Are you going to the ASUG BusinessObjects Conference in Orlando Oct 10-12? Make sure you RSVP for the BI4 launch party on Monday night!
All of the details are at EverythingXcelsius for RSVP instructions. Hope to see you there!!
http://everythingxcelsius.com/xcelsius-2008/asug-sbouc-bi4-release-party-official-rsvp/4274
You put blood sweat and tears into a dashboard design element and want to re-use it in another project. This question often arises, so if you are not aware, you can copy and paste components between 2 instances of Xcelsius.
There are a few best practices to accomplish this successfully, ensuring the copy and paste will not only hold your bindings, but also not crash or corrupt your project.
There needs to be some consistency between your Xcelsius project files before you copy and paste. The most important is Excel ranges and tabs. The tab names where your components are linked need to be identical. In other words, if you have a chart that is bound to a range called ‘Sheet1′!$D$2:$D$5 your new XLF project will also need to have a range available called ‘Sheet1′!$D$2:$D$5. Otherwise your bindings will be lost.
If you are pasting into a project that already has tab names established, you can always go back to your original XLF and change the Excel tab names. If you do this, make sure you save your XLF as a new version before copying anything over.
If your old XLF project uses a different skin than the new one, all of your custom color configuration and styling could be lost. Make sure the skin for your new XLF is the same as the old.
If you want to use data from your old XLF inside of the new project, you will need to copy data from Excel sheets. Unfortunately in many cases it is not quite as simple as it should be. My recommendation is to go into your old XLF, click on the Data menu, and then Export Data. Open the Excel sheet and paste from Excel into your new XLF. Once again you need to make sure that if you are copying formulas, you paste into the exact same range and that your XLF contains the correct tab names.
This is the easy part! Select the components that you would like to copy from your canvas or the Xcelsius Object Browser. Press Ctrl & “C” to copy the components. Inside your new XLF, press “Ctrl” & “V” to paste your components. With your new components inserted, you will want to close your old XLF and save your new XLF. I have seen odd behavior over the years with Excel and Xcelsius when you have more than one Xcelsius project open.
Let me know if you run into any problems or nuances. I have avoided several of them using the process described above.
Today as I tried to figure out how to turn some new features off in Facebook, I came across an article stating that a Facebook IPO could come in at $100,000,000,000. That is 100 billion dollars… An amount of money that I can’t wrap my mind around for several reasons.
When I look at this story line, I do not see the Facebook saga ending well unless investors have knowledge of a silver bullet that Facebook will deliver to market, changing everything we know about how to use their “social graph”… I think that Facebook has a bright future, but an inflated valuation leads to burning cash which creates the volatility that bubbles are made of; this is what concerns me because a software bubble is bad for business. At some point when investors start pushing for returns and Facebook under-delivers, everything goes south from there. The valuation of Facebook really boils down to the fact that it commands a critical mass of over 800 million people. The stats around Facebook usage are un-real, and something that makes Facebook un-like any other technology.
They always say that you should invest in things that you know… As a Facebook user, potential advertiser, and enterprise software CEO, I have not given a single dollar to Facebook. On the other hand, I have given Google tens of thousands of advertising dollars over the last year. The entire online advertising market is $25B and Facebook commands less than 5% of that market; though it is growing significantly year-over-year.
What are your thoughts? Do you think $100B public offering will be the beginning of the end for Facebook? or do you have confidence that they will overcome serious skepticism and remain a critical hub of our social media experience without burning investors?
This week I was asked to provide the source file to a compass that I built in Xcelsius for the SAP 505 Races several years ago. I figured I would share the source files with the community in case if you have a need to show a compass in a dashboard.
Overall the process is quite simple… Import a gauge, overlay my compass SWF, and change the gauge min/max angle to (0,360). I modified my tick marks and provided a legend in the spreadsheet.
Last week, I had the chance to attend TechEd for a few days to share my experiences about location intelligence and BI. With so many great sessions in such a short time, I am thankful to have access to the PPT decks online. I was in Vegas to co-present with SAP about location based analytics and in my downtime, was fighting a cold; so I was not able to immerse myself in the conference.
The sponsors at TechEd and topics on the agenda are two leading indicators that this conference is not catered to the same profile of visitors who we see at the ASUG BusinessObjects conference. Because the skill sets, technologies, and areas of focus are so diverse across SAP’s huge portfolio of products, it is hard to have a developer conference that can satisfy everyone.
I now turn my attention to this year’s ASUG SAP BusinessObjects conference in Orlando where I will be presenting a few sessions and also have plenty of time on the show floor as a sponsor. Make sure if you plan on coming to Orlando to stop by and say hi.
