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

Crystal Reports Customized Groups

Did you know that in Crystal Reports you can design your own customized groups for your reports? All you need to do is to decide what the new groups will be called and what the rules or criteria are for the different groups. You are ready to go!

Let’s say that you have a list report containing 250 companies and the total sales amount for the year to date. The Sales Manager would like to see them grouped as follows:

Gold Star Customers (Total Sales Amount greater than $100,000)Silver Star Customers (Total Sales Amount between $50,000. and $99,999)Bronze Star Customers (Total Sales Amount between $10,000. and $49,999)Must Contact Customers (Total Sales Amount less than $9,999)

Here’s how you customize the grouping in Crystal Reports:

Insert a group on the Total Sales Amount field.Select Group from the Insert menuIn the order drop down (second drop-down on Common Tab)—choose Specified Order.A New Tab will open with the label Specified Order.

Type the name of the group ie. ‘Gold Star Customers’ and click on the New button, which opens the following dialog for entering the criteria of this group:

Add your criteria and click OK.Create the other two main groups in the same manner.The last group, Must Contact Customers, will go on the tab for Others.
Select the tab Others – notice the radio button is already there, just change the name in the text box from ‘Others’ to “Must Contact Customers”.You now click on OK and you are done!!

You have now made your first custom grouping for your report! Congratulations.

Happy Reporting!

View the original article here

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

Changing Default Field Settings in Crystal Reports

When you design your reports in Crystal Reports, Crystal Reports uses the database format for the database fields.  It also uses the database fonts as I discussed in Setting Default Fonts in Crystal Reports. This, again, requires that you format these fields every time you want to use them in you report.

I recommend you take the time upfront to change these default settings in Crystal Report so that you won’t have to change the settings on each new report you create. Here’s how you change the default field settings in Crystal Reports:

From the File Menu, select Options.Choose the Fields tab.For each field category, select the format you would use regularly. (For example; for Numbers you may like the comma format and 2 decimal places.)Currency could be the same as Number, but with the currency symbol: Floating places the symbol directly to the left of the number, e.g.  $456.87.Fixed places the symbol several spaces away from the number, e.g. $       456.87.Date is often in the database as Date and Time, but your organization does not use the time part!  Format it so that Crystal Reports fixes that so it appears the way you want it on your report.  You can include the leading zero (05/05/2010) or not (5/5/2010.)  Pick the preferred format for your organization.Date and Time should be the same as Date, if your organization does not use the Time part.  Otherwise, format according to the preference of your organization.

Keep in mind, Crystal Reports is considered a presentational report designing tool.  While your report should always look professional, it does not mean the report designer needs to spend hours formatting it.  The report designer needs to present the correct data in a professional manner, but with Crystal Reports, that processt does not have to be difficult!

View the original article here

Crystal Reports Rounding Function

In general, Crystal Reports users set up the default formatting to display the data in the way it is to be used most often. However, when it is necessary to be able to switch quickly to another format – right-clicking to format the field is usually the solution.

If the data field comes down to Crystal Reports with several decimal points, one solution would be to use the remove decimal places button on the tool formatting bar. That button actually rounds up on decimal place numbers greater than 5 and rounds down on decimal place numbers less than 5.

If that data is included in a formula, the Round function could be used on the number to be formatted. To give the report designer more control there are actually two functions for rounding numbers: Round and RoundUp. Each of these rounding functions have two sub-functions, which we will see below.

The syntax is simply Round (x), with x being the numeric or currency field to be rounded. Here are some examples of the Round function:

Round(1.234) = 1Round(1.4999) = 1Round(1.5000) = 2

You can also add a second argument to the Round function to indicate how many places to be rounded to as represented by y here: Round(x, y). Some more examples:

Round(1.234,2) = 1.23Round(1234.2345,2) = 1234.23Round(2345.23456,0) = 2345

The syntax is RoundUp(x), again with x being the numeric or currency field to be rounded. Here are some examples of the RoundUp function:

RoundUp(4.234) = 5RoundUp(1.4999) = 2RoundUp(1.25000) =2

Again, you can also add a second argument to the RoundUp function to indicate how many places to be rounded to as represented by y here: RoundUp(x, y). Some more examples:

RoundUp(1.234,2) = 1.25RoundUp(6.36521,3) = 6.366RoundUp(2345.23456,0) = 2345

If the second argument is left blank then the function rounds up to the nearest integer. In other words, 0 is the default for the second argument.

All this sounds complex, but it really isn’t. I would suggest that you try it on simple numbers with decimals first. Then, when you have the expected results, place it in your Crystal Report using it with the database field.

Taking it a step further, as in Arne’s comment – an if-then-else operator would have to be incorporated using syntax similar to this example:

If region in[CA, MA, FL] then Round({orderdetails.orderamount},2)Else Round({orderdetails.orderamount},0)

Happy Rounding with Crystal Reports!!

View the original article here

À tous ceux et celle qui veulent découvrir Xcelsius

J’ai toujours trouvé que les dirigeants d’entreprise étaient “pris” avec des rapports Excel drabes et peu invitants à regarder. Combien de fois ai-je vu des fichiers de rapports mensuels destinés à des gestionnaires, contenant 150 lignes dans des colonnes impossibles à regarder sans s’arracher les yeux… sans aucun graphique ni tableau…

Eh bien… dans un souci de faire évoluer le monde du dashboarding en général, j’invite tous ceux et celles qui auraient envie de faire passer leurs rapports de gestion à un autre niveau à essayer la version gratuite de ce qui deviendra un des incontournables dans la présentation de données d’entreprises.

Le logiciel “CX Now!”, version minimaliste de SAP Crystal Xcelsius, vous offre un tas de nouvelles façons de présenter vos analyses, vos tableaux de bord et autres. D’utilisation simple, il vous n’en prendra que quelques minutes pour comprendre comment il fonctionne.

Ceci pré-suppose que vous avez des connaissances “moyennes” de Excel et que vous savez comment faire des graphiques et (peut-être) créer des plages de données dynamiques.

Téléchargez ce logiciel gratuit du site download.com, en utilisant le site suivant:

Si vous avez des questions ou des difficultés à bien utiliser le logiciel, écrivez-nous!

Bon apprentissage!

Cliquer ici pour télécharger Filed under: BI/Reporting, Xcelsius Tagged: | Xcelsius, CxNow!, Reporting, Dashboards

View the original article here

Cool Stuff: Film Reel Countdown and Radar Simulation using Xcelsius

Cool Stuff: Film Reel Countdown and Radar Simulation using Xcelsius – 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 SAPContactAuthorsArchivesCool Stuff: Film Reel Countdown and Radar Simulation using XcelsiusOct 21st, 2010

by Kalyan Verma. TweetShareEmailTweetShareEmail

Inspired by Joshua Tapley’s UFO tracker, I’ve tried my hand at creating this cool animation using Xcelsius. I will be posting the source code soon, however, I would like to hear from you all on your own “approach and take” on creating such an animation using out of box Xcelsius components.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post)