Xcelsius:
- It’s a Dashboard Tool.
- It is a visualization tool for creating interactive visual models.
- It is uniquely designed for ease of use. Basic understanding of Microsoft Excel is required for user to create visual effects in their reports. No additional training is required!.
- Xcelsius Dashboards are basically Designed for the top level management.
- Mostly for aggregated data not for the granular level.
- Need to consider Excel limitation while designing the dashboard; Dashboards do not support Macros or VB Scripts.
- Only one person can build one dashboard at a time
How Xcelsius Works:
Following are the three steps to create Xcelsius dashboard
- Add data to Spreadsheet.
- Build the visualization.
- Publish the visualization.
To design a dashboard:
- The overall requirements should be clear.
- BO environment (universe) need to be in place.
- No frequent changes in requirements.(difficult to maintain XLF file).
- Business standard should be available while designing the dashboard.
Commonly used Approaches:
BO Universe --> Webi reports --> Live Office --Xcelsius--> Dashboard
BO Universe --> QaaWs--> Xcelsius --> Dashboard
LiveOffice & QaaWs – (Query as web service) are used as middleware between Webi reports and Xcelsius.
Following points can be considered to estimate the dashboard:
- Complexity of the dashboard is depend upon the requirement of the dashboard.
- Number of KPI’s need to display on dashboard.
- What kind of functionally(navigations) user want to see on dashboard(drill down , hyper linking, dynamic visibilities, Data filters)
- What are the display standards to be used in the dashboards?
- What is the size of the data?
Tentatively 30 to 40 days per person will require to build a complex dashboard (which will include 4 to 6 KPI’s with all functionality)
