Reporting & Analytics Archives | Page 4 of 5

Current and Previous month reporting made easy

XLCubed/ 18th July 20134th January 2019/ Reporting & Analytics

We’ve all been there. Our shiny new dashboard or report pack is finished and ready to go meet its users. We’ve presented the key information clearly, we’ve followed all the data vis guidelines on effective charting and use of colour. We like it a lot, and we’ve thought ahead and built in lots of flexibility with slicers and managed drill paths so it can already help answer some of the questions it will doubtless raise.

It’s a little disappointing then that one of the first pieces of feedback is that the senior execs don’t actually want to use the interactivity much. They want to open the dashboard and see the current month picture (or previous month), and don’t want to waste valuable seconds selecting the month in a slicer…

Joking aside, in lots of situations it’s a sensible request, and there are various different ways to handle it in an XLCubed / Analysis Services world. Often this will be for a multi-sheet report incorporating grids, formulae, and charting elements and we need a centralised point to handle the month selection – enter the XL3MemberNavigate() formula.

This lets you pick a hierarchy and a level, and you can specify that you want the Last member (first and previous / next are also available). It’s available in the XLCubed Insert Formula dialog. In our case we’d pick the date hierarchy, the month level and choose Last, generating a formula as below:

=XL3MemberNavigate(1,”[Date].[Calendar]”,”[Date].[Calendar].[Month]”,”LastMember”)

The issue is that at this point it has no concept of data, it will give you the last month available in the hierarchy, not the last month with data. However that’s just another parameter away, we can add dimension member pairs to force a data check, as below, where we are checking that data exists for the “Reseller Sales Amount” measure.

=XL3MemberNavigate(1,”[Date].[Calendar]”,”[Date].[Calendar].[Month]”,”LastMember”,0,”[Measures]”,”Reseller Sales Amount”)

So that will return the last month with data, and as we know in XLCubed all grids, formulae and XLCubed charts can be based off a cell. The Xl3MemberNavigate() cell becomes the driver for all time selections in the report. Job done. Or is it? What if you actually wanted the last complete month? :

=XL3MemberNavigate(1,”[Date].[Calendar]”,”[Date].[Calendar].[Month]”,”LastMember”,2,“[Measures]”,”Reseller Sales Amount”)

Adding the addional ‘2’ parameter means it will go back an additional month, hence giving you the last completed month.

In our experience this is far and away the easiest way to handle current or Previous month reporting, and we hope you find it useful if it’s new to you. For more information on XL3MemberNavigate check our wiki.

Rolling Forecast reporting in Excel

XLCubed/ 27th March 20134th January 2019/ Reporting & Analytics

In monthly reporting for the current year the most pertinent numbers for closed periods are the actuals, and for open or future months the forecast. In most cubes actual and forecast (or budget) are implemented as either different measures, or as part of a scenario hierarchy. This can lead to challenges in reporting, where putting both the period and the actual/forecast on the same axis means you will get duplicated months which show the forecast for periods when the actuals are already in as in the PivotTable below.

We would want the report to be asymmetric (i.e. different months returned for Actual and Budget). Various tools can handle that, and it’s always been possible to achieve that in XLCubed through formulae or in a grid. What’s more difficult is to make the report fully dynamic without the need to redesign it each time. Ideally we’d want the user to be able to change a slicer to select the last completed month (or pick this up directly from the cube), and have the appropriate months reported under Actual and Budget. Here’s how to achieve it in one grid…..

The approach uses a combination of:

Excel Ranges to determine the available months, and which are for Actual and Budget
An XLCubed Slicer to pick the ‘Last Actuals’
One XLCubed grid with the ‘Exclude from display’ pointing to the relevant ranges above

Let’s work through this example which uses the Finance cube on the AdventureWorks DW 2008R2 database.

We’re going to use data from FY 2006 and report Actual and Budget figures across departments. We will use a slicer to select the last Actual month we want reported. For the remaining FY 2006 months we will report Budget values.

Entire year of Months in the report

There are several ways to achieve this – we added an XLCubed Excel driven slicer (XLCubed – Slicer – Excel) based on the range $AA$1:$AB$12 as shown below, containing all months in FY 2006. This lets the user pick the last month for which we want to report Actuals.

RP3

The slicer is set to output its selection into $B$1. In $C$1 the formula =VALUE(B1) converts the text output of the slicer into a number which we’ll use to calculate which months should report Actual and which Budget, see the screenshot below:

Date Table

This is an Excel range supporting the reporting logic. Row 2 contains every month in the reporting year. Row 3 assigns an incremental number to each month, 1-12.

We can then compare the value of the selected month from the slicer ($C$1) with the value for each month. Basically if the month is less than or equal to the selected last actuals month it should be reported as Actuals, otherwise as Budget. An example formula contained in B4 for Actuals would be: =IF(B3<=$C$1,B2,””) . For the Budget row the formula has the inverse logic.

At this stage we’ve used a little XLCubed, and the flexibility of Excel to match the appropriate months to Actual and Budget. We now need to add the report itself.

We’ll create our grid – initially we set it up to report Budget and Actual figures across the year, by basing the selection for Date.Fiscal on the range containing all months for the year ( $B$2:$M$2).

We then use XLCubed’s right-click menu (Keep – Exclude From Display) to exclude members. It doesn’t matter which slices are excluded at this point. To do this highlight ‘Actual’, followed by the first available month and then choose Exclude From Display. Repeat this for ‘Budget’ and the first available month. We will exclude July 2005 for Actuals and August 2005 for Budget. You will notice the red comment marker on the grid. Right-click on this cell and choose Axis – Edit, and go to the Excluded Slices tab.

The above screenshots show that we are currently excluding July 2005 from Actual as well as August 2005 from Budget.

We can then easily change the Date Fiscal selection for each scenario. For Budget we will exclude Budget values for months in cell locations $B$4:$M$4 (as we want to report Actuals for those entries) and Actuals values for the months in cell locations $B$5:$M$5 (as we want to report Budgets for those entries).

The grid report now looks like this with Actuals being reported up to November 2005 and Budgeted for the remainder of FY 2006:

We have also set Merge Repeating Cells on (in Grid Properties). You could do further formatting – for example by colour filling all Budget values and hiding the grid headers.

The end result is a one grid report giving the Actual:Budget month mix that we want with the monthly maintenance process a case of simply changing a combo box selection.

Mind the gap!

XLCubed/ 4th September 20124th January 2019/ Grid & Report Formatting, Reporting & Analytics

Today’s blog is going to show you how to use XLCubed’s custom calculation functionality to create column breaks in a grid. Imagine that you have a report that shows you Reseller Sales across Product Model Categories over a 12-month time period.

There’s nothing wrong with this report but don’t you think it would be nicer if there was a way to separate out each quarter block ie put in a divider column between March and April, June and July, September and October. That would make it much easier to read and show clearly where each quarter period started and ended.

So let’s start by creating a custom calculation. Click the highlighted icon and give your custom calculation a name – let’s call it ColBreak. It’s connected to the Date.Calendar hierarchy.

Now in the Expression area enter a blank string starting and ending with ” (double-quote). Click OK.

To insert this into our report we now go to the Hierarchy Editor for Calendar Date – expand the All member and you will see ColBreak.

Drag this across and insert it into the report. We will insert it after March, June and September and click OK.

The report now looks like this:

Now let’s format this column break so that the we don’t see ColBreak appearing as a column heading. You need to right-click to get XLCubed’s right-click menu and then choose Format This Member.

We will choose white for the Font colour before clicking OK.

The report now looks like this with clear demarcations between each quarter:

Asymmetric grid reporting

XLCubed/ 6th August 20124th January 2019/ Reporting & Analytics

A common scenario for Analysis Services reporting is to want to present different measures for different members, particularly in budgeting and planning. So I want a grid that shows actuals for previous month, budget for this month and forecasts for future months.

This could be achieved in the cube, by using a “Phasing” measure to switch to the different values but quite often our customers are not in control of the cube structure.

We will look at a way to achieve this from within XLCubed itself by working through an example.

So this is our initial grid – it is currently set to report both Revenue and Discount values across all quarters in 2002 – 2004.

Let’s create a couple of slicers – one for Revenue:

and a similar one for Discounts:

The settings tab for Discount slicer is:

You can see that this is a multi-select slicer allows which updates an Excel range with the slicer choices.

The entries in the Excel range are referred to by their ‘Unique Name’ eg for Quarter 2 2004 equates to April 2004.

The settings tab for Revenue is similar except it outputs to different cell locations:

In this example our Discount slicer choices are Quarters 2 & 3 in 2004 and our Revenue slicer choices are Quarter 4, 2004.

Now let’s set up the excluded data – remember that we when reporting Revenue rows we want to exclude the Discount slicer choices and vice versa.

Right-click on the Discount header row and then select Exclude from Display

You will now see a red triangle appearing in the corner for the first member of the hierarchy which has excluded data. If you hover over this cell it displays an additional message that the rows are being restricted by members and that you should right-click to edit axis (it’s the menu option just after grid charts).

In the Axis Designer window pick the Excluded Slicers tab and click in the lower-half of the window (highlighted) – this is where we are going to define the quarters that are to be excluded on the Time hierarchy.

Select the time hierarchy and then click the box to its right (highlighted in screenshot below) and click the box next to the drop-down so that you can pick the Excel range – in our example it is cells I23 through to I28 (the Revenue slicer choices that we do not want reported as Discounts). Clicking OK will refresh the report and only show Discounts rows for the quarters selected.

We now need to do the same for Revenue so right-click on the row containing the red triangle and set up the Revenue excluded slices in a similar way. Click the icon highlighted to add a new exclusion. This will be cells A23 through to A28 (the Discount slicer choices that we do not want reported as Revenue).

Click on the new exclusion row and then in lower half of screen build up the Revenue exclusion in the same way but remembering to point to the Excel range to cell locations A23 to A28.

You should end up with an Axis Designer window something like this – for Discounts exclude slices in cell locations I23 – I28; for Revenue exclude slices in cell locations A23 –A28.

OK to apply these changes and the report now looks like:As you can see the report shows Discounts for Quarters 2 & 3 in 2004 but only shows Revenue for Quarter 4 in 2004 and because everything has been linked to ranges driven by slicers, the user of the report can easily control the switch in measures.

One slicer, two reports!

XLCubed/ 18th July 20124th January 2019/ Reporting & Analytics

So today’s blog is going to show you how easy it is in XLCubed to have a slicer driving a grid and a SQL table at the same time. There may be occasions when some of the information you require for your report is held not in an analysis services cube but a SQL table. So you’ve created a grid report with a slicer like below:

This is a simple report with Geography on headers and Product Model Categories on rows showing Reseller Sales Amount with the Country slicer driving the grid. The slicer is set to update cell B9 with the slicer choice.

So I show this to my manager and he asks for some more detail – he wants to know what type of businesses there are in each country, their names and the number of employees. That’s when I realise that all of this extra information is not in my cube but on a completely separate SQL table.

Not a problem for XLCubed! I can quickly create a report that includes all this data from the SQL table. Using the SQL option within Grids & Tables I can create a report that connects to a relational SQL data source.

Create my connection to my data source – I am selecting the AdventureWorksSDW database:

Let’s build up my SQL query – I’m using the DimReseller and DimGeography tables to return the required fields.

My SQL statement is:

Select DimReseller.BusinessType, DimReseller.ResellerName, DimReseller.NumberEmployees, DimGeography.EnglishCountryRegionName From DimReseller Inner Join DimGeography On DimGeography.GeographyKey = DimReseller.GeographyKey

This is great but it returns data for all the countries and I only want to see data for the country chosen through the slicer. So let’s add a parameter to our SQL query.

If you look at the corner of the SQL query window you will see the parameters area – with a very helpful tip on adding a named parameter.

Let’s add the following to the end of our SQL query:

where DimGeography.EnglishCountryRegionName = @parm1

Now we can define where the Excel range is for our parameter – in our example it is cell B9. You remember that this is the cell that the slicer has been set up to output the slicer choice.

So now when we select a country from our slicer eg United States the grid refreshes as well as the table.

Excluding members in XLCubed

XLCubed/ 31st May 20124th January 2019/ Reporting & Analytics

So today we are going to show you how you can easily exclude members from your XLCubed reports. Here we have a simple grid which shows lowest level descendants of Promotions on rows and Geography on columns.

We would like to rank this report and also exclude the Promotion No Discount which is not really adding any value to the report.

So let’s edit the Promotions hierarchy and set up the exclusion of the No Discount Promotion.

Click the Advanced tab and then the Add Member List icon:

You will see a window as below:

Now click the drop-down on the right-hand side member list and select Edit. This will allow us to edit the member set:

We are going to exclude No Discount so select it and drag it across.

Next we need to choose one of the following operations to perform on our two member lists:

Add – left and right sides combined

Common – must exist on left and right side

Subtract – left side minus right side

We will select the subtract operator and click OK. We will also click this icon to rank the result:

Let’s rank these Promotions based on the current measure, Reseller Sales Amount:

The Promotions hierarchy has now been edited to exclude No Discount and then ranked.

Our report now looks like this:

As you can see the report now excludes No Discount row and has been ranked to show the top 10 Promotions across All Geographies.

Easy pivoting of SQL queries in Excel

XLCubed/ 22nd May 20124th January 2019/ Data, Reporting & Analytics

So today’s blog is all about pivoting SQL query data columns.

Here we have a small sample of a SQL query report that shows us actual revenue across different products over a number of quarters. There’s nothing wrong with the data being returned but it is pretty difficult to do any comparison analysis.

So what if your task is to report back on actual revenue across the product categories over all the quarters in this report.

This would not be an easy query to write in SQL as we don’t always know which data will be returned by a query, but that’s where XLCubed can come to our rescue!

We just right-click on the column heading which we wish to pivot – in our case cDate and then select XLCubed and Pivot (XLCubed fills in the column heading) as below:

The report is now displayed as with the quarters across the page as columns.

This format is so much easier to read and we can quickly how each of the products are contributing (or not!) to the company’s revenue across a time period.

So that’s how easy it is to pivot column data in XLCubed.

Creating tree-view slicers in v7

XLCubed/ 15th May 20124th January 2019/ Reporting & Analytics

XLCubed has always provided a tree view selector to let users chose items from different levels in a hierarchy. Previously, however, it was only possible to do this directly from a cube-based hierarchy. With the extension of our SQL reporting capability in V7 we found a few scenarios where we wanted to create tree views from non-cube data. This can be easily achieved in Version 7 by using a slicer sourced from an Excel range. This can then be used to drive reports sourcing data from cubes, Tabular models, or SQL as required.

You can also use this method to allow users to choose items from an amended structure of a hierarchy or a limited part of a cube hierarchy and this is what our example below shows:

As you can see we’re going with a food-based theme. This Excel range needs to be in a specific format and so we have our list of slicer choices with the three required columns: key, value and depth.

Here are the slicer choices at the different levels of the hierarchy:

We’re happy with our list so from the XLCubed tab let’s select Slicer and then Excel which allows us to insert a slicer based on the data in our workbook.

At this window we need to tell the slicer where to find the data (slicer range) in our workbook and the slicer type – in our case a tree view.

In our example we are also giving the slicer a name ‘Food and Drink Slicer’ as well as instructing it to write the slicer selection to cell location $J$19.

The resulting slicer looks like this and the user’s choice can then be used to drive any report, ranging from cube-based grids to DAX and SQL tables.

Streamlining writeback with XL3DoWriteback

XLCubed/ 31st January 20124th January 2019/ Reporting & Analytics

We were recently asked by one of our customers to help them improve their forecasting process. They had originally been using a solution developed using XLCubed Excel Edition v6.0 and our XL3LookupRW formula. The system had been working, but because of a combination of the intricacy of the data model and the slowness of the cube server when performing a writeback, the process was taking much longer than necessary.

As an example, one of the workbooks that was being used contained nearly 7,000 XL3LookupRW formulae, and another contained over 1,000. Many of these lookups could actually have been replaced by a simple Excel formula, such as a sum or a product of other values, but built as it was, the customer was having to type these values into the cells individually: a tedious, time-consuming and error-prone task.

In the screenshot above, the price, percentage and production figures would be typed in, then a calculation made to calculate their product (in the white cells). This would then be individually copied and pasted into the corresponding cell in the revenue row.

What the customer wanted was a couple of changes to streamline the process:
* the ability to use Excel formulae in the workbook to obtain the final values – without the subsequent copying of values,
* they wanted to be able to get all the calculations lined up, then submit them all at once – this would make the poor server performance a much less important issue, since instead of having to wait to enter the next value, that period could be usefully spent doing other tasks.

What we offered was a different writeback method, which has been available in its current form since XLCubed v6.5: the XL3DoWriteback formula.

Unlike XL3LookupRW, XL3DoWriteback is geared towards the kind of batch writeback approach that the customer had envisioned. Once set up, Excel formulae can be used to do the actual work of calculating the numbers, and the XL3DoWriteback formulae remain dormant until all the values are ready, then are activated in one transaction.

If this sounds useful for you, here’s how to set it up.

The XL3DoWriteback Formula

In addition to the member list required by the XL3LookupRW formula, the XL3DoWriteback formula requires two extra parameters:

PerformWriteback: this parameter tells the formula whether it should be in active writeback mode, or should remain dormant
Value: this parameter gives the new value that should be written back to the tuple

Following these two parameters are the connection number, and the hierarchy-member pairs that will be familiar to you from the XL3Lookup and XL3LookupRW formulae.

The PerformWriteback parameter is a bit special. If it refers to a cell that contains only a boolean value of TRUE, then when it has finished sending the value, it will set that cell back to FALSE. This means that periods of writing and non-writing are very easy to define. In order to maximise the power of this, we usually point all the XL3DoWriteback formulae at a single PerformWriteback cell, which we can switch using an XL3Link formula. For example:

A1: =XL3Link(XL3Address($A$1),"Write changes",,XL3Address($B$1),TRUE)

B1: FALSE

C3: 1,000

C4: 0.85

C5: 20,132

C6 =C3*C4*C5

D3: =XL3DoWriteback($B$1,C3,1,"[Account]","[Account].[Production]",
     "[Date]","[Date].[Calendar].[January 2011]")

D4: =XL3DoWriteback($B$1,C4,1,"[Account]","[Account].[Our %age]",
     "[Date]","[Date].[Calendar].[January 2011]")

D5: =XL3DoWriteback($B$1,C5,1,"[Account]","[Account].[Price]",
     "[Date]","[Date].[Calendar].[January 2011]")

D6: =XL3DoWriteback($B$1,C6,1,"[Account]","[Account].[Forecast Revenue]",
     "[Date]","[Date].[Calendar].[January 2011]")

In this example, C3, C4 and C5 are cells containing the raw values. Since we know that the forecast revenue is a product of the production, the percentage and the price per unit, C6 is just the product over those three cells. The four XL3DoWriteback formulae in column D refer to these value cells, but because the value in cell B1 is FALSE, nothing is written back yet.

In cell A1 is a XL3Link formula that, when clicked, will change B1 to TRUE. This immediately signals the XL3DoWriteback formulae that they should gather and write back their values. Once that transaction has been sent to the cube, the XL3DoWritebacks set cell B1 back to FALSE, and the workbook is back to the ready state.

The Setup

To make it as easy and efficient as possible, we used:

one section for values. These were a mix of XL3Lookup formulae, typed-in values and standard Excel formulae
one section for XL3DoWriteback formulae. We pared away any excess XL3DoWriteback formulae, leaving only those cells that we were sure we wanted to be writeable
a single cell with the boolean value, set to FALSE
an XL3Link in a highly visible place, to switch the boolean cell. In this case, the cell containing the boolean value was B1:

=XL3Link(XL3Address($A$1),"Write changes",,XL3Address($B$1),TRUE)

The final workbook looked a little like this (except, of course, much larger!):

The customer would then enter all the necessary values on the left section, using whatever combination of Excel formulae, cube lookups and typed-in values he needed, without any wait between entries. A single click of the XL3Link then wrote the values back in a single batch, leaving the customer to do other jobs.

The revised model allows the user to update entries quickly and efficiently, without any ‘write’ delay. The numbers to be written back can be calculated using Excel formulae as needed based on the raw input numbers. When the input process is done and checked in Excel, everything can be committed to the cube with one button press. The end result – a happy customer, with more time to plan and analyse the budget, rather than just input it.

Between and Member Searching

XLCubed/ 26th January 20124th January 2019/ Reporting & Analytics

Our blog today takes a look at two new features available in v6.5 – Between and Member Searching.

Between

In v6 we give our users the ability to enter a reporting range for their grid reports by allowing them to enter a ‘From’ and a ‘To’ range on a hierarchy.

The only thing to remember is that both members have to be at the same level.

So let’s try to put together an example. Let’s say that we would like to report all data between two dates.

So we edit the hierarchy that should include the range. The hierarchy can also be on the header area of the report as well as on rows or columns.

Under the Advanced tab we click the Clear all icon

before clicking the Member Set icon

so that we can enter the From and the To values.

Click OK and our report will show only the members in the range specified. It’s as simple as that!

Even better for the end-user is the option to enter an Excel range so that they just enter their values into Excel cell locations.

So we’ll run the grid report based on From and To values in $I$3 and $I$4 respectively.

Another great feature of using this option is that we can choose to leave one of the ranges empty.

So if we just enter a value in the Excel cell location for the From date and leave the To date blank the report returns all data from the From date to the latest date available in the hierarchy.

As you can see in the screenshot below we have put FY 2002 in the From range and left the To range empty – so XLCubed returns all data from FY 2002 to latest.

Conversely, leaving the From date blank and entering a value in the To date will return all data from the earliest date available to the To date. This time XLCubed returns all data until FY 2003.

So that’s how you report on a range in XLCubed.

PS Don’t forget both members of your range have to be at the same level in the hierarchy.

Member Searching

Another great feature of v6.5 is the new functionality that allows the user to filter a report by searching for members in a hierarchy.

Let’s show this functionality in action with a simple example.

Our report below shows a simple grid with Geography on rows and Fiscal Years on columns – we’d like to show only those members in the Geography hierarchy (at all levels) that start with B.

Click the Advanced tab and then select All Hierarchy Members by clicking:

Click on Member Search and the following window will be displayed:

At this point we have two options:

enter a value in the Search Value field – in our example we enter B
use Excel range to hold the value that should be used

In our example we are using the value in cell F2 to determine the filtering on our report.

We can determine the ‘search by’ criteria as below – ‘Ends with’, ‘Begins with’, ‘Exact match’ or ‘Contains’:

Additionally, we can choose the ‘Property to search by’:

MEMBER_CAPTION (most commonly used)
MEMBER_UNIQUE_NAME
MEMBER_KEY
PARENT_UNIQUE_NAME

As you can see the report now only shows those members of the Geography hierarchy that start with B regardless of their level within the hierarchy.

This example is based on an entire hierarchy but it is also possible to do the same for a specific set of members, for example, a level or descendants of a specific member.

We hope this short example has shown you how easy it is to use Between and Member Searching within XLCubed reports.

Category: Reporting & Analytics