INFOASSIST: REPORTING MADE SIMPLE

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I ^NFO A ^SSIST : R ÊPORTING M ÂDE S ÎMPLE

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Presentation Abstract: InfoAssist, WebFOCUS' browser-based ad hoc reporting tool, provides a single facility that meets all the needs of business users. Users easily progress from simple tasks, such as building a single query, all the way up to creating published documents. Come see how WebFOCUS and Web 2.0 can combine for a rich and efficient ad hoc reporting experience.

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O VERVIEW

In this lab, you play the part of a typical business user or analyst. You will walk through a typical workflow in InfoAssist, demonstrating the creation of reports and dashboards. Enjoy!

P ART 1

Log in and get familiar with the Active Dashboard you are about to build.

1. Open Internet Explorer and you will see the BI Dashboard login page. The URL is:

http://localhost:8080/approot/iawork/index.htm

2. Login as “wfuser” and leave the password blank.

3. There are two tabs on the dashboard. The first tab opens automatically to reveal an active dashboard.

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4. Filter the entire dashboard by TYPE.

5. On the bar chart, click on the icon and change the Sum to an Average.

6. Click on a slice of the pie chart to isolate.

7. Right click on the pie chart and select “Enable rotation”.

Then spin the pie chart around to get a different perspective of the data.

8. Click the icon on the tool bar of the Pie chart to bring up the “Chart/Rollup tool”. Now you can change the chart to a number of different chart types. Select the Charts tab and the select the

“Other” sub tab and change to a Radar, Pyramid, or Funnel chart to see the different types of charts available.

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P ART 2

Build the dashboard in InfoAssist

1. Switch to the Query and Analysis tab.

2. Expand the “My Reports” folder in the domain tree. Right click on the Custom Reports folder and click on the InfoAssist link.

3. Note the Quick Start page:

4. Click Compose a Document and note the list of available data sources.

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5. Double click on “ AWDEMO_DEMODB”. Now note the InfoAssist interface.

6. Maximize the IA window. Note that InfoAssist is launched in its own window to maximize real estate.

7. Go to the Layout tab and change the page orientation to Landscape to maximize the page size and give yourself plenty of room to build your dashboard.

8. Switch to the Home tab and Change the format to Chart.

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9. Build the Bar chart

a. Drag and drop “ Country” on to the top left hand corner of the canvas.

b. In the data pane, click on “ Internet Sales”, hold down the Shift key and click on “ Reseller Sales” to multi-select the two fields. Now drag and drop the two fields together onto the chart preview to add to the chart. Note you can also double click each field individually to automatically add to the chart. The built-in intelligence eliminates the need for you to know which “bucket” to drop a field in to create a chart.

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a. Size the chart to fill approximately half of the canvas horizontally and vertically. Note, use the ruler and page size (11” x 8.5”) as a guide for sizing the chart.

b. Change the format of the chart to a stacked bar. Go to the Format tab and select “Other”

for the chart type. Click OK.

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10. Build the Pie chart.

a. Deselect the bar chart and activate the canvas by clicking on the canvas to the right of the chart area. Note, the chart is selected if there is a black outline around it.

b. In the field list, expand the Time dimension to see “ Quarter” by clicking on the plus in front of “ Year”.

c. Drag and drop “ Quarter” to the right of the bar chart. Note the drop point will be where the upper left hand corner of the new chart will be positioned.

d. Double click “ Internet Sales” to add a measure to the chart.

e. From the Format tab, select the Pie for the chart type.

f. Size the chart to match the Bar chart and position evenly side by side with the bar chart. Note you can select the Bar chart and hold the shift key and then select the Pie chart to see the sizing. You can move the last item selected and still see the size of both.

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11. Build the Area chart.

a. Click onto the Canvas so no charts are selected.

b. From the field list, drag and drop “ Month/Year” to the left hand side of the canvas, below the Bar chart – dropping the field as to position the chart roughly so it aligns with the left edge of the bar chart.

c. Double click “ Internet Sales” and “ Reseller Sales” to add to the chart or multi-select the two fields and drag and drop onto the new chart.

d. Size the chart so it fills the remaining bottom half of the page and spans across both the bar and the pie charts.

e. From the format tab, change the format of the chart to Area.

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12. Run the document by clicking the Run button. Then hide the field list by clicking the View tab and selecting the Resources option. Finally, right click anywhere on the ribbon and select “Minimize”

to give a full screen view of the dashboard. Note this is just a static HTML dashboard and how nice the graphics are. This can also be run in PDF, Excel, or PowerPoint.

13. Make the ribbon visible again by right clicking in the toolbar area and deselecting “Minimize”. Then click the

Resources option again to bring the field list back into view. Finally, close the output window by clicking the small

“X” in the top right hand corner of the window (just like Windows). Now you should be back to the Compose view of the dashboard.

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14. Now you will make this into an interactive dashboard in just two steps.

a. Create a global filter for the dashboard by dragging and dropping the “ Category” field into the “coordinated”

bucket in the query pane below the field list. Be sure that one of the charts is selected before adding the coordinated field.

b. From the Format tab, change the format of the document to

Active Flex. Be sure the canvas is active and not one of the charts. Note that turning a static dashboard into an interactive dashboard is as simple as changing the output format!

15. Click the Run the report and note you now have a Coordinated Active Flex dashboard.

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16. Save the dashboard.

a. Click the globe to access the application menu.

b. Select the Save option.

c. Type the name of your dashboard –

“My First Dashboard”.

d. Click Ok.

e. Now open the application menu again

and click “Close” to close the dashboard and prepare for the next task.

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P ART 3

Build a single report and analyze

1. Click the New option to create a new report.

2. When the Getting Started screen appears, select

“Build a report”.

3. Select the “ AWDEMO_DEMODB” data source.

4. Add the following fields by double clicking each field in the field list respectively: “ Country”, “ Category”, “ Internet Sales”, and “ Reseller Sales”.

5. Add a Computed field that measures the percentage of sales that came from the Internet.

a. Click on the Data tab and select the Summary (Compute) option.

b. Change the name of the field to Percent.

c. Click the format button to change the format.

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i. Change the format to “Percent (%).

ii. Reduce the number of decimals downs to zero.

iii. Click OK.

d. Collapse the Dimensions segment of the field list so only the Measures are displayed.

e. Now we’ll create the calculation: “Internet Sales / (Internet Sales + Reseller Sales) * 100”

i. Double click “ Internet Sales”.

ii. Click the “/” division symbol.

iii. Now click the “()” symbol to create a group.

iv. Within the parenthesis, double click the “ Internet Sales” field again v. Click the “+” plus sign.

vi. Double click the “ Reseller Sales” field vii. Click to the right of

the outer parenthesis.

viii. Click the “*”

multiplication symbol ix. Then add “100”.

x. Select OK.

6. Now you should see your calculated field in the report.

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7. Drag and drop the “ Internet Sales” field to the right of “ Reseller Sales”.

8. Add conditional styling

or “traffic lighting” to the report that indicates a percentage of Internet Sales greater than or equal to 60%.

a. Click the Percent column and select the Traffic Lights option.

b. Select “Greater than or equal to”

and type “60” for the value.

c. Click Ok.

d. Your percent column should now reflect this indicator displaying any percentage of 60% or higher in green.

9. Now let’s rank the” Internet Sales”

column.

a. In the Field tab, click the “ Rank” option.

b. Now you have an additional “ Internet Sales”

field appearing at the beginning of the report along with an actual rank column.

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c. Now we’ll use this additional ranking column to rank within “ Country”. Select the “ Internet Sales” ranking column (2^nd column from the left) and drag and drop between “ Country” and “ Category”.

d. Now select the “ Internet Sales” field (ranked column) again and select the “ Down”

option to change the sort from ascending to descending and see the highest ranked categories.

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e. Now click on the “ Country” column and click on the “ Line break” option to visually separate the different countries.

f. Now select the “ Internet Sales” field (ranked column) again and right click on the column.

Then select the “ Visibility” option and select “Hide” to visually remove the column from the report.

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10. Now click the Run option to see the full output.

11. Notice a trend? It appears that “Components” are consistently selling over 60% via the internet. Let’s see which type of components are attributing to this.

a. Click the “ Interactive” button on the bottom left hand of the tool to go back to the interactive preview.

b. Let’s focus on “Components” by filtering the report.

i. Right click on the “ Category” column in the field list and select “ Filter”.

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ii. Click “ Values” and select “Fetch All Values from Source.

iii. Double click on

“Components” to add to the filter.

iv. Click Ok.

c. Double click on the “

Subcategory” and “ Product” fields to add more detail to the report.

d. Click Run to see the output.

e. Looks like “Wheels” are our top selling item over the internet.

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12. Now let’s add a heading and footing to prepare this report for a presentation to the boss.

a. Click the “ Interactive” button on the bottom left hand of the tool to go back to the interactive preview.

b. Click on the “Home” tab in the ribbon.

c. Click the “ Header & Footer”

option.

d. Type in “Internet Sales Ranking Report”.

e. Click the “ Report Footer” button.

f. Type in “Powered by WebFOCUS”.

g. Now go to the Format tab and change the format to PDF and run the report.

h. Now you can print the report and save it for later use.

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INFOASSIST: REPORTING MADE SIMPLE