Posts tagged Business Intelligence

There is lots of stuff we’d like to see in a new version of SAP Dashboards / Xcelsius. Probably the HTML5 version will focus mainly on HTML5 export functionality so lets stretch the wish list towards ZEN (I don’t want to type that 2314 counting character official product name).

If I look at SAP Dashboards / Xcelsius I’d love to see the following features being made available in a next version of SAP Dashboards or the new product ZEN. It is quite a wish list and I know that some of these things can be fixed with some creativity, but I’m looking for out-of-the-box functionality.

Here it comes..

- Help screen pop-ups / mouse overs

Now this is possible but requires to much tricks. The time of paper documentation is moving behind us. I’d like to see functionality to easily build integrated help functionality. With this I mean that I don’t need to create a background menu, transparent background to show over the dashboard, 10 custom label objects, a ‘close-window’ push button and some dynamic visibility logic to start the circus. Just provide help menu’s which are easy to configure.

- Decent printing options

I shouldn’t rely on 3rd party solutions for being able to print the dashboard the way I want it, including some simple annotations.

- Decent commenting options

This is not supported. Connecting to a remote database and store/retrieve comments is possible, but too much customizing.

- Flexible change of chart type (like in Webi)

I often use the Combination Chart just in case I want to change the chart type afterwards from line to bar chart. If I don’t do this, I’ll need to reconfigure the cell binding, properties, alignment, etcetera. Webi handles this much better.

- More developer-friendly drag and drop of components and objects

The amount of time you spend to align, resize and position objects can be reduced if this is improved. Selecting objects and moving them around sometimes works a bit buggy. Please fix this.

- New version of the Open Document Statement integration protocol. This should be ‘point-and-click’ easy

I shouldn’t need to be able to read HTML parameters for connecting BI content. Sure, it works OK and offers great functionality but this should be done like a ‘walk down the park’ instead of a ‘walk down the HTML parameter trial-and-error hell’. Make this point-and-click easy with a decent user interface.

- Easier integration between multiple dashboards

Jumping from one dashboard to another including parameters should be easy. This way you should be able to scale your development team without loosing interactivity. Now you often have one big sized dashboard with longer load times etc. Of course you can tune this with dynamic visibility, connection settings etc but cutting one dashboard into smaller pieces can have quite some advantages. Now this is possible, but only for advanced developers.

- Better support for custom fonts (include more than 1 custom font in the dashboard model)

The typography topic for dashboards is often completely skipped. I’ve seen and designed dashboards with a well designed typography model which really made a difference. Now the support for custom fonts is limited. If a user hasn’t got the used fonts on his machine, you can embed them in the dashboard. However, you can only embed one font. And flipping between serif and sans-serif for large headers and titles on one side and small lables and subtitles on the other side requires more than just one font.

- Debug mode for errors

Solving issues is often a complex process. An empty chart pops up. What’s going on? Does the connection not retrieve any data? Is the table range not large enough? Doesn’t the filtered row object pick the right label? Is the chart binded to the wrong cells? Is there a dynamic visability issue? Is there an authorization issue for the user? Is there no data at all in the source? And so on..

An advanced developer will be able to find the issue but this can require quite some time. I have been laughing quite often when an empty error dialog screen popped up in Xcelsius. Laughing only lasted for seconds, than the frustration came..

- CSS editor for easy theme and template creation

Xcelsius has some out of the box themes. Editing these themes is not possible for the average developer. In the installation folders of Xcelsius, CSS files are stored which contain all the styling. I’d like to see a modern CSS editor in which you can load, edit, save and share CSS templates. This way dashboard development can be taken to the next level.

- More flexible and detailed property options for all components

From a design perspective, Xcelsius falls short in some area’s. It does a real great job in the first 95% but as a die-hard, you also want to slam those last 5%. For example, a combination chart has no alerting options (comes in FP3). Setting markers in line charts (sparkline chart excluded) is only possible for every value on the X-axis. I, the designer, want to be able where and how the markers should be applied. For example one on the highest or lowest, and one in the end, not just everywhere.

The default legenda looks just ugly. I want to be able to make a more sophisticated legenda. And why can’t I set the scale range for the microchart? Now two charts cannot be compared since they can have a different scale range. Not to speak about the number of times I had to copy multiple graphs on top of each other to be able to create the chart looking exactly the way I wanted it to do. And for charts with a scale from negative to positive values I want to be able to make the X-axis line for the ’0′ Y-value a bit thicker but I’m only able to make the bottom X-axis line thicker (the lowest value line).  This is just a small set of examples of stuff you just wanted to be able to configure slightly different, with a big positive impact on the user experience.

Conclusion

SAP Dashboards / Xcelsius has surprised me time after time by it’s flexibility and ability to realize requirements by applying ‘tricks’ and ‘voodoo magic’. This makes it that I love the product. Possibilities sometimes look endless. But when someone has to support this magic dashboard full of MS Excell spells and dynamic visibility voodoo, you may loose some friends.

Therefore I like to see some of this magic back in the standard component properties and menus. What does your wish list look like?