Here is an interactive calculator to predict the future President of the USA. Design concept from the Wall Street Journal Electoral College calculator. I tried my best to replicate the functionality. Hope you’ll alll like it. Please leave a comment as a feedback.
Click Here for the calculator.
So, you’ve been told you need to start using Crystal Reports. It’s installed on your machine and you’ve opened it. Now how do you get started?
The good news is that you don’t need to be a programmer or a database expert. However, you will need to be aware of the business requirements
for the report, how the report will be distributed, and be familiar with the data in the database. Assuming you have this knowledge, you can jump right in:
When you select Print Preview, Crystal Reports will generate the report by retrieving the records from the database and display the requested data on the report. It then is the time to be sure that the newly designed report meets all the business requirements per the request. Changes to the report, additions and deletions are simple to employ. If all is good, you can then export the report to several different Windows applications or to HTML. There is even a free Crystal Reports Viewer for those who don’t have a copy of Crystal Reports.
We provide plenty of practice creating basic reports in our Introduction to Crystal Reports 2008 class.
This post shows how to create Christmas lights in Xcelsius by using just a couple components. The two components used in this example are the Push Button and Play Control component. Just five formulas were written in the spreadsheet to alternate the colors and create “blinking lights”. These formulas are all based on the Data cell in the Play Control component.
Adding Hex Codes
In this example, I used five colors for the alternating lights and listed the hex codes in the spreadsheet. These codes were entered and labeled in the spreadsheet. Be sure to add quotes around the hex codes when entering them. See the screenshot below.
Setup the Play Control Component
The next step is to add and setup the Play Control component. Drag and drop the Play Control component onto the canvas then map the Data and Scale property values to values in the spreadsheet.
Setting up Properties
Set the Minimum Limit to 1 and since we’re using five colors, set the Maximum Limit to 5. I included both 1 and 5 in the spreadsheet then mapped to them. Next, set the Data property by selecting a cell in the spreadsheet.
Color Coding
A best-practice is to color-code input cells in the spreadsheet and also include a temporary value. The screenshot below shows the cells that the Play Control component are mapped to (from the General tab of the component).
Play Control Behavior
An important step in the Play Control component is to click the Behavior tab and set the Play Time to 1 second. Also be sure to check the following Play Options:
Auto PlayAuto RewindAuto Reply
These three settings work together to force the Play Control to continually run. The purpose of the Play Control component is to increase the value in the Data cell. The value placed in the cell will be between the minimum and maximum value previously set. The value will increment by 1 and will Auto Rewind and Auto Reply (because of the previous settings).
Changing Hex Codes with Formulas
With the settings we’ve setup so far, cell J1 will continually count from 1 to 5, restart after hitting 5. In the next step we’ll write a formula that changes the Hex color code when the value in J1 changes.
Here’s the syntax for the first formula: =IF(J1=1,A4,IF(J1=2,B4,IF(J1=3,C4,IF(J1=4,D4,IF(J1=5,E4)))))
This code says, if J1 equals 1, then return the first Hex color code. If J1 equals 2, then return the second Hex code. The formula continues on through J1 = 5. By writing this formula, the Hex code in the formula cell will continually change as J1 changes (thanks to the looping action in the Play Control component).
The next thing I did was create four new formulas with slightly different conditions to show five different hex codes at all times. Observe the pattern and differences in the five formulas listed below.
=IF(J1=1,A4,IF(J1=2,B4,IF(J1=3,C4,IF(J1=4,D4,IF(J1=5,E4)))))=IF(J1=1,B4,IF(J1=2,C4,IF(J1=3,D4,IF(J1=4,E4,IF(J1=5,A4)))))=IF(J1=1,C4,IF(J1=2,D4,IF(J1=3,E4,IF(J1=4,A4,IF(J1=5,B4)))))=IF(J1=1,D4,IF(J1=2,E4,IF(J1=3,A4,IF(J1=4,B4,IF(J1=5,C4)))))=IF(J1=1,E4,IF(J1=2,A4,IF(J1=3,B4,IF(J1=4,C4,IF(J1=5,D4)))))The screenshot below shows how the five formula fields used to change the hex codes appear in the spreadsheet.
Note
After setting up the Play Control component, move it to the back layer behind all components so it will not be seen. An easy way of doing this is to select the component and hold down the minus symbol until it’s at the very bottom layer.
Adding Blinking Lights
The final step is to add the blinking lights. Each light is actually and individual Push Button component - mapped to one of the five formulas previously described.
Begin by adding a Push Button component to the canvasAdjust it to the shape you preferSelect the component then remove the word Push from the component’s Label valueNext, click the component’s Appearance tab followed by the Color tabChange the Default color and Pressed color (pictured below)
All that’s left now is to copy and paste the 5 existing Push Button components many times and place them appropriately on the canvas. That’s it! Blinking Christimas lights with Xcelsius!
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you!
Jim.Brogden@daugherty.com
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!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 Pursuit Technology
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.
Several years ago, I saw an exhibition of surrealist paintings in Paris including works by Salvador Dali and Joan Miro. I found the Dali paintings visually stunning as well as fascinatingly compelling whereas I had a hard time understanding the Miro ones. Others, who were with me, expressed the complete opposite opinion and loved the Miro work but had little time for the Dali pieces.
We all have different likes and dislikes to visual images whether they are paintings, cars or even business intelligence dashboards. I can personally testify to the dashboards since our company has developed over 400 of them in the last four years and they come in all shapes, sizes and visual tastes. I remember one particular dashboard that we developed for a transportation company that I thought was very visually stunning and provided multiple levels of drill down and some very powerful “What if?” scenarios. While the manager at the company also liked it a lot, his director felt it was not stunning enough and wanted different colors and more 3-D components. They both felt the dashboard met their functional needs but for the look it really just boiled down to a matter of personal taste.
The beauty of a dashboard tool like Xcelsius is that it allows you to design and cater to all these different tastes. You have a wealth of components, colors, themes and templates available and, if this is still not enough, you can develop your own.
While some people prefer simple dashboards with clear sharp components, others may prefer a more complex and richer look. If you do not like pie charts and certain colors, you do not have to use them.
Dashboard design is an art but the key to designing an effective, as well as a visually pleasing, dashboard is not to read books about the subject and it is also not to hire a graphic artist. The key is to sit down with the people who are going to be using the dashboard and to understand what they want to see and how they want to view and interact with it. While this may sound too simplistic, it is not. Of course, there can be room for visual enhancement and “cool” features but only if they serve a purpose.
There are many dashboard products on the market today that provide limited views and components so that you often have to force fit your requirements into what is available within the product. Xcelsius, on the other hand, allows you to design and create dashboards in an almost infinite number of ways and you are only limited by your imagination (or your user’s requirements). As to how they look, it is doubtful you will ever please everyone but remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
For a gallery of Xcelsius dashboards designed by INFOSOL and defined by customers, visit INFOSOL’s Dashboard Gallery
Paul Grill started his career in Information Technology in the U.K. in 1978, as an Executive Data Processing Trainee for Honeywell. More than thirty years later, he still has a voracious appetite for learning as Information Technology continues to advance at an ever accelerating pace. He was first introduced to the world of Business Intelligence in 1991, in France, when he saw a demonstration of an early version of BusinessObjects on Windows 2.1. He returned to the U.S. to rave about this phenomenal product, but it was many years before BusinessObjects made it into the mainstream. Paul founded InfoSol in 1997, and made Business Intelligence one of the key solutions offered by the company. Today, InfoSol is a leading SAP BusinessObjects solutions partner, known for its expert consulting, education and innovative add-on solutions. Paul is well known within the SAP BusinessObjects community for his extensive knowledge of Business Intelligence, and he has lectured and written many articles on the subject. Paul enjoys writing, running and coaching kids soccer, and is passionate about Ancient Egyptology. Due to performance limitations within Xcelsius, it can be difficult to build large scale dashboards that are easy to manage. Fortunately, Xcelsius comes equipped with components that makes it easier to create a single “Parent” SWF which can load multiple “Child” SWFs inside itself. Perhaps the biggest challenge with this design architecture is enabling the “Parent” SWF to communicate with the “Child” SWF.
Luckily, with the use of Flash Variables and the SWF loader component, we can easily overcome this challenge.
How to do it:
1. Create your child.xlf
2. Establish a cell where your parameter will be passed. I used cell E6 in my example
3. Access the data manager within the child.xlf and add a Flash Variables connection
4. Add a range and give it a name. In my example I named the range “salesman”
5. Select the range in which the data parameter will be passed. Cell E6 is the range in my example
6. Create your parent.xlf
7. Setup a sheet within your parent.xlf as follows:
a) Enter the URL where your will store your child.swf in cell B5
b) Enter the name of the range that you used in your child.swf in cell B7 “salesman”
c) Reserve cell B9 for the parameter that is going to be passed
d) Enter the following formula in cell B11: =B5&”?”&B7&”=”&B9
8. Add a component to input your parameter – I chose to use a list box for my example
9. Bind the output destination of your component to cell B9
10. Add a SWF Loader component to the dashboard
11. Bind the Source URL to cell B11
There you have it. Although my example is fairly simple, this should get you moving in the right direction to developing larger scale dashboard applications that are easier to manage.
As always, feel free to download the source files.
1. Bind labels of the selector (eg. B2:B5)
2. Set Insertion type and destination (eg. C2)
3. Set the selected item type on Dynamic on the behaviour tab of the selector
4. Bind the item to a cell (eg F2)
5. Bind source cell of Push button (eg. E2)
6. Bind destination cell of Push button (eg. F2, same as selected item of combo!)
7. Add formula in source cell push =if(F2=”x”,B2,”x”)
8. Add “x” value in destion cell F2
Comes in handy when you want to reset only certain parts of the dashboard and not resetting it to its initial state (as you do with the reset button).
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.Before getting started, I want to provide a quick update on the Reportapalooza competition:
Unfortunately, I fell a bit behind while attending 2 SAP Conferences back to back this month. Sorry if I let anyone down but I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the support. I also want to give a huge CONGRATS to our current leader David Deitch who is an Xcelsius beginner turned Guru in this competition!
Now to Challenge #5. Labeled the ‘Report Remix’ challenge, I am tasked with learning more about Crystal Reports 2008 and sharing it with YOU the community, hence the ‘remix’ which is to take you on the journey with me of learning a new Crystal product 
. Below is my official public statement:
So let’s get started with a few simple questions?
Q. How can you integrate Xcelsius flash files into your Crystal Reports?
A. It’s a 2 step process. You first have to configure the Crystal Reports Data Consumer connection in Xcelsius (seen below) and then use the .swf button in Crystal Reports to embed the Xcelsius flash file. (More details on how to setup each will be provided in the next article)
Q. What are the Pros and Cons?
A. Pros – It is no secret that Xcelsius’ ability to handle large amounts of data is VERY limited. By embedding your Xcelsius flash file into Crystal Reports you get to leverage the power of the Crystal engine while utilizing the beautiful graphics in Xcelsius. It’s like having the best of both worlds. In fact, in my next blog posts I am going to show how to integrate a map in Xcelsius into a Crystal Report.
A. Cons – If your not as familiar with Xcelsius you may have some issues using the ‘Crystal Reports Data Consumer’ connection. It could use some fine tuning (note to the Product Team )
One more thing! This is your last week to submit your dashboards to the community Reportapalooza competition. Hope you read this far down, because if you have something worth seeing I am opening the door to review any entries that you send via email to gurus at everythingxcelsius.com and provide feedback if sent by 10/31 @ 12am EST.
Mico Yuk is a 2010 SAP Mentor and the founder of the Xcelsius Guru Network and the Everything Xcelsius blog. To learn more about her, please visit our About Us page.
Tags: Business Objects, Reportapalooza, SAP Crystal Dashboard Design, Xcelsius 2008
In this post we will review interaction options of the Label Based Menu component.
One of the nice features under the interaction options of the label based menu component is the “Expand On” feature. This turns the menu into a condensed button which when clicked or mouse over expands a list or menu similar to a web based fly menu.
This feature is great for gaining a little extra canvas space for the more important components such as the chart or indicators on the dashboard.
How to achieve:
1. On the behavior tab of the label based menu component uncheck “Always Expanded”
2. Choose whether or not you want to expand on mouse click or mouse over. I prefer mouse over.
3. Choose the direction you want to expand. For horizontal orientation you have the option to expand left or right. For vertical orientation you can choose from center down, left down, right down, center up, left up, or right up.
4. Open Animation gives an animated “Flash” feel when the menu expands.
There you have it. An easy way to gain some additional real estate on your canvas.
Please let me know if you have any questions and as always please feel free to download the source files.
As SAP announces the “ramp up” or controlled release for SAP BusinessObjects XI 4.0, some companies who are planning to upgrade to BO XI 3.1 are wondering if they should now wait.
The simple answer is “no” and there are many good reasons to upgrade to XI 3.1 as soon as possible.
Firstly, BusinessObjects XI 3.1 has been the general release for a couple of years now and has proven to be a stable and solid platform. It brings a new version of Web Intelligence with the Rich Client (offline) capability with access to external data providers like Excel. It also has other features, previously only available in Desktop Intelligence, like the fold/unfold feature and stored procedure support through the universe. It adds new functionality also like the ability to track data changes between versions, contextual hyperlinking and use of drop-down selection boxes for prompts.
At the same time, XI 3.1 fully supports Desktop Intelligence reports unchanged which is quite significant when you consider that there will be no support for Desktop Intelligence in XI 4. This means that XI 3.1 will be the last BusinessObjects release to support Desktop Intelligence or the old Full Client reports.
BusinessObjects XI 4.0 will be a major new release with a lot of new functionality some of which will be available in the first 4.0 release and some which will be released later in service pack updates. It will be a 64-bit software application. It will have a new semantic layer that will combine the capabilities of the old BusinessObjects universe and Crystal Business Views and with a slew of new functionality including support of OLAP (MDX) data sources like SAP BW and MS OLAP cubes. The old BusinessObjects Universe Designer will remain supported in XI 4 for compatibility and easier transition.
There are new functionalities and capabilities in Web Intelligence, Xcelsius, Crystal and other content providers including taking advantage of the new semantic layer and universe design tool. There are two versions of Crystal – Crystal Enterprise which is new and uses the new semantic layer and Crystal Reports 2011 which is a continuation of Crystal Reports 2008. There is a new OLAP analysis tool called Advanced Analysis which replaces Voyager and there are significant improvements to Data Services and the BOE infrastructure functionality.
There will also be a new utility to move the contents of your old BusinessObjects content to XI 4. The Import Wizard is effectively replaced by this new tool called the Upgrade Manager Tool. This works for upgrades from XI 3.1 and the plan is to also be able to upgrade from XI R2 with security model changes. There is no upgrade available from earlier releases meaning you would need to move to XI R2 or XI 3.1 before moving to XI 4.
The ramp up will probably last 3 to 6 months so the general availability of XI 4.0 is expected sometime between February 2011 and May 2011. It is unlikely that the first service pack will be available until late in the year and most existing BO customers will probably not look at moving to XI 4 until 2012 or 2013 (based on previous trends).
For these BO customers still using Desktop Intelligence, there will be the added consideration and work of converting or replacing their old reports with Web Intelligence which for some may be a considerable effort and cost.
According to information disseminated at the ASUG BO annual conference in October, in addition to Desktop Intelligence, the following other existing BO XI products will be end of life : Voyager, Encyclopedia/Discussions and Performance Manager.
Historically, the current and immediately prior software releases tend to be actively supported for all software issues which would suggest that at some point in 2011 only XI 4.0 and XI 3.1 will be considered the actively supported releases.
Taking all of this information into consideration, it does make sense to upgrade to BusinessObjects XI 3.1 in the coming months if you have not done so already.
Paul Grill started his career in Information Technology in the U.K. in 1978, as an Executive Data Processing Trainee for Honeywell. More than thirty years later, he still has a voracious appetite for learning as Information Technology continues to advance at an ever accelerating pace. He was first introduced to the world of Business Intelligence in 1991, in France, when he saw a demonstration of an early version of BusinessObjects on Windows 2.1. He returned to the U.S. to rave about this phenomenal product, but it was many years before BusinessObjects made it into the mainstream. Paul founded InfoSol in 1997, and made Business Intelligence one of the key solutions offered by the company. Today, InfoSol is a leading SAP BusinessObjects solutions partner, known for its expert consulting, education and innovative add-on solutions. Paul is well known within the SAP BusinessObjects community for his extensive knowledge of Business Intelligence, and he has lectured and written many articles on the subject. Paul enjoys writing, running and coaching kids soccer, and is passionate about Ancient Egyptology. Have you ever used the Highlighting Expert in Crystal Reports? Chances are your response is no, and you are wondering what it is. The Highlighting Expert is a button on the Experts Toolbar. The button looks like this: 
.
The Highlighting Expert is also on the shortcut menu of the right-click. Once you choose this Expert, this dialog box opens:
Try it out, the Highlighting Expert is fast and easy to use!! It gives the “wow” to your report.
Happy Reporting!
In my previous post I demonstrated how to pass data from a parent to child SWF with the use of Flash Variables and the SWF Loader component. Today, I’m going to demonstrate how to accomplish the same functionality leveraging a free add-on component from Inovista.com called the “Data Sharer”.
One of the noticeable difference in this solution compared to the use of Flash Variables is that the child SWF does not have to load and initialize each time the parameter is changed.
How to do it:
1. Go to Inovista.com and download the free data sharer component
2. Add the data sharer component with Xcelsius’ Add-On Manager GUI or see Kalyan’s post “Using the command-line version of the Add-On Manger in Xcelsius 2008” to add using command line
3. Using the same child.xlf as in my previous example I have kept the same cell (E6) reserved for my parameter
4. Next add the data sharer component found under the “Inovista Other” category in your components list. Note that the component will not be visible at run time.
5. Give the data sharer a connection name. In my example I have used “salesman”
6. Check the “Import Values” box
7. Select the range of cells for the “Import Data Cells”. In my example it is cell E6
8. Save and export your child SWF
9. Using the same parent.xls as in my previous example I have made a few changes to the underlying excel sheet.
a. Cell B5 should have the URL to your child SWF (Note that your SWF Loader Component will link to this URL)
b. Cell B7 should be reserved for the parameter that is going to be passed
10. Add the data sharer component to your canvas
11. Use the same connection name that you used in your child SWF. I used “salesman” in my example
12. Check the “Transmit Values” box
13. Select the range of cells for the “Transmit Data Cells”. In my example it is cell B7
14. Save and export your parent SWF. Note that the parent and child SWF should be located on the same server or file directory.
There you have it. Passing data from a Parent to Child SWF leveraging what I feel to be one of the best free components available to the Xcelsius community. There are a few quirks with this component so be sure to read the supporting documentation when implementing into a more complex model.
As always, please feel free to download the source files.
Tired of following instructions from the User Guides? Trying to find an old video on Xcelsius? MyXcelsius.com has a solution. They recently launched Xcelsius Videos page which has all the Xcelsius Videos that you can find on the web. They all are captured on high resolution and can be viewed on any browser.
The InfoBurst team at InfoSol is relocating their Infoburst2009 site to a new web address. Visit the new product blog at infosolblog.com/infoburst
Yolande Grill is the Vice President of Business Development at InfoSol Inc. I would like to think of myself as the Chief Transformation Officer. My favorite quote to ponder is one from Trina Paulus. "How Exactly does one become a butterfly? You must want to fly so badly, that you are willing to give up being a catterpillar" When you connect an OpenDocument statement to a URL button in Xcelsius and you apply the option New Window in the button properties, a new window is opened to show your WebI report (or Crystal report for that matter). However the report is not actually opened in that window, it is opened in your dashboard window, thus after closing or going back it forces the dashboard to reload again.
Solution:
add the following commands to the opendocument url:
sWindow=New&isApplication=true
the first command forces the link to open in a new window, the second command keeps your dashboard in the state it is in.
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.More and more, dashboards are playing an increasingly pivotal role in organizations with a growing demand for new ways of delivering and consuming these dashboards. Users are no longer content with having dashboards delivered via a corporate portal or BusinessObjects InfoView. In fact, to use a rather overused BI cliché, users are demanding dashboards that deliver “the right information, at the right time, in the right place”.
This means, that organizations are now looking at ways to make dashboards available offline, delivered by email, or accessible on their users’ mobile devices. They also want to focus the information within the dashboards so that it can be personalized and distributed to users in a simple file format. However, many organizations have concerns about data security, encryption and scalability, and also the work required to customize dashboards. These concerns have prevented them from pursuing what could be a very effective way to extend the use of business intelligence to new users.
Antivia will be hosting a webinar on Thursday, November 18 at 2:00pm EST, demonstrating how you can utilize the power of XWIS and the BusinessObjects Enterprise platform to distribute personalized, offline Xcelsius dashboards, in a secure and scalable way to new users and new devices.
You can register for the webinar here. Space is limited so register today.
For those of you who missed the previous webinar: “Accelerate your Xcelsius Dashboards”, the recording is now available here.
Soo Tang Yuk fosters and evangelizes the ‘Xcelsius Gurus Network” and its communities. To find out more about her, please visit the About Us page. (posted on behalf of Andrew Smith, VP of Antivia, North America)
Tags: Antivia, Business Objects, BusinessObjects, Xcelsius 2008, Xcelsius Webinars
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 2008The 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.
