Jan 24, 2012 -- 12:52PM, dpatrias wrote:

We are publishing dashboard reporting using Fusion primarily because of the variety of chart options and interactive functionality in contrast to MS Office.  Can you provide any User Manual/Traning documention to review the how to and functionality of Xcelsius ?

 

Hi dpatrias!

Thank you for your question!

I'm sorry to say that I'm not familiar with the functionality of Fusion but there are (free) resources on the web that I typically recommend to learn more about Xcelsius (Dashboards).  

Check out the SAP Product Guides site.  Change the top filter on the right side to Xcelsius and look for the Xcelsius Users Guide.  The latest SP5 for 3.1 is best.  If you are interested in Dashboards for the BI4 system, change the selection to Dashboards and Presentation Design and look for the User's Guide for BI4.  

Also, there are a few really good elearning references.  Have a look at this url: www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/bi-suite-tutoria... and click on SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards.

You can always find books out there to purchase on the topics, but the free resources are always a great place to start!

I hope this gives you some good ideas!

Chris
@chickman72

When using a Live Office connection with a prompt is there a way to set the default not to pull data until input is provided from the user?

Jan 24, 2012 -- 12:50PM, RamTadepalli wrote:

Hello Gurus,

Good Afternoon. Couple of questions.

1. When building dashboards, are there any recommended chart types to be used for different reporting areas (Finance, Sales, Manufacturing, Retail etc.). If not, Is it always the business that decides what kind of charts to use in a dashboard? It's confusing to decide the excat chart to use for a specific business area or should we even use a chart or we are fine with using a table?

2. If I want to display statistical information (Quartile, Perntile, Median etc.) in a dashboard, what chart type is most recommended?

I want to know your opinions based on your experience.

 

Best Regards

Ram

Hi Ram

This is a great question!

I will start by giving the typical grad school answer and say "it depends".

When you are building your dashboards, the metrics that have been determined as most important can be presented back to the business users with a question.  "Here are the options that we have for representing the data.  How can you derive the most data in the least amount of time?"  For a Finance dashboard, it would not make sense to give the entire balance sheet and income statement, but providing a small spreadsheet component giving the total assets, liabilities and net income would be ideal.  You can also provide a historical line or column chart once the user clicks on the assets, liabilities or net income.  Sales are usually interested in the performance of their products.  You should ask the users if a pie chart showing the percentage of sales against all lines available would be the best way to derive value.  You can then provide the ability to click on the pie pieces to give drill down information.

As far as statistics, we usually think of histograms and scatter charts.  Investigate using column charts and second axis series.  Also consider using the  XY Chart for scatter charts.  I've seen these used most often in statistical analysis.

I hope this helps!

Hi Gurus,

Imagine that my dashboard is alive & working well, still the user need to jump to to a further more detailed analysis.

Do you know if is possible & how to pass parameters from Dashboard (2008) into a Bex Analyser report ?

Thanks

Dragos Oprisan

Jan 24, 2012 -- 12:54PM, EmilyMui wrote:

Jan 24, 2012 -- 12:47PM, Scott Wallask wrote:

Hi Emily -- I was talking to a consultant a few weeks back about data volume overload in dashboards. What are you feelings on having too much data, and how do you avert that?

Thanks...Scott

Hi Scott,

Usually, we have encountered customers that want to transform reports into dashboards as their foray into the world of dashboards. As such, they are looking at passing thousands and even tens of thousands of rows. We recommend our customers look at the differences between what a dashboard accomplishes vs what a report does. Dashboards provide high-level summary information and the metrics are aggregated at the database/data warehouse level before being visualized in the dashboards.

Perhaps Chris Hickman might provide want to his perspective.

Emily-

I completely agree with Emily on this!  Dashboards are meant to provide a snapshot of the data using a smaller dataset.  Reports are meant to provide a more detailed view with higher amounts of data.

If the requirements of a dashboard call for higher amounts of data than can be efficiently handled by the dashboard, you should investigate using third party tools that efficiently handle big data.  One tool that I have worked with in the past is Antivia XWIS (antivia.com).  You are able to connect directly to a Webi report as a data provider and import the data directly into the dashboard without the need to bind to a cells in Excel.

Chris