With 2008 coming to an end, I wanted to reflect on what has happened this year as I look forward to 2009...

Customer Education- The first and most exciting trend that I have seen is the education and comfort that businesses have acquired for dashboards. Regardless of technology, enterprise customers generally understand how they can benefit from using dashboards as an entry point into business information. In previous years, I spent a lot of time educating and setting expectations for what a dashboard should do. These days, a lot of customers have come to understand the potential capabilities of dashboard technologies like Xcelsius.

New Technology- Most of the major BI software vendors have adopted some form of Adobe Flex UI into their product suites. The rich user experience and visualization that this technology provides to end users is unmatched. Xcelsius 2008 uses Adobe Flex to provide a new platform for the same Xcelsius development paradigm we have come to know over the last 5 years. The 2008 release didn’t provide many new components, but did improve several shortcomings from previous versions, and is a great foundation for new integrations and extended capabilities in the future.

Xcelsius SDK- The availability of the SDK with Xcelsius 2008 was a huge step forward for the product, and critical for the success of Xcelsius in the future. Centigon Solutions and Antivia to name a few, have taken the lead to release to market add-in components for Xcelsius.

Moving forward- As we get ready for 2009, the global economic issues will certainly impact how we do all do business. At the end of the day, technology like Xcelsius is intended to make business information quicker and easier to access. I am committed to continue using Xcelsius as a dashboard development tool as long as it continues to grow with the demands of the marketplace. We are working on new products that improve the speed and simplicity for deploying robust dashboards with Xcelsius as we begin 2009. I appreciate the kind emails I have received this year and look forward to continuing this blog in 2009.

On 12/17 @10am PST, I will co-present with Mico Yuk "Xcelsius Gurus- Top 10 Excel Tips for Success. We will discuss best practices for setting up your Xcelsius dashboards. In this how-to session, we will share some of the best practices we have adopted after hundreds of succesful dashboard implementations between the two of us. I am extremely excited to present with Mico, and hope that you can join us. This is an SAP SDN sponsored event so you can sign up here:

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/index?rid=/webcontent/uuid/907e07f3-b09c-2b10-a1bd-bdc869e133f4

I have been asked countless times to explain the value of Reverse Selector, which is actually difficult to articulate unless you have spent some time trying to build complex calculators with many inputs. This add-on component for Xcelsius 2008 is one of the few that Centigon Solutions sells on the website. Hopefully this will clarify how this component is useful to your dashboard projects.

Reverse selector provides a unique functionality to Xcelsius and is designed specifically for dashboards/calculators that require multiple data inputs. Generally, the Reverse Selector is best used for calculators or forms containing many variables that an end user controls. Coupling single value components or input text boxes with a Reverse Selector will significantly improve the configuration process, enabling end users to input an unlimited number of variables with ease.

To understand the value of this Xcelsius plugin, we will address a use case where Reverse Selector can reduce overhead, save development time, and streamline a dashboard:

Use Case
In the calculator below we want to first filter through sales reps by region, then calculate how increasing each rep’s sales can contribute to the overall target. The technical challenge for the Xcelsius model is allowing a single slider to dictate a value for each sales rep, and then persist the values so they can be used in the calculation.

Download Source Files- Requires Reverse Selector
>>Get Reverse Selector Trial

Problem

The traditional solution to this problem included stacking multiple sliders on top of each other, then assigning dynamic visibility to each slider based on the selected sales rep. With a 1-1 relationship between a single value component and the cell it controls, scaling this solution is a major challenge. While 2 or 3 stacked sliders are not a problem, 10 or 20 quickly generates a dashboard project that is heavy and difficult to maintain. Furthermore, the time to configure each selector could lead to hours of un-necessary work.

Solution
Reverse selector is a great alternative to simplify design and management of calculator functionality within a dashboard. In this example, the Reverse Selector will use one slider to insert and persist the values based on the selected sales rep. The following directions illustrate how to setup a Reverse Selector to achieve the following dashboard.

Source Value- The Source Value is a single cell where you will also link your single value component or input text.

Destination Range- The destination range is the column where you will insert and distribute “Source Value.”

Row Index- The Row index will dictate where the Source Value will be placed within the destination range.

With these three properties set, it is extremely important to set the appropriate behavior for the Reverse Selector.

Update Destination Range- This behavior option dictates when the Reverse Selector will insert the "Source Value" into the "Destination Range." The most commonly used behavior is "When Source Value Changes." This option triggers Reverse Selector to insert any time the source value changes. In other words, as the slider modifies the source value, Reverse Selector will insert its value into the destination range based on the "Row Index."

Source Value Lookup- This behavior is the most important feature making Reverse Selector unique because it enables bi-directional communication between the Source Value cell and the Destination Range. As the Row Index changes, the slider component will need to reference the persisted value within the destination range. The Source Value Lookup will retrieve this value and place it in the Source Value cell. Without this capability, the reverse selector will simply overwrite the destination cells.

Tips for Using Reverse Selector

• When using this component, remember to check the appropriate behaviors.
• Do not have a selector insert into the Source Value component.
• Check out the templates on the Centigon Solutions website to see some of the different ways for implementing this component.

Recommendations for future releases:

• Allow reverse selector to insert into a range, rather than a single row or column.
• Make the Source Value Lookup behavior checked by default.
• Rename the Reverse Selector component.

>>Get a free Reverse Selector Trial

During my webinar last week Xtreme Makeover, I showed a demo dashboard where a user could drill down from a pie chart down to a bar graph and pass the color from the selected slice to the chart below. This is a simple technique for creating consistency with color, which facilitates intuitive analysis; if it were only as simple to setup in Xcelsius… In essence, I am using chart alerts to dynamically change the color for a single series chart. This method will only work with bar and column charts.

Download Source Files

Inside of my spreadsheet I associate a multiplier for each product line (1,2,3…). When I enable the pie chart drill down feature, I include this multiplier in my source data and data insertion range.

Directly under the insertion range where we link the bar chart’s data, I perform a simple calculation using the multiplier (=[value]/[target multiplier]). These rows highlighted in green within the spreadsheet are the bar chart alert targets.

Inside of the bar chart’s alerts tab, I color coded alert levels for each value in my pie chart.

With everything hooked up, you get a nice effect as someone clicks on the pie chart. What would be a better solution?...Having an ability to bind colors to the spreadsheet… As a user community you should definitely request this functionality on the BOBJ support and forum sites. With an ability to bind colors in the spreadsheet, you could enable this functionality for all components within Xcelsius, and in turn facilitate better analysis for end users.

On November 12 at 10AM PST, I will be conducting a 30 minute webinar with Business Objects sharing practices for developing better looking dashboards with Xcelsius. This presentation is based on some of the articles that I have written about dashboard design. The goal is to shed light on some of the building blocks for building dashboards that not only look good, but also promote non-intrusive easy to use interfaces for interactive dashboards. You can view and sign up for the event using the link below, and I look forward to sharing some helpful information with the community.

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/businessobjects?rid=/webcontent/uuid/f0a68ded-5d87-2b10-6682-c541930da65e