We’ve just completed the process of renewing our Gold partner status with Microsoft. Among other things, this ensures we have early access to upcoming software through the CTP and beta programs, as has been the case with office 2010 over the last year.
The Gold level now has a requirement for completion of an independently run Customer Satisfaction survey, and thanks very much to everyone who completed this. The scoring and comments are much appreciated, and it was good to see the consistently high scores. We’re of course reviewing the areas where we didn’t score perfectly as we strive to further improve the service we offer.
The survey also highlighted a number of questions which appeared a few times:
1) Relational Database support
Our prime focus is on cube based reporting and analytics, but we do also support querying of relational databases in both Excel and on the Web, and have a number of customers using the product purely for relational reporting.
We extend the native Microsoft functionality in excel, and add support for this in the Web product. The connection string and query string can both be formula driven so you can construct parameter driven reports with ease.
– Search for ‘relational database access’ in the help file for an overview.
2) Writeback & Planning applications
XLCubed supports both grid and formula based writeback against Analysis Services, in Excel and on the Web. As such it lends itself well to planning and budgeting applications, and it’s an arena in which we have a lot of experience, from the straightforward through to the highly complex.
3) Documentation and User Guides
Documentation is now online and regularly being updated, you can access it here: http://www.xlcubed.com/help
4) YouTube videos
We had two streams of comment here, broadly summarised as:
a) They’re really useful – thanks!
b) Youtube access is blocked by our corporate internet policy!
If your access is blocked, you can download the videos as mp4 from