Most transactional systems have some kind of status field which is crucial to business operations and must be analyzed in a real-time manner. Here are some examples.

• Sales Orders
• Work Orders
• Ticket Status
• Technical Stock Analysis
• Case Management
• Lead Management

Executives often need comparative, relative or time-series analysis in order to improve operations. They need to be able to drill into these figures by in order to test a hypothesis or hunch about where innefficiency may lie. In a sales scenario, you’d want to know a close ratio. In support we’d like to know how many tickets are open. In marketing, we’d be curious about which lead sources are delivering the highest percentage of qualified prospects.

The Magic Function

Unfortunately, there is no magic function in SQL that automatically separates the good stuff from the bad. The good news is that we can use some simple tricks to get the results we need. Imagine that shipping costs are eating up too much of our profit and we need give management and operations staff the ability to detect and discover deliveries with high shipping costs.

(This is part of a series of posts on the new Izenda Reports 6.4, presently at the Release Candidate stage.)

Colorful Ad Hoc Dashboard Gauges

(This is part of a series of posts on the new Izenda Reports 6.4, presently at the Release Candidate stage.)

New virtual constraints are easy to add in Izenda Reports.  Complicated schemas no longer require extensive user education or the changing of database schemas. Virtual constraints allow Izenda Reports to know about any connections between tables. For example, users can even run reports on Sales Force databases without reshaping the schema. These may be required to use smart join.

You can try user defined constraints with wildcards in our online demo of Izenda Reports.

(This is part of a series of posts on the new Izenda Reports 6.4, presently at the Release Candidate stage.)

Enhanced Report Viewer

AdHocSettings.ShowSaveInReportViewer= true;

You can try the new save controls in our online demo of Izenda Reports.

(This is part of a series of posts on the new Izenda Reports 6.4, presently at the Release Candidate stage.)

Grids with gradient

A new visual enhancement in Izenda Reports 6.4 adds gradient shading to cell backgrounds depending on value boundaries you set. Now with a single check, you can highlight important data.

You can try grid gradients in our online demo of Izenda Reports.

Here’s a less than two minute introduction to Izenda Reports you might want to share with your coworkers.

Ready to learn more? See our online demo.

(This is part of a series of posts on the new Izenda Reports 6.4, presently at the Release Candidate stage.)

Scheduling for specific timezones

Need reports for branches located all over the world?  In Izenda Report 6.4, simply set the timezone in the Reports Scheduler.

AdHocSettings.ShowTimeZoneDropdown = true;

You can try time zone scheduling in our online demo of Izenda Reports.

Horizontal bar charts

You can try horizontal bar charts in our online demo of Izenda Reports.

(This is part of a series of posts on the new Izenda Reports 6.4, presently at the Release Candidate stage.)

Locked report mode

Restrict users from adding or removing filters or fields in the Report Viewer, but still allow them to change an existing filter’s value by using the new Locked report mode.

Ever present to a client or manager an information dashboard or a key report, only to be crushed by their underwhelming response? Maybe the problem isn’t your data or how well you understood the requirements; maybe your need to understand how to create more attractive reports and dashboards. While you may be a developer not an artiste designer type person, you need to understand at least the basics of design if you want to surprise and excite your customers, clients, or management.

Here are four basic rules for making the stuff that you put on the screen not just accurate but attractive. These are four basic patterns that every designer uses to make what they do attractive – they just never bothered to tell you how to do these things. Understanding what these four patterns are about and how they work together will do wonders for the content you are programmatically creating.

Contrast – The heart of this idea is making sure different elements on the page or screen actually look different. For example, both for visual and SEO reasons, there should be only 1 H1 heading, other headings should clearly follow a set hierarchy of sizes, and headings and data should at a minimum be displayed in different fonts. All too often the reports and dashboards we create are a muddle of responding to specific user requirements without paying attention to the differences between blocks of information.

Repetition – This is the flip side of Contrast – things that are similar should look similar. This goes from using the same kind of chart to display similar data to adhering to a set of style guidelines for one set of reports.

Alignment – Alignment is the invisible connection between different parts of your dashboard or report, both vertically and horizontally. It can be as simple as keeping to a specific text alignment throughout a report and as subtle as sticking to a specific amount of white space between different text and graphic elements.

Proximity – Putting similar elements together that should be understood as being of the same type is another way of visually organizing your report or dashboard.

These four principles – Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity – are your starting points for improving your report layouts. They also make for an easy to remember abbreviation that should remind you what you don’t want your hard work to look like.

Finally, spending a bit of time and money on these following resources will handsomely pay off in the form of happier clients and managers:

• The Non-Designer’s Design Book (3rd Edition) by Robin Williams.
• Before & After: How to Design Cool Stuff by John McWade.

And if you’re looking for some visual inspiration, check out these sites:

• http://dashboards.org/ – which describes itself as an independent business intelligence community,
• Dashboard Examples Volume 1 and Dashboard Examples Volume Two – hundreds of different examples of executive dashboards.
• Also check out http://dashboards.tv/ for a number of videos on different aspects of dashboard and report building.