Roambi Trends provides the ultimate interface to monitor, zoom, and drill into measures (sales, profit) that change over time in consecutive intervals (days, months, quarters). Organize and trend information in real-time while maintaining historical context using a thoughtfully designed line and area chart user interface. Rotate your iPhone to uncover Trends’ powerful zoom capabilities that provide detailed focus required to quickly assimilate information. Slice by multiple time dimensions (day, week, month, quarter, year) and visualize any measure from sales ($) volume to energy consumption (kWh).

Example Use Cases
Trends by default will display the latest information available, with an option to toggle inline alerts that measure change from the previous interval. Any information that changes frequently where historical trending is required is a perfect use case for Trends. Whether you monitor market data to assess risk, or require historical sales trends at your fingertips, Trends’ powerful interface will accommodate any data or time series. For example, a retail energy sales executive can utilize Trends to reference their customer’s historical energy usage and demand data. While dynamically comparing two data points, the retail energy sales executive can address on-peak and off-peak demand inquiries from their customer while un-tethered from the computer.
   

Roambi Trends Features
Aside from the sleek aesthetics and thoughtful design execution Roambi Trends features:

• Multi-level categorization of key dimension to simplify navigation
• Inline alerting that indicates change from the previous interval by units and %.
• Slicing feature to display multiple grains of data by time dimension
• Touch focus to display any value within the chart.
• Dynamic trending with automatic best fit calculations that use the data shape to choose a correct trend (linear, logarithmic, polynomial, power, exponential, polynomial, moving average)
  
  
• Moving average trend will evaluate every “x” data points plot an average line
• Multi-touch comparison of two values within Trends’ chart interface
• Landscape rotation expansion of chart including sliding micro-chart for pan and zoom functionality
• Bookmarking option saves your place so you can re-call it at anytime
• Locate specific trends with built in Go-to feature and trend selection
• Instant email and screenshot capabilities to share content with non Roambi users or  with Roambi users via Roambicast
• Email Trends views while keeping  with bookmarks intact

Data Visualization Best Practices
Trends employs the use of a line and area chart visualization control, which is best applied to consecutive interval metrics which are always time-based (month, day, etc). To ensure that Trends will properly display your business data, the dimension that will ultimately display as the X-axis will contain consecutive values (days, months, hours) to communicate performance over time. Trends’ best-fit line will evaluate the data shape and then generate an appropriate trend using one of 6 statistical calculations. Included as a trend option is a moving average that will evaluate every “n” values to re-calculate the average.
Appropriate uses for Trends where the listed dimension (quarter, week, etc) is intended as the chart X-axis.

• Sales by quarter
• Expenses by week
• kWh by day
• Safety incidents by month
• Market Price by hour

Inappropriate uses for Trends where the listed dimension (region, category, etc) is intended as the chart X-axis.

• Sales by region
• Expenses by category
• kWh by customer
• Safety incidents by department
• Market price by commodity

If your data does not contain appropriate data for line chart visualization through Trends, other Roambi views like CataList, and Cardex can fulfill other requires for navigating and visualizing your business data.
Implementation Best Practices
While Roambi provides tremendous flexibility for implementing intuitive views, formatting reports and Excel worksheets that provide data require best practices that can save you valuable time, while facilitating a usable data structure for your data visualization needs. When working with Excel, all Roambi Views require a flattened vertical table where any combination of columns can be grouped and then assigned to charts and tables within the view.
By default the last non-data row is utilized as the KPI name for each column of data. All other rows above are grouped into category names. While data sources like Salesforce.com, Crystal Reports, etc automatically identify categories, Excel will require you to use the cell grouping feature, to automatically create Roambi categories. Trends will support one level of grouping, which is visually represented in the Trends interface.

Roambi Trends will use up to the first 5 columns to identify consecutive time measures for which the graphs will be displayed. It is a best practice to insert the largest time dimension grains from left to right, to ensure the user can intuitively drill into the data. Roambi Designer provides flexibility to re-label the measure label.
Example: year=Y, quarter=Q, month=M, day=D, hour=H, minute=M

Roambi Trends will display the last value within the trend view, and calculate the change from previous value. To visually indicate change, Roambi Trends leverages color coded indicators to display a “good” or “bad” change as the values change. Every measure (column) can differ in how they are measured for performance. For example, as revenue increases the Roambi view would display a green alert value. However, if expenses increase the Roambi view should display the alert indicator as red. Roambi Designer can accommodate unique alert definitions for every column of data.

Data Formatting
Applying number formatting to data: Roambi is intelligent enough to interpret multiple data formats from reports and Excel files. When applying number formatting, you want to ensure that each column only contains a single numeric format ($, %, “,”, etc).
The Trends component can utilize MUTIPLE ranges in the workbook or one big dataset (containing different numerical formats).

RoamBi provides an excellent application for presenting Salesforce.com data as interactive visualization on an iPhone. As one of the supported data sources available with the free version of RoamBi , you can retrieve the latest information available from your company’s Salesforce.com instance while on the go. This is a powerful proposition not only for a mobile sales force, but also administrators, marketing and management who interface with Salesforce.com. To publish RoamBi views against Salesforce.com, you will utilize Salesforce.com reports to provide appropriate data. Using Salesforce.com reports, RoamBi invokes Salesforce.com to do the heavy lifting.

My company, Centigon Solutions, has standardized all CRM, marketing, and support on the Salesforce.com platform. With the desire to keep up with the daily operations, there are many scenarios where RoamBi assists me in tracking my organization’s ability to close opportunities, follow up on leads, and serve Centigon Solutions customers.

There is a lot of valuable information stored inside of Salesforce.com that is useful on the go. If your organization utilizes the “Products” capabilities within Salesforce.com Enterprise, you can use RoamBi as a reference tool for tracking the latest product SKUs and pricing information. In my case, Centigon Solutions stores all SKUs in Salesforce.com so we can report on product performance, support cases, etc. Organized by product family, CataList organizes all of my products so that anyone within Centigon Solutions can get an up to the minute view of current product pricing and availability.

Below is a list of other ways I am currently using RoamBi at Centigon Solutions:

• Pipeline/Sales
• Pipeline by Stage- CataList
• Sales by Source- CataList
• Sales- Current Month Sales- SuperList
• Lead Analysis
• Daily Trials by Campaign- CataList
• Current week trial Download Leads by Product- PieView
• Neglected Leads- SuperList
• Support
• Aging Cases- CataList
• Administrative
• Current Month customer portal sessions- CataList

RoamBi SuperList is the ultimate interface for navigating tabular data within the condensed screen real estate of your iPhone. Never lose your place when you pan both vertically and horizontally as SuperList retains context supplied by intelligent row and column labels. With filter and sort capabilities at your disposal, SuperList also features inline charting invoked by double tapping any column containing numeric data. The combination of SuperList’s innovative user experience and personalization capabilities provide a powerful solution for assimilating tabular data.

Example Use Case
RoamBi SuperList is a versatile view for presenting data structured as a vertical table. Whether you are a human resources specialist who monitors new hires and terminations or a sales director responsible for a large portfolio of customers, SuperList provides an intuitive interface for navigating, filtering and sorting tabular data. In this example intended for a sales director, SuperList presents all customers within the portfolio including assigned account managers and customer profiles. Using sorting and filtering capabilities, you can personalize SuperList from your iPhone, to display only the records that you require. Double tapping on a column containing the current quarter sales, pipeline revenue, or number of contracts will display an inline bar chart making it extremely easy to visually digest qualitative information at a glance.

RoamBi SuperList Features
Aside from the sleek aesthetics and thoughtful design execution RoamBi SuperList’s features:

• Conversion from portrait to landscape mode by simply rotating your iPhone.
• Intelligent row and column sizes adjust to the data ensuring information consumption with ease.
• Transformation of tabular data into an inline bar chart by double tapping on any column containing numeric data.
• Expanding columns and titles invoked by tapping on the column and row titles (figure 1).
• Sort selection for any column within the SuperList (figure 2).
• Filters that can be personalized for any combination of dimensions present in the SuperList columns (figure 3).
• Customizable column order, visibility and aesthetics ensure maximum flexibility for personalization on your iPhone (figure 4).

Data Visualization Best Practices
Formatted as a vertical table, RoamBi SuperList should be utilized for presenting data that is oriented in a vertical (top down) format. The most column of a vertical table is a key dimension (products, employees, regions, etc) that enables you to assign context to each individual row within your table. RoamBi SuperList automatically locks this key column, to avoid losing your place as you scroll from left to right. Data contained within each individual column within a vertical table should contain either numeric or text values, allowing you to take full advantage of sorting, filtering, and charting capabilities available in the SuperList View. Columns that display measure such as sales, profit, or growth should only have one numeric format (#, $, %) assigned to each column. If you are importing data into a SuperList that contains a hierarchy of dimensions (country, state, city) or rows of data that you would like to chart with the same ease of use as SuperList’s inline vertical bar chart, you should evaluate the RoamBi CataList view as a powerful alternative.

Implementation Best Practices
While RoamBi provides tremendous flexibility for implementing intuitive views, formatting reports and Excel worksheets that provide data require best practices that can save you valuable time, while facilitating a usable data structure for your data visualization needs. When working with Excel, all RoamBi Views require a flattened vertical table where any combination of columns can be grouped and then assigned to charts and tables within the View. By default the first row in most RoamBi Views is used to assign group names, while the second row identifies the column titles.

RoamBi SuperList by default will assign the first column as the key dimension. This key column will be also utilized as the left-most column of the table, which is fixed (figure 5). In this RoamBi SuperList example, the first column of the customer list contains a list of customers. While

Each column containing consistently formatted numeric values can be enabled as a bar chart by tapping on the column.

Applying number formatting to data: RoamBi is intelligent enough to interpret multiple data formats from reports and Excel files. When applying number formatting, you want to ensure that each column only contains a single numeric format ($, %, “,”, etc).

Additional Images:

RoamBi PieView is a drillable pie chart view, enabling you to quickly navigate a single dimension such as products, employees, or regions, using tap and rotate gestures. With a unique user experience that can only be compared to spinning the “Wheel of Fortune”, you will quickly find this engaging interface perfect for visualizing multiple measures such as sales, costs and growth against a single dimension. Drill into any pie slice to view customizable supporting tables and charts required to drive action. You will never look at a pie chart the same way once you leverage the innovative RoamBi PieView.

Example Use Case
RoamBi PieView provides a powerful solution for monitoring a single dimension across multiple measures. Whether you are a marketing professional responsible for monitoring campaign effectiveness, or a supply chain manager who needs up to date KPIs, RoamBi PieView requires minimal interaction to consume information quickly. In this example intended for a manufacturing plant manager, the RoamBi PieView displays multiple performance measures for all zones. Measures like production, defects, inventory, and headcount can all co-exist in one RoamBi Pie view separated by a simple “swipe” gesture. With a current view of performance, you can drill into any slice to view the entire detail KPI list and contact information of zone managers. From the detail card, you can conveniently contact someone by pressing on an email address or phone number..



RoamBi PieView Features
Aside from the sleek aesthetics and thoughtful design execution within a small screen real estate, RoamBi PieViews’s fluent user experience includes:

• Innovative rotate gesture navigation that facilitates intuitive navigation.
• Quick toggle between multiple measures by swiping left and right with your finger.
• Drillable pie slices for visualizing supporting text and charts.
• Automatic aggregation of a drillable “Other” category for charts containing more than twelve slices.
• Summarization of all pie slices displayed in the center of PieView.
• Integrated tap to dial for phone numbers and Google Map integration for addresses.
• Bookmarking option will save your place so you can re-call it at anytime.

Data Visualization Best Practices
A pie chart should be utilized to represent multiple parts of a whole or percentages that when combined equal 100%. A pie chart is capable of presenting a single dimension (products, employees, regions, etc) where the dimension values are represented as pie slices and differentiated by color. A pie chart presents 1 measure (sales, costs, growth, etc) at a time in descending order where the size of the slice is dictated by the value relative to the total for all slices (displayed as a value in the center of RoamBi PieView). As the volume of slices increase, the difficulty of using any pie chart analysis decreases, which is rectified using an automatic RoamBi PieView feature that aggregates slices as “Other”, once the number of slices exceeds 10. A pie chart should not be utilized to plot a time dimension (day, month, time, etc) since time dimensions are best represented in a line or bar chart. If you choose a percentage-based measure the sum of all pie slices, like any other measure should equal 100%.

Implementation Best Practices

While RoamBi provides tremendous flexibility for implementing intuitive views, incorporating best practices that save you valuable time, while facilitating a usable data structure for your data visualization needs. When working with Excel, all RoamBi Views require a flattened vertical table where any combination of columns can be grouped and then assigned to charts and tables within the view. By default the first row in most RoamBi Views is used to assign group names, while the second row identifies the column titles.

RoamBi Pie by default will assign the first column as the key dimension used to represent all slices which can be easily modified in the RoamBi Publisher. In the manufacturing RoamBi PieView example, the first column contains zone identifiers (figure 2).

Each column containing consistently formatted numeric values will be enabled as pie values. While this example contained several columns containing numeric values, only the first 5 key measures were intended for use in the PieView, while the remaining columns were reserved for supporting charts located on the detail card (figure 3).

To successfully create a chart within the detail card, you need to create a group within the RoamBi Publisher layout tab containing at least two columns utilizing the same numeric format. If either column contains text values or inconsistent number formatting characters ($, %, etc) RoamBi will not enable charting capabilities for that group.

For a complete guide of how to assign data groups to the best possible chart for visualizing quantitative data, see RoamBi Data Visualization Best Practices.

Data Formatting
Applying number formatting to data: RoamBi is intelligent enough to interpret multiple data formats from reports and Excel files. When applying number formatting, you want to ensure that each column only contains a single numeric format ($, %, “,”, etc).

Addresses: When formatting addresses in RoamBi for automatic linking to Google Maps, you will want to input addresses as “Address, City, State abbreviation” (34555 N. 5th Pl., San Diego, CA).
Phone Numbers: RoamBi is intelligent to recognize most variations for displaying phone numbers both for domestic and international phone numbers. It is a best practice to refrain from using decimal separators in phone numbers to avoid RoamBi mistaking the phone number for a standard numeric value. Valid Examples: 123-456-7890 (123)456-7890 + 22 607 123 4567

Email addresses: RoamBi will invoke your iPhone email upon selecting text formatted as an email address without applying any extra formatting.

Websites: Open Safari browser by tapping on any URLs where the text starts with www or http.
Additional Images

RoamBi CataList is an extremely powerful view for navigating and consuming information that can exist as a hierarchy, using a robust library of charts. CataList’s innovative micro-charts provide quantitative analysis for each dimension value, empowering you to quickly consume a large amount of information as you swipe and drill. At the lowest level of detail, CataList features a robust library of thoughtfully designed charts and tables for visualizing any combination of trends, comparisons, and qualitative information. Regardless of industry or job function, you can customize CataList to present your pertinent business data into an interactive view that will have you favoring your mobile device for accessing business intelligence.

Example Use Case
RoamBi CataList is a flexible view capable of presenting any combination of charts and micro-charts aligned to your business information. Whether you are a call center manager who monitors call volume and blockage measures or a credit union executive who desires regional budget analysis down to the office level, CataList provides a robust interface for digesting a large amount of information. In this example intended for an executive, CataList provides an intuitive interface to drill into any region and then visualize each office across multiple measures including headcount expenses, operational expenses, and non-interest income. From there you can drill into any office and view a detail card to with a collection of charts and tables that provide a holistic view of performance.



RoamBi CataList Features
Aside from the sleek aesthetics and thoughtful design execution within a small screen real estate, RoamBi CataList’s features:

• Hierarchical navigation of information with flexibility to swap measures represented as micro-charts with the swipe of a finger (figre1).
• Highly configurable micro-charts options including sparklines, bar and stacked bar charts, and column charts.
• Alert and trend icons identify when a value within a micro-chart is out of tolerance (figure 2).
• Dynamic sorting by dimension or measure simplifies navigation or analysis to quickly assess top and bottom performers within a list (figure 4).
• Robust charting library including a line chart, bar chart, area chart, column chart, stacked column chart, combination chart, pie chart, and data table (figures 5 & 6)
• Search dialogue provides instant access to any tabs with matching records (figure 7).
• Micro-chart legends that quickly identify color assignments while exposing additional options for label assignments that maximize screen real estate (figure 9).
• Careful consideration to screen real estate and performance simplifies the aesthetics and alleviates clutter as you scroll top to bottom within the detail view.
• Integrated tap to dial for phone numbers and Google Map integration for addresses.
• Bookmarking option that will save your place so you can re-call at anytime.

Data Visualization Best Practices
Assigning the best possible chart to represent quantitative information will impact a CataList’s effectiveness to clearly communicate performance. As data groups are assigned to a chart type, you can also re-purpose most RoamBi charts as micro-charts, further boosting efficiency for digesting large amounts of information quickly. Understanding best practices for assigning data groups in RoamBi to charts and establishing relationships between standard charts and micro charts will also impact your ability to communicate and interpret information.

Line charts are best applied for consecutive Interval metrics which are typically time-based (month, day, etc). The benefit of using a line chart is its effectiveness to communicate trends over time.

The sparkline, originally conceived by Edward Tufte, is the perfect chart type for the condensed screen real estate or CataList. A sparkline provides the same visual context as a line chart, minus the x-axis labels. In addition to the sparkline, you can enable a trend icon that measures the last value against a single point within the trend to dictate the overall series trend (up or down).

Data tables are best applied displaying data where there is no value or need for quantitative analysis. For applications including multiple measures that are related for analysis, a data table is the perfect solution to display the data.

Bar/Column charts are the most widely used charts for consuming quantitative information based on a single dimension (products, employees, regions, etc) with one or multiple like-measures (sales, costs, etc). Both bar and column charts are extremely effective for representing quantitative information using the relative bar size against a common axis and scale to provide powerful comparative analysis. Choosing between a RoamBi Data Bar and Column chart should be dictated by the number of measures that you would like to visualize and your desire to display dimension axis labels without further interaction. The stacked bar chart does not have a corresponding micro-chart, though you can create a single stacked micro-chart using a Pie chart.

The Data Bar chart will plot one data group (series) in a horizontal orientation with the dimension values (y axis label) displayed to the left of each bar. Tapping on the title will auto expand larger titles, and clicking on any bar will display the data values in place of bars.

The Column chart will accommodate the same analysis as the data bar, but with an option to add an additional series. The column chart will convert to a micro-chart, once a second series is added

Stacked column charts are effective for displaying multiple parts of a whole similar to a pie chart, but across a series. A stacked column chart emphasizes the whole, while enabling you to visualize the distribution of values within each bar.

A combination chart works similar to a multiple series column chart with an option to transform one series into a line trend rather than a bar. The purpose for implementing a combination chart is to draw attention to a series where a trend is present. A combination chart is typically used when there is a calculation or target trend corresponds to the accompanying bars. The corresponding micro-chart is also capable of displaying up to two series.

Pie charts can be implemented as an alternative to a single series column or bar chart, though pie charts should display all parts (slices) required to represent a whole. As the volume of pie chart slices (dimension values) increase, the difficulty of interpreting information and deriving value from the chart decreases. Like the RoamBi PieView, this pie chart will automatically aggregate all remaining values into an “Other” category, once the pie chart exceeds 10 slices.

An area chart is a line chart with extended shading to emphasize a two dimensional space that the trend occupies. While one or two series can effectively communicate this information, as the number of series increase the shading can cause interference as the shaded areas overlap.

An area chart’s assigned micro-chart is a shaded Sparkline that works exactly like the regular Sparkline with additional shading.

Implementation Best Practices

Formatting the source reports or Excel worksheets within each view require best practices that can save you valuable time, while facilitating a usable data structure for your data visualization needs. When working with Excel, all RoamBi Views require a flattened vertical table where any combination of columns can be grouped and then assigned to charts and tables within the view.

By default, the first row in most RoamBi Views is used to assign group names, while the second row identifies the column titles. To streamline the process for defining groups for CataList, during the import step within RoamBi Designer, define the first two rows as your titles.


RoamBi CataList uses the left column within your data to determine the hierarchy to navigate to the detail card level. The budget analysis example has two levels of hierarchy (region and office) requiring you to edit the navigation columns to reflect both column A and B. The hierarchical data needs to be flattened as shown in figure 10.


RoamBi CataList will utilize the right column of your navigation columns to define the detail card titles. As you navigate through the hierarchy and micro-charts down to the detail card, you will need to choose what field will dictate the card title. In most cases the default will automatically become the detail card title figure11.

Once the key column (card title column) is chosen, you can create or modify layout groups which can be assigned to any RoamBi chart and micro-chart (figure 12). To successfully create a chart within the detail card, you need to create groups within the RoamBi Publisher layout tab containing at least two columns containing the same numeric formatting. If either column contains text values or inconsistent number formatting characters ($, %, etc), RoamBi will not enable charting capabilities for that group.

After configuring charts within CataList, you can assign micro-charts that can be displayed within the CataList navigation screen, providing a level of analysis that provides significant utility not possible with other RoamBi views. Most charts can be toggled and configured according to the defined chart you have assigned to each data group.

Data Formatting
Applying number formatting to data: RoamBi is intelligent enough to interpret multiple data formats from reports and Excel files. When applying number formatting, you want to ensure that each column only contains a single numeric format ($, %, “,”, etc).

Addresses: When formatting addresses in RoamBi for automatic linking to Google Maps, you will want to input addresses as “Address, City, State abbreviation” (34555 N. 5th Pl., San Diego, CA).
Phone Numbers: RoamBi is intelligent to recognize most variations for displaying phone numbers both for domestic and international phone numbers. It is a best practice to refrain from using decimal separators in phone numbers to avoid RoamBi mistaking the phone number for a standard numeric value. Valid Examples: 123-456-7890 (123)456-7890 + 22 607 123 4567

Email addresses: RoamBi will invoke your iPhone email upon selecting text formatted as an email address without applying any extra formatting.

Websites: Open Safari browser by tapping on any URLs where the text starts with www or http

Additional Images