BW 12 Xcelsius

Dashboard Examples

*1.Daily executive report:* Summarizes the daily status of a hospitality company's key performance indicators across different locations. Gives the executive an interactive view of the daily and monthly metrics. *2.Standard income statement:* Highlights a new way of presenting typical income statements. By selecting a region from a map, the viewer cansee its P&L and net income trend over the last six. quarters and compare it with the target values.

Dashboard Types I

*1Strategic Dashboards:* • Used by executives. • Quick overview on the health of the business, including major high-level measures. • Few information, simple display mechanisms, static snapshots. *2 Analytical Dashboards:* • Used by analysts. • Support interaction with data, e.g. drill-down. • Complex data, sophisticated display mechanisms, static snapshots. *3 Operational Dashboards:* • Used to monitor operations. • Support alerting for critical events, interaction with data. • Detailed data, simple and clear display mechanisms, real-time data.

Dashboard Design2

*Applying the Gestalt Principles of visual perception to dashboards:* • Proximity: Objects that are located near each other are perceived as belonging to the same group. • Similarity: Objects that are similar in color, size, shape, and orientation are perceived as belonging to the same group. • Enclosure: Objects that are enclosed by a visual border, e.g. a line, are perceived as belonging to the same group. • Closure: Open structure (e.g. shapes with open ends) are perceived as closed whenever possible. • Continuity: Objects that appear to form a continuation of one another are perceived as belonging to the same group. • Connection: Objects that are connected (e.g. by are line) are perceived as belonging to the same group.

Dashboard Design1

*Dashboard design principles I* • Reduce the non-data pixels, by eliminating unnecessary non-data pixels and de- emphasizing the remaining non-data pixels. - E.g. eliminate unnecessary third dimension of depth on charts. - E.g. eliminate unnecessary grid lines in bar graphs. - E.g. eliminate variations in color that don't encode any meaning.

Dashboard design

*Dashboard design principles II* • Enhance data pixels by eliminating unnecessary data pixels and highlighting most important data pixels: - Remove data that is less relevant. - Condense data by summaries and exceptions. - Emphasize important data by visual attributes like color intensity, size, line width. - Emphasize important data by its position on the dashboard: top-left and center are sections with greatest emphasis.

Dashboard Types II

1*Dashboard versus Portal:* • Portal = Focus on the integration of different contents under one user interface. • Dashboard = Focus on the compression of important facts and figures on one single screen. *2Dashboard versus Scorecard:* • A scorecard is a specific dashboard including Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), usually used on a strategic level

Spreadsheet Models-Using Excel functionality

1- Mathematical, statistical functions • Calculation of maximum value: =MAX(B2:D2) 2- Text-related functions • Concatenate Strings: =CONCATENATE (B2,C2) 3- Date/Time related functions • Provide current data: TODAY() • Provide current time and date: NOW()

Line Chart and Bar Chart

A Line chart uses a series of data points to represent values. Every two adjacent points are connected by one straight line. • It is often used to illustrate the trend of changes in data of certain measures over a period of time. • A Bar chart uses horizontal bars to represent the data values of one or more series. • Bar charts are often used to compare the relative values for different categories of items.

Dashboard Definition

A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance.

Dashboard layout

Art and background components • Art and backgrounds can be used to enhance the dashboard layout. • Background: add backgrounds to dashboard to improve the design, can be used to create divisions and designate groups of related components. • Image: display JPEG images or SWF files. • Rectangle, Ellipse, Lines: layout element that outlines, defines, or contains sections.

Visual Components

Chart components provide a range of different chart types like line, pie,bar, area, radar, and tree map chart. Container components group and display other components. Selector components are used to create a visualization with multiple options to select from . Single value components are used to add user interactivity to visualizations, these components are linked to a single cell in the spreadsheet. Map components create visualizations with geographical representations that can display data by region. Text components are used for placing labels and including text into a visualization.

Column Chart

Column chart uses a column (vertical, tall and relatively thin) to represent the data for each data part compared to slice in a pie chart. • It is usually used to show and compare values of different compartments in a range. • A column chart can be used to show and compare sales revenue in each quarter. The Pie chart would be better at displaying the percentage or contribution to the total sales revenue of each quarter. • Properties panel in column charts have an additional tab of Alerts.

Combo Box

Combo-box is a graphical User Interface widget. It is a combination of a drop-down list or list box and a single-line textbox, allowing the user to either type a value directly into the control or choose from a list of existing options. • This Filter component is a selector that lets you take a large amount of data organized in rows and present it in a user-friendly way. • It also lets a user create models with drill down navigation that can use two or more interrelated combo boxes.

Dashboard Design

Dashboard design questions... • What type of dashboard should be designed? • What are the relevant data and KPIs that should be visualized? • What are appropriate elements for visualization? • What should user navigation look like? • How is the dashboard supplied with data? In short the design should take care of the following: • Audience, decision made using the dashboard, data-metrics, visualization. components and user interaction.

Evolution of Dashboards

Evolution of Automobile Dashboards versus Business Dashboards:

Interactivity with selector components

Example: Radio button selector. The user can select by a radio button selector if the share per model is shown by revenue or by pieces sold.

Spreadsheet Modeling Limitations

In the event that you re-import spreadsheets with renamed sheets, any bindings to cells in the renamed sheet will be lost. • The complexity of calculations being performed in the spreadsheet will affect the performance of the visualization. • Only one single Excel workbook can be embedded in a dashboard, references to remote workbooks are not possible.

Interactivity with selector components-Source, destination and insertion type

Insertion types ROW: Each row is linked to a radio button, the selected row is inserted into the data destination. Insertion type POSITION: The position of the selected radio button (e.g. 1 or 2 in this example) is inserted into the data destination, the result can be used for further processing.

Accordion Menu

It is a two-level menu in which items are categorized into groups, the user can first select a category and then select an item from it. • This component can be used when there are too many items to choose from, and they can be categorized into groups. • Properties panel of the Accordion menu is divided into categories: • General - Appearance of the component can be controlled in this category and it is also used to select the two-level menu. • Behavior - This is used to control the behavior of the categories selected, how they respond to the user activities. Eg: Slide speed, Selected Item.

Text components

Overview text components • Placing labels and typing text into the dashboard. • Input Text Area: input multiple lines of text. • Label: add text to the dashboard, e.g. for titles, explanation, help, etc. • Input Text: input one line of text.

The New Intelligence Platform of SAP

SAP Crystal Dashboard Design (formerly Xcelsius) is the flagship product for dashboarding and visualization. Rapid development of dashboards by drag and drop. Replacing SAP Bex Web Application Designer. Connectivity through XML and webservice connectors.

Selector components

Selector components overview • Selector components let you create interactive dashboards with multiple selections. • Radio Button: users can select from a horizontal or vertical group of selections. • Combo Box: provides a vertical list of items, when it is clicked, users can select an item from the list. • Accordion Menu: provides a two-level menu, users first select a category and then select items within that particular category.

Single value components

Single value components overview • Can be used for adding user interactivity to visualizations. • Components are linked to a single cell in the spreadsheet. • If cell content is a formula, component is an output component, no modifications possible. • If cell content includes a plain value, component is an input component, modification possible.

Adding Chart Components

Step-by-step... • Drag chart to the canvas • Adjust titles. • Bind data. • Adjust scaling. • Adjust layout.

Design Dashboard

The final step is designing the dashboard • Position the UI components and implement the layout as planned. • Import the Excel file that is edited in the previous step and set the properties for each component. • Preview the dashboard and test the charts, the drill-down behavior, and they dynamic visibility with the sample data. If all is well you can go on and configure the data connections. • Now the dashboard is complete, if needed make it look better by adjusting the components appearance.

Plan the Dashboard

The first step in building a comprehensive dashboard is planning. • We first... Plan the Workflow. • Start working with user requirements rather than with data at the early stage. • Define the primary business questions the dashboard will answer. • Capture other user questions that arise. • Capture the actions the user would take when these questions emerge. • Next we... Plan the UI. • Based on the information collected, appropriate visual representation has to be chosen to tackle each problem. You may want to include a map, a column chart, a line chart, a pie chart or a gauge.

Process of Building a Dashboard

The optimum workflow for building dashboards follows this sequence: 1. Planthedashboard. 2. Preparethedata. 3. OrganizethedatainExcel. 4. Design the dashboard in Xcelsius.

Prepare Data

The second step in building a dashboard is preparing the data. • It is important to understand what kind of data is needed for each component of the dashboard. • Best practice suggests a connected model should have more connections returning fewer rows and columns instead of fewer connections returning more rows and columns. • Minimize the number of connections overall for the dashboard.

Organize data in Excel

The third step is organizing data in excel • Data pertaining to different components of the dashboard should be organized into different tabs of the embedded spreadsheet. • Sheet 1 - Spreadsheet Model. • Sheet 2 - Control sheet for UI control logic. • Additional sheets for color coded data tables. • Best Practice - Adding a "control" sheet in Excel with the UI control logic, such as the data insertion, calculation mechanism, and when to trigger a connection.

Example to Bind data - By Series

Use Series option if data series are segregated

Chart components 1

cumn chart - scaling tab: • Manual Scaling: If data doesn't require the scales to change. • Auto Scaling: If data feeds of the chart change and scaling has to be adjusted automatically.

Chart Components-Chart Overview

• 1Line Chart: showing a trend over a period of time, like stock price movements. • 2Bar Chart: visualization of rankings, like the TOP 10 products by revenue. • 3Pie Chart: showing relative shares compared to a certain total, like share of one products revenue compared with the total. • 4Column Chart: showing developments over a period of time, like revenue by month. • 5Radar Chart: plotting multi-dimensional sets of data using several axis, like comparing different aspects of stock like price, volume, price to earning ratio, etc.

Interactivity with selector components-Source, destination and insertion type1

• A selector component is linked to... • a data source, that represents the available data, and. • a data destination, representing the selected data. • The values inserted into the data destination depend on the chosen insertion type. • Insertion types: • Row/column: The selected row/column of the data sources is inserted into the data destination. • Filtered rows: A set of rows from the data source that meet the selected filter criteria are inserted into the data destination. • Label/position: The label/position of the selected radio button is inserted into the data destination.

Alerts-Defining Alerts for a Gauge

• Activate Alerts on the Alerts tab in the Properties panel. • Define Alert method: • as percent, if evaluated values are percentages. • as value, if evaluated values are integers . • Define Alert levels and colors. • Select if high/middle/low levels are good.

Summary (continued)

• Alerts can be defined at various data levels with coloration in the component. • Selector Components "select" the data series of interest. • Dashboard Layout makes the dashboard visually consistent and appealing. • Dashboard Building Process. 1. Plan the Dashboard. 2. Prepare the Data. 3. Organize the Data in Excel. 4. Design the Dashboard.

Dashboard layout-Themes

• Allow a global change of the appearance of components. • Each theme has a number of different components with a look and feel of that particular theme. • Themes can be combined with different color schemes.

Single value components-Gauges: Data binding and scaling

• Bind data to a single cell. • Set minimum and maximum values, e.g. 0 and 1 if a percentage between 0 and 100% is displayed.

Summary

• Dashboards provide a full view of critical information at a glance. • Display media are used to provide intuitive understanding of data. • Dashboard design answers the right questions with visual cues. • Spreadsheet functions are used to perform calculations. • Charts and Single Value Components provide the visual display.

Single value components-Gauges

• Gauges as input component represent a variable that can be modified to affect other components. By dragging the needle users can interact with the Gauge to change the value. • Gauges as output components represent a value that changes and moves the needle if underlying data changes.

Pie Charts

• Pie charts can be used to show the relative size and especially the contribution of each data part. • Though other charts can represent the relative sizes Pie charts are the best choice when depicting percentage contributions that can be easily understood at a glance. • The properties of a pie chart are categorized into four groups corresponding to the four tabs in the properties view • General • Drill Down • Behavior • Appearance

Spreadsheet Modeling-Using Excel functionality

• SAP Crystal Dashboard Design supports a variety of Excel functions (about 160) and formulas. - Mathematical, statistical functions - Text-related functions. - Date/Time related functions. - Spreadsheet formulas. • Complete list of supported Excel functions available in SAP Crystal Dashboard Design Help. • Not all Excel functionality is available in SAP Crystal Dashboard Design.

Chart components

• Title, subtitle, axis values can include fixed value or values from the spreadsheet model • Bind data: It has 2 options ; By Range and By Series Use Range option if data is a range of continuous cells

Spreadsheet Model Approach-Design guidelines

• Use the first sheet for documenting your spreadsheet model. • Use subsequent sheets if your spreadsheet includes many different tables. • Use colors and labels in your model for better readability. • Do not start in the first row and column, leave space for enhancements. • Apply formatting to your spreadsheet before you start building the visualizations.

Alerts-Alerts overview

• Used to call the attention of the user to a specific item that has reached a pre-defined limit. • Limits are e.g. budgets or benchmarks, plan data, etc. • Alerts can be defined for different components, including most charts and single-value components and some selector components. • Customization of different alert levels and colors possible. • Configuration takes place on the Alerts tab of the Properties panel.