Objects to go looking for them. From a command prompt you have to run a script that looks something like:

[BOE_install location]\win32_x86\scripts\addnode.bat -name [NODENAME] -siaport [Port Number] -cms [CMS Name] -user [User Name] -password [Password] -authentication [Type] -platform win32_x86 -update

EXAMPLE:

C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Business Objects Enterprise 12.0\win32_x86\scripts\addnode.bat -name BOXISERV -siaport 6400 -cms BOXISERV -user Administrator -password [Administratorpassword] -authentication secEnterprise -platform win32_x86 -update

For better or worse BOTH the new Xcelsius servers and LCM server seem to be troubled by the same problem, with the same fix.

Please let me know how this works for everyone out there!

Thanks to Dallas Marks and Matt Hawkins at Consultancy by Kingfisher for help with the Xcelsius Server information.

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How to handle missing data in time series analysis

Posted by Hemanta Banerjee on March 26, 2010

Saw a post today on the clearpeaks blog on ways to display time series charts with missing data. This is something that all of us run into and I wanted to try out some of the suggestions posted on the blog and actually implement those using XCelsius to see whether they can be done in real world.

So here is the situation. As you can see below I have sales for the various months of the year with data for Mar-June missing. If I do nothing and try to draw a chart it is actually misleading since it does not tell

the viewer that some of the months is missing. It is better if we include all the months and show missing data by a broken chart as shown below.

This is better since at least the viewer of the chart knows that the data is missing for some of the months.

This is of course not ideal since we would like to use the data we have to extrapolate and have a better visualization that shows the trend of sales for the full year including the missing months.

So how is done?

We added an excel formula to calculate a rolling average function… we could have used other functionality and even get the backend database to calculate the missing months.

With this new layout we could draw out the chart, and we do not have missing data… however I feel that we are again misleading the user since there is no way for the user to know that Apr to Jun is made up data.

Ideal would be if we could draw that section of the chart in a different color.

This is something that I thought would be easy but turned out to be a little bit complicated.

In the end I ended up doing a hack, which I am not sure if it is a scalable… In the table on the right, the yellow section is the data section. That has all the data from the database as well as the rolling months. Using that I have created 2 series, 1 which contains the real data (red) and another which contains the calculated months (green). For the calculated months series I have also included the boundary months to make sure that I have a continuous line.

Then I setup 2 series in XCelsius, the 1st pointing to the red portions, and the 2nd pointing to the green section of the spreadsheet.

And I have the final chart I need.

If someone has a better way of doing this using XCelsius would love to hear.

This entry was posted on March 26, 2010 at 5:35 pm and is filed under BusinessObjects, XCelsius. Tagged: XCelsius, BOE, BusinessObjects, Missing Data, Visualization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Under Pressure

Par for the course really. How often do you get told the deadline is tight and cannot be shifted as the media slot has been booked?

When I was told I had 2 weeks to develop the Careers24.com Salary Survey Results Dashboard I thought to myself, “no problem”. The stats guy had 4 weeks to do his thing and I needed to supply him with my data requirements.

Salary Survey 2008

The client contact person came from a project management background and as such she nearly exploded when the data guy came with one excuse after the other for being late. First the data quality was bad because they added the dreaded “Other” field to the survey. This caused most participants to just type in their jobs instead of looking for them on the list. So he had to manually go through 20,000+ records to fix this.
That wasn’t the end of it, his second excuse for not being on time was that his computer was hit by lightning. This meant that while I could do the foundation work on the dashboard I couldn’t integrate the data. We were not sure if he could deliver the aggregated data in the format I required.

So instead of having 2 weeks to develop the dashboard I had 1. Just 1 week to design, populate and test. There was no turning back, I had to deliver and deliver I did.
Squeezing 2 weeks into 1, working round the clock. I had to use Skype and email to communicate. PowerPoint slides with screenshots and annotations were sent back and forth, long hours on the phone and then, right as the client was about to crack I pulled through. The dashboard was finished.

I delivered in 1 week what the previous year’s flash developer took 3 months to do. The client didn’t believe me at the start that Xcelsius could deliver on my promises but it did. I had saved the day and the launch party was a blast.

Using Xcelsius 2008 I could deliver all but one of their requests, I could not display values above the bars of the charts. Now as of SP3 I can

If you think you can’t, you usually can.
Time can slow down given enough Redbull.
Being a report developer can be quite exciting.
Pressure can turn a lump of coal into a diamond.

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Naujasis SAP Crystal Solutions

2010.05.17-19 dienomis vykusio SAP SAPPHIRENOW renginio metu buvo paskelbta apie Crystal Reports ir Xcelsius pavadinimu ir marketingo principu pakeitimus. SAP, ivertinusi Crystal Reports ir Xcelsius sprendimu sekme bei perspektyvas, nutare apjungti šiuos sprendimus i vieninga sprendimu paketa – SAP Crystal Solutions, o kiekviena iš produktu pavadinti jo paskirti ir funkcijas apibendrinanciu pavadinimu:

SAP Crystal Reports (anksciau Crystal Reports) – Crystal Reports ataskaitu kurimo programa SAP Crystal Interactive Analysis (naujas sprendimas paremtas WebIntelligence Rich Client programa) – užklausu pagal poreiki (Ad-Hoc) bei informacijos analizes irankis SAP Crystal Presentation Design (anksciau Xcelsius Present) – vizualiu ir interaktyviu prezentaciju kurimas SAP Crystal Dashboard Design (anksciau Xcelsius Engage) – interaktyviu rodikliu rinkiniu vizualiu ekranu (angl. Dashboards) kurimo irankis SAP Crystal Reports Server (anksciau Crystal Reports Server) – serverine Crystal Reports platforma, leidžianti prie sistemos prisijungti bei analizuoti informacija per interneto naršykle

Naujasis SAP Crystal Solutions apima ataskaitu kurimo, informacijos analizes, užklausu pagal poreiki ir vizualiu ekranu kurimo galimybes, šios informacijos paviešinima placiam vartotoju ratui per vieninga organizacijos analitini portala bei automatini informacijos išplatinima vidiniams bei išoriniams vartotojams naudojant ataskaitu publikavimo priemones.

Sekmes naujajam SAP Crystal Solutions!

View the original article here

SAP Crystal Dashboard Design

Following SAP’s free download offer for SAP Crystal Presentation Design, there’s now an excellent offer on the grown up product: SAP Crystal Dashboard Design. This extends functionality to make all the widgets available, plus live data, web services, all singing and dancing! If you have Crystal Reports Server with Named User Licenses, you can even publish dashboards for all your users to play with.

Headline offer is 45% off, I’m hoping to make that half price once I can get a confirmed cost price.

For those who’ve been struggling to keep up with the name changes, this used to be called Xcelsius.

Prices through, managed to trim to half price:
Single license £395 + VAT
Discounts available on 3+. Extra discounts for Government, Non-profit, Education
Order on 01759 369827 or via www.pursuittechnology.co.uk

Prices valid until end of October.

View the original article here

Getting Started with SAP Crystal Reports Server

In the fifth and final challenge of Reportapalooza, I’ll be writing a three part series of blog posts about the product at the heart of the SAP Crystal product line – SAP Crystal Reports Server.

My experience with BusinessObjects software goes back to versions 6.1 and 6.5 and the days of Application Foundation and the BOMain.key. Then in 2006, I had the good fortune of being introduced to BusinessObjects XI and the new CORBA architecture. This led to an ongoing string of (mostly) enjoyable experiences installing, deploying, migrating to, and administering BusinessObjects XI R2, XI 3.0, and XI 3.1. These experiences also included many years of developing Universes, building Desktop Intelligence reports, Web Intelligence documents, and finally Xcelsius 4.5 and 2008 dashboards. But my experience with SAP Crystal Reports only goes back to version XI and I’ve never had the opportunity to even see SAP Crystal Reports Server. So I jumped at the opportunity to install and peruse SAP Crystal Reports Server as part of the “Reporting Remix” and Reportapalooza.

Diving right in, I installed “SAP Crystal Reports Server 2008 V1” on my favorite box. My first attempt failed though because I tried to install it on a machine that already had SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 installed. My mistake, I should’ve known better.   Not a problem, I moved to another PC.

As the installation began, I started noticing some very familiar screens. These were some of the same exact windows and options that are offered when SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.x is installed. Below is a description of a few of the dialog screens presented during installation.

Install Type selection – Provides the option to install a MySQL Database Server.Server Component Configuration – CMS Port selection and administrator account setup.Server Intelligence Agent – An “umbrella” service that helps manage services (or servers) by automating starting, restarting, and stopping of servers.Web Application Server selection – Java Web Application Server is the default and “WACS” is recommended deployment type. However, the option to install a Tomcat server and deploy to it is provided.  Additional options are also provided, such as:Allowing you to deploy to a pre-installed Web App ServerThe option to manually deploy the WAR file web components after installationInstall an IIS Web App Server (assuming ASP.NET v1.1 already exists)MySQL Database Configuration – Used for storing system data.Web Application Container Server Configuration – HTTP port setting. 6405 is the default.

After making it through the initial series of settings, installation is ready to begin. The screens continue to remind me of installing BOE but they all say “Crystal Reports Server 2008 V1 Setup”. Pictured below is the Server Intelligence Agent dialog screen showing the option to rename the Node Name and manually adjust the Port number. I changed the Node Name but kept the default Port #.

The screenshot below shows the Web Application Server deployment options.

The two screen shots below show the installation in progress. Expect installation to take from 30 minutes to 1 hour.

As my installation moved very close to completion, I was prompted (on Vista) by my Windows Firewall to either Keep Blocking or Unblock “BusinessObjects Enterprise”. “BusinessObjects Enterprise”? Wow, so far, it’s almost exactly like BOE!

Suddenly I remembered the driving force behind the architecture change from BusinessObjects 6.5 to the smooth, elegant, and .WAR filled CORBA architecture in XI. It was because of the powerful and stable SAP Crystal Reports Server.

Installation complete! It’s time to click Start and have a look at what was installed. The screen shot below shows full list of tools installed. The items that jumped out to me are:

Central Configuration Manger (CCM) – Windows based server management utilityCentral Management Console (CMC) – Web based administrative consoleImport Wizard – Tool for migrating objects from one environment to anotherJava Infoview – The reporting portal (and same favicon used by InfoView in BusinessObjects)

The first thing I did was click “Java Infoview” and logon as the administrator. At first glance, it’s identical to SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1. But within minutes I began to notice a couple subtle differences. For one, there were a couple key products missing that I’m used to seeing. Such as:

Universe DesignerWeb Intelligence

Then I realized how long Crystal Reports has been around. And how many clients use Crystal Reports to develop highly refined pixel perfect reports. What is the best method for delivering reports to users in a zero-client environment and not requiring the installation of Crystal Reports on every users PC? The answer is SAP Crystal Reports Server.

In my next two posts I will begin describing some of the common features and primary functions in SAP Crystal Reports and how it relates to an enhanced user experience.

Thank you,
Jim Brogden
jim.brogden@daugherty.com

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How to implement an expiration date in an Xcelisus dashboard?

How to implement an expiration date in an Xcelisus dashboard? – MyXcelsius.Com div.cute_profiles_sprite{top:275px;left:0px;}//#smooth_sldr{width:550px;height:180px;background-color:#7f6d57;border:2px solid #4f4131;}#smooth_sldr_items{padding:10px 12px 0px 12px;}#smooth_sliderc{width:526px;height:125px;}.smooth_slideri{width:526px;height:125px;}.sldr_title{font-family:Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;color:#ff991b;}#smooth_sldr_body h2{line-height:23px;font-family:Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:20px;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;color:#f0f0f0;margin:10px 0 5px 0;}#smooth_sldr_body h2 a{color:#f0f0f0;}#smooth_sldr_body span{font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;color:#ffffff;}.smooth_slider_thumbnail{float:left;margin:10px 5px 0 0px;border:2px solid #4f4131;}#smooth_sldr_body p.more a{color:#f0f0f0;font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;}#smooth_sliderc_nav li{border:1px solid #ffffff;font-size:12px;font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}#smooth_sliderc_nav li a{color:#f0f0f0;}.sldrlink{padding-right:25px;}.sldrlink a{color:#ffffff;}MyXcelsius.ComVisual Data Analysis, Information Dashboards and Related Technologies

Skip to Content ?HomeShowcaseVideosVideos from SAPContactAuthorsArchivesHow to implement an expiration date in an Xcelisus dashboard?Sep 23rd, 2010

by Greg Wayne. TweetShareEmailTweetShareEmail

Here is an Xcelsius/Excel trick that allows you, the developer, to set a validity period on a dashboard. This is great for sharing demos or giving a potential client an evaluation period.

1. Setup your Excel file as follows

Cell B1 enter your start dateCell B2 enter the Now() function to determine the current dateCell B3 use the Date() function to capture the year, month, and day. Then add the number of days that you want to make the dashboard viewableCell B4 use an IF() statement to compare the expiration date to the current date

2. Here you can get creative, however for this example I am going to keep it simple. Add a background component to the canvas and make sure it takes up the entire workspace.

3. Set the dynamic visibility of the background component to cell B4 and set the key as “expired”. Be sure to check the “Block mouse movements” found on the “General” tab of background properties.

4. Top your dashboard off with a pop-up box or watermark displaying how many days remaining in the evaluation period by taking the difference of cells B3 and B1.

There you have it, a simple solution to implementing a validity period within your dashboards.

Please feel free to download the sample Excel file

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