XLCubed Blog | Page 3 of 14

No comment? We’ve got plenty to say!

XLCubed/ 13th September 201820th February 2019/ Reporting & Analytics

Today’s blog will run through XLCubed’s commentary functionality.

At XLCubed we have seen a lot of customer interest in commentary and collaboration in the last couple of years.

We’re all familiar with the standard comments functionality in Excel where you add a comment to an Excel cell.

However, in a dynamic BI environment it can be limiting. For example, say I add an Excel comment to cell $C$10, then the comment is tied to that specific cell. If a user changes a filter selection, the numbers change but the comment does not and may not now be relevant.

This is where XLCubed commentary shines through.

Continue reading “No comment? We’ve got plenty to say!”

Eat, Sleep, Report, Repeat!

XLCubed/ 17th April 201820th February 2019/ Charting & Visualisation

Repeaters are a visualisation feature introduced in v9.1. They are effective when you want to repeat a formatted section of a report by one variable. They can save so much time as you don’t have to go through the tedious, error-prone task of recreating the same section many times by copying and pasting manually. Imagine the time you’d save setting the design up just once and have the repetition handled by XLCubed!

Continue reading “Eat, Sleep, Report, Repeat!”

Making your (Power)Point

XLCubed/ 27th March 201820th February 2019/ Publication & Distribution

Over the last year or so several customers have asked about the ability to export XLCubed reports directly into PowerPoint. They were doing this manually as part of regular monthly reporting cycles, and wanted to automate what was a fairly tedious process, and to save time. We took these requests on board and are pleased to announce PowerPoint integration as a new feature in v9.1.

Continue reading “Making your (Power)Point”

Charting the Premier League Transfer Window

XLCubed/ 14th September 201720th February 2019/ Charting & Visualisation

This summer English Premier league clubs spent more than ever before on player transfers, a staggering £1.47bn in total. Some spent a lot more than others, and while PSG are making the Financial Fair Play headlines globally, the EPL clubs as a group spent more than any other league.

There are lots of ways to analyse spending, and rather than write a detailed analysis or opinion piece (as I’d doubtless end up being biased), I’ve taken the opportunity to simply present the transfer activity in a few different visualisations and readers can draw their own conclusions. Continue reading “Charting the Premier League Transfer Window”

User control of dashboard layouts

XLCubed/ 18th August 20174th January 2019/ Dashboard Design

Dashboard sheets were introduced with V9, primarily as a way to deliver mobile-friendly reporting with a responsive UI to auto-fit any screen size. Specific Targets which define the layout can be defined to optimise the layout for different devices and are automatically applied depending on the device type.

Another use-case which is less obvious but can also be very useful is to allow users to choose between a number of predefined layouts.

For example, on a specific report there may be just 3 or 4 slicers which are typically used, but occasionally users may need access to a much larger list of slicers to filter by. It would be a shame to clutter the report for everyone permanently with all the slicers as it makes the selection process less intuitive, and probably forces us to use only combo boxes to save space. Ideally we’d like users to be able to switch from a ‘Quick Slicer’ view to an ‘All slicer’ view.

Another example would be where users want to include additional dashboard items, or remove items to get a larger view of a data table.

These scenarios and others can be handled by giving users control over which Dashboard Target is active via a slicer.

In the example shown below the button slicer allows switching between a ‘Quick slicer’ view with the 3 primary slicers shown as list boxes, an ‘All Slicer’ view with all 9 slicers available as combo boxes, and a ‘Table View’ which maximises the space for the data table and removes the charts.

So how do I…?

Firstly, you’ll need to define the various Targets which you want the user to choose between (see here for the details).

Next you need to add a slicer allowing the user to select between Target layouts. This slicer will be based on an Excel range, and will output its selection to another cell which you specify. It’s easiest if the input range for the slicer exactly matches your Dashboard Target Names (otherwise you can use vlookups to cross-match). Of course you’ll need to enable that slicer on each of the targets to allow the users to switch views.

Finally, we can use the XL3SetProperty() formula to set the active Target for the dashboard, based on the output of the slicer we just set up. The syntax is:

XL3SetProperty(Object Type, Object Name, Property to set, value to set the property to)

The screenshot above shows the slicer and formula setup – hope it proves useful for some of you!

Icon-based Navigation and Filtering in XLCubed

XLCubed/ 1st August 20174th January 2019/ Dashboard Design, Reporting & Analytics

Version 9 introduced an embedded icon library and XL3PictureLink, which together make the creation of icon-led navigation and filtering simple.

XL3PictureLink provides the same parameterised navigation capabilities which the XL3Link() formula has done for years, but with an added visual aspect. Users can choose from one of the thousands of icons provided, in any colour, or choose a custom image as required.

The images can then be used as an intuitive way for users to navigate to another sheet within the report, while passing a dynamic parameter to ensure the data is in-context. Alternately, where there are a small number of selection choices they can be used as visually appealing slicers.

Insert PictureLink is available from the Insert Formula tab on the XLCubed ribbon.

Click the drop-down and search for an appropriate image from the picture library – you can also specify the colour by clicking the Colour drop-down.

You then select the required image, and enter the destination cell location in the “Link to” box – this is the location where the user will be taken when they click on the image (can be the same sheet or a different sheet in the report).

You can also parameterise the image – “Value” is the content which will be inserted into the cell specified in “Range to Set” (can be text or a cell reference).

To edit a Picturelink once it has been inserted, hold down Shift and then click the image.

Note that PictureLinks do not need to pass parameters – they can used as a simple link to another location:

Lastly, on web reports XL3PictureLink can also be used instead of the standard ‘Submit’ toolbar button.

There is more information on that here.

The Missing Link in Excel BI

XLCubed/ 3rd March 20174th January 2019/ Reporting & Analytics

When viewing a high level summary report or dashboard, users often want to delve into more detail on a specific area. In some cases that may be a drill down, in many others it may be to a different view of the data or to an entirely different report. In the XLCubed example below, users can link from any one of the summary KPIs to a detail report showing product level detail for the selected KPI.

This is a fairly common requirement in reporting. In a standard Excel context, it would be easy to add a hyperlink formula to jump across to another sheet, but that’s just part of what’s needed. In this example we need to link in the context of the selected KPI, otherwise we would need a separate sheet for product detail on each KPI, far from ideal, especially in row-dynamic reports.

This type of limitation is one reason why you’ll often see workbooks with huge numbers of worksheets, which become unwieldy and horrible to maintain.

We need hyperlink functionality but also an ability to pass parameters (and of course a way for the pivot table to accept the incoming parameter…).

XLCubed makes it straightforward for non-technical users to build this type of contextual linking into reports through the XL3Link() formula. XL3Link has arguments which determine what is displayed in the cell, where it hyperlinks to, and what cell(s) parameters are passed from and to.

Unlike Pivot tables, XLCubed Grids and formulae can reference cell content as a filter, so the data on the ‘link to’ worksheet can update as soon as a new value is passed into the driving cell, retrieving the relevant data from whichever data source is involved.

The beauty of the approach is its simplicity. It’s something which most users can get to grips with quickly, and opens up huge flexibility in joined up reporting.

Last but not least, web and mobile deployment takes a matter of seconds. The report is published to XLCubed Web and from there browser and mobile app based users have access to the same report with the same chain of thought links. The links can be to different content in the same report, to a separate report, or a url to another application or website.

(This piece revisits content from our blog from several years back the missing link part 1 . The business requirement it addresses is now even more common, and still one not handled in native Excel.)

Auto refresh in XLCubed Pivot-views and Power BI

XLCubed/ 20th February 20174th January 2019/ Data

Version 9 of XLCubed introduced Pivot-views, which allow our powerful grids, small multiples and slicers to be driven directly from lots of different relational sources.

We also added support for Power BI as a data source, and many of our customers are now using XLCubed on Power BI data for a better in-Excel experience and slice and dice.

Many of you will already be familiar with the data refresh options in Power BI, essentially either a scheduled refresh process, or through the Enterprise Gateway.

With pivot-views we wanted to ensure that the data refresh process is very straightforward, and to enable business users to benefit from them without worrying about scheduling data flows or getting involved with discussions about gateway configuration. Fundamentally, the data will automatically update when the report is opened or if any of the query parameters change (either by updating a slicer or if an Excel cell-based parameter value changes).

This means the report builder doesn’t have to worry about the latest view of the data as that is all handled automatically without any custom code, manual intervention or IT assistance.

Here is how it works in detail.

First insert a grid and select a relational database as the source.

We are presented with the query designer, we can pick a table and setup a parameter by entering “@productgroup”:

This gives us an option to link that parameter to a cell or directly to a slicer:

We can now design the grid we want to see:

And view the result.

Now, if I update the driving cell:

The query is re-run and the grid (and anything else driven from the data has updated to reflect the new query results):

This automatic handling of the data refresh continues once the report is published to XLCubedWeb. Whether accessing from Excel, a browser or the XLCubed Mobile App, the report is based on current data without the need for any additional handling or refresh processing… One less thing for the report designer to worry about, one less thing to go wrong!

Rio Olympics – Medals Treemaps

XLCubed/ 22nd August 20164th January 2019/ Charting & Visualisation

Well, the Rio 2016 games have finished and we now all need to find something else to watch on TV. As always at the Olympics there was plenty to entertain and inspire. After the London games in 2012 we blogged showing the medal distribution using Treemaps. We’ve updated that for 2016 below with the corresponding 2012 equivalent:

The charts are split by country, and then sport where the size of the tile represents total number of medals, and the colour saturation represents the number of Gold medals. We can see immediately that the US retains a significant lead over the other nations, and also that roughly half its medals overall were won in Swimming and Athletics. Great Britain and France have seen their relative medal positions strengthen in the four years. It’s difficult to see the breakdown for countries with smaller numbers of medals, but the interactive version can of course be drilled to additional detail and we’ll make that available in the coming weeks.

Looking at things split by Sport then by country it’s as below:

Athletics and swimming have the most events and hence the most medals and largest presence on the Treemap. USA dominates both categories across both London and Rio, with an even stronger grip on athletics in Rio. Elsewhere China rule the diving boards, winning 7 of the 8 events in Rio.

Team GB again did spectacularly well in Rio, and as a British company we can allow ourselves a slight bias in our coverage (a roundabout way of saying the remaining charts are just about the British team). Firstly we’ve brought the 2012 and 2016 data for GB together into one treemap as shown below.

While the mix of sports is slightly different, and in both games the team won medals across 19 sports, the core strengths remain fairly consistent. Despite that, there are some interesting movements. Gymnastics and swimming have shown the biggest improvements between 2012 and 2016. Cycling (all cycling disciplines grouped) had the same number of medals in total, but 2 fewer gold. Having said that when you start from such a high base even being close is success – when other teams are videoing your warm up / stay warm routines it’s safe to assume you’re doing something right!

Last but not least, a column chart showing overall GB medals by discipline across the two games – if you need a binary sport by sport comparison rather than contribution to total the classics still tell it best.