There is an old saying that owning paint and brushes does not make you a painter. This is the same case for building dashboards. I often see resumes of individuals who credit themselves as experts in Xcelsius and unfortunately customers mistake technology expertise for proficiency in dashboard design; which is two different things. Xcelsius is a free-form development environment requiring skills above and beyond technical aptitude to create meaningful content. A dashboard designer who uses Xcelsius should understand basic business performance management concepts and then know how to visually organize this information for an end user to consume. Dashboard development borrows concepts from multiple facets of design including but not limited to software architecture, user interface, and data visualization. An individual who arranges Xcelsius components on a canvas without strong grasp of these concepts is the equivalent of a painter trying to create a piece while blindfolded. Unfortunately there are customers who have paid a significant amount of money for Xcelsius dashboards created by individuals who recently added Xcelsius to their resume.

There is certainly a learning curve for Xcelsius just like any software application but new users require education in design techniques much more than technology. I have been designing dashboard applications for years and I still learn from experts like Stephen Few and others who write and share experiences, and from customers who share their performance management standards through various projects. The good news for any new Xcelsius developers who want to refine their design approach is there is a ton of reading available on web sites and blogs like Dashboard Insight. For customers who are searching for dashboard developers, you should definitely educate yourselves on these same web sites so you can ask the right questions and ensure that the person building content for your business users and executives is not the equivalent to a blind painter.

I work with many excellent independent designers or companies, who specialize in dashboard design, so if you are in the category, feel free to comment and provide a link to your organization. If you have any questions about any of the companies who provide their information below, feel free to contact me directly.

The flashy aesthetics of Xcelsius has always been a debate sparked by data visualization experts and designers who like the “shiny” graphics provided by Xcelsius and other technologies. I disagree with customers or developers who passionately desire Flashy graphics over what Few emphasizes as well executed dashboard design by maximizing every inch of screen real estate. Xcelsius does not derive its value by looking shiny, and customers today don’t buy into flashy graphics over a solid value proposition both for business and/or IT stakeholders. Xcelsius sells because it provides value as a flexible point and click development tool for constructing BI dashboards....

Read Entire Article at EverythingXcelsius.com

In my day to day discussions with other consultants and customers who use Xcelsius, I have experienced common issues that you may find when building Xcelsius dashboards. While I often work within the constraints of the product I beat up Xcelsius pretty good and have found a suitable system configuration for building dashboards. I wanted to share my configuration and practices in hopes that you may be able to improve your dashboard building experience.

Troubleshooting an issue with Xcelsius can be a bit of a moving target with different versions and hot fixes of Windows, Excel, Flash player, and of course Xcelsius. Here is how my system is currently configured:

PC- Sony Vio Laptop
Dual core Pentium with 3GB RAM.
Windows Vista
Office 2007
Xcelsius 2008 Enterprise SP1 Hotfix2
Flash Player 10

If I could have it my way, I would still run windows XP with Office 2003. Windows XP consumes less memory and in my experience, Office 2003 also seems to be a lot more stable.

Design Time with Xcelsius Best Practices
As you launch Xcelsius, the following practices should be taken into account to set you up for success.

• Do not run Excel while using Xcelsius. I have both 2007 and 2003 on my system, so if I need to get into Excel while using Xcelsius, I only use 2003.
• Run 1 instance of Xcelsius at a time. If you need to copy and paste components between Xcelsius instances do so and then close the second instance of Xcelsius.
• If you need to copy data from an old Excel spreadsheet, paste into wordpad first and then Xcelsius. It adds an extra step but goes much smoother than trying to get data from Excel into Xcelsius
• If Xcelsius crashes for whatever reason, open the task manager CTR + ALT + DELETE and shot down any Excel processes before re-starting Xcelsius.
• Turn Excel auto save off while working heavily inside Xcelsius. In Excel 2003, this is located in Tools>Options>Save. In Excel 2007 this is located under Excel Options.
• Shut down all Excel add-ins or any other applications that may use Excel or Office.
• Save and version your dashboards every time you make major changes. It never hurts to have extra versions sitting around.
• Don’t develop dashboards on Xcelsius running on Windows Server. I don’t believe that it is supported and does not work very well for heavy development.

If you have other contributions to this list feel free to add them in the comments section.

Continued from Part 1: Observations

With a general understanding of the basic concepts that collectively create dashboard value, there are certainly opportunities to improve on each concept. Before evaluating opportunities for improving dashboard development for Xcelsius, there are a few assumptions that we will make to narrow our focus.

• Data quality is not an issue
• The methods for monitoring performance are rationalized (performance indicators, metrics, supporting analytics, etc).

With these assumptions taken into account, we can focus specifically on dashboard development. Xcelsius does an amazing job of providing controls for painting a picture of business performance. As the software evolved into an enterprise dashboard development application for BusinessObjects, we have seen great improvements along the lines of:

• Integration with BusinessObjects Enterprise, enabling the required heavy lifting for processing and serving up data through the semantic layer.
• Streamlined Xcelsius development environment for faster easier authoring and maintenance of dashboards.
• Extended global filtering, alerts, and aesthetics capabilities for an improved dashboard experience.
• Addition of an SDK, allowing developers to generate new components, connectivity options, and logic.

The addition of the SDK is the best opportunity for you to maximize their investment in Xcelsius for dashboard development.
The SDK enables your customers or third party developers to extend Xcelsius’ capabilities far beyond what exists today. For each concept described in part one, the SDK opens up a new world of possibilities through:

1. Automation- Unlimited opportunities to automate complicated procedures and logic through simplified point and click properties sheets within the Xcelsius development environment.
2. Visualization- There are visualization mediums that have become synonymous with dashboards including spark-lines, bullet charts, and scorecards that would serve Xcelsius dashboards well.
3. Navigation- There are advanced navigation paradigms including hierarchical, multi-select, and drag and drop that would extend end user’s ability to intuitively navigate information.
4. Connectivity- Any data source that can be exposed via XML or web services should be integrated into an Xcelsius dashboard with the same point and click simplicity as Business Objects.
5. Runtime Analysis- While Xcelsius makes what-if analysis a breeze to create using Excel logic, there are opportunities to improve the depth and breadth of runtime analysis capabilities.
6. User Adoption- While end user’s appreciate the sleek looking graphics, and aesthetics, there is certainly room to improve customer’s ability to build professional looking dashboards.

Coming Soon: Part 3, Available Solutions
Next, I will recommend available solutions in the marketplace that you can download and integrate today.

This week, I wanted to discuss recent developments in dashboard development using Xcelsius. In looking at the marketplace and how dashboards have evolved, Xcelsius has remained a popular tool for building business intelligence dashboards. I wanted to outline my experiences in this 3-part series and hopefully provide some valuable information as you plan your next dashboard project.

Part 1: Observations- How we derive value from dashboards today.
Part 2: Opportunities- Technology gaps and how to fill them in.
Part 3: Available Solutions- Extend and improve dashboards with add-ons.

Part 1: Observations
The overall value of a dashboard as we know it today is to simplify the process for delivering information to business users, while painting a picture of current performance as it relates to strategy and/or processes. The resulting benefit of this simplification is to reach and empower more people within an organization to identify problems, improve efficiencies, and ultimately seek new opportunities.

While a dashboard and its contents look different for every customer, the underlying methods are similar in how you derive value from dashboards.

• Automation- Dashboards automate the process of cultivating, summarizing, and presenting information aligned with business logic.
• Visualization- Dashboards enable consumption of data through data visualization controls ranging from trends to multi-dimensional graphs.
• Navigation- Dashboards facilitate interactive analysis for filtering, sorting, and drilling into more information within a single consistent interface.
• Connectivity- Dashboards enable on-demand access to multiple data sources for a mash-up of the most current information.
• Runtime Analysis- Dashboards enable some level of analytic or what-if capabilities to provide additional insight beyond monitoring data.
• User Adoption- Dashboards ultimately can increase user adoption of “business intelligence”, assuming the executions of the previous elements are appropriately combined into a useful application.

Part 2, Opportunities
Next, I will identify opportunities for improving dashboards with Xcelsius.