Background Information

Consolidating Dashboards, Home Screen, Stories, Report Views, Report Summaries

Simplifying user interaction for various uses cases of data visualization and planning

➕ The “Report” object will be discontinued

➕ Table (* Formerly known as Crosstab) widgets in Stories will be the replacement

What Is New?

• Stories can hold Canvas or Grid pages
• Grid pages
  • Full screen grids that offer Excel like functionality
  • Native cells with the ability to enter numbers, formulas and text
  • Multiple data regions with data binding to models
• Canvas pages can have different kinds of widgets. New: Table (Formerly known as Crosstab)
  • Native cells with the ability to enter numbers, formulas and text
  • One data region with data binding to a model

Grid Page

Canvas Page

Additional Features Offered by the Table Widget Compared to Reports

• Cell reference management
  • show/hide
  • remove
• Summary and View Features in one Grid

Benefit

• Integration of Charts/Viz with Table
• Fewer Objects in the application with richer functionality – simpler
  Easier answer for the question:
  “Which object do I need to create if I want to achieve abc?”
• Combination of View and Summary Sheet features in one
• Input Schedule taking advantage of full story visualization features
• Data from different models on one page without the need to copy and paste
  Report: one model per view sheet, copy & paste references to one summary sheet
• Transparent cell references and their management

Migrating Report to Stories

• Tables in stories provide the same functionality as reports with view and summary sheets
• Some features work a little different
• Table offer more options
• ℹ an automated migration cannot benefit from the richer feature set
• ℹ Thus please migrate the reports you need manually

Tips – Preface

The following tips for migration are only meant to help you migrate. We try to point out aspects where the user interface changed a little. We also try to point out areas where you can benefit from the migration by doing things differently than in reports.

Tips – Reports with View Sheets only

• Create a story for every report that only contains view sheets
• For every view sheet in the report, create a grid page in the story
• Add one table to every grid page, binding it to the model you need
• Adjust layout, drill state and filter definitions (see section Filter and Layout for details)

Tips – Filter and Layout

• The designer panel from reports is replaced with a builder panel in stories
• Adding a dimension to rows/columns is achieved by typing on the ‘Add Dimension’ text
  • it will bring up a filtered list of dimensions when you start typing. This allows you to effectively manage also a huge number of dimensions
• Removing a dimension is achieved by clicking on the ‘X’ that appears on ‘hover’
• Filters can be defined using the filter icon
• ❗ Workaround for setting filters on dimensions not assigned to an axis:
  • Assign the dimension you want to filter on to an axis
  • Define the filter
  • remove the dimension from the axis
  • ➕ We will introduce a separate section for defining filters (as for charts) in an upcoming release

Tips – Side Calculations Referring to Data of one Model

Migrating a summary sheet that is used to add calculations (or formatting) based on data from a view sheet is very interesting as the new table allows you to have both aspects in one grid.

• Add a table (works both for canvas or grid pages) bound to the model you need
• Use native cells around the data region to add the calculations
• Copy cells from the data region to native cells to create cell references
• Cell references can be shown, hidden and removed using a tool from the tool bar
• See section formatting for more details

Tips – Formatting

Before you can use the formatting pane you need to ‘fix’ the builder pane. (This restriction will be removed in upcoming releases.)

Please note, that data regions can change its size over time or persons as over time more members may have data or different persons are not allowed to read members of certain dimensions. Native cells around the data region will then be shifted down or right when the data region become bigger or up or left if the data regions becomes smaller. Native cells above or left of a data region are not affected / shifted during re-sizing of the data region. Thus native cells above or left of a data region as easier to handle.

The formatting pane allows adding rows or columns. These can not be added inside a data region but only above, under, left or right.

😉 Rather create rows above a data region and use those native cells for side calculations, cell references and formatting.

ℹ In an upcoming release, formatting will also be enabled inside the data region.

Known Shortcomings

We do have some shortcomings in the area of data references.

• Cell references are restricted to one grid – as a grid (on a grid page) can hold multiple data regions the same effect can be achieved in a different manner
  • Reports; View A on model A, View B on model B, summary sheet showing cells referring to both views
  • Grid: Table A on Model A, Table B on model B, cell references on both Tables in one common area in the grid (e.g. above everything)
• Data regions cannot be hidden
• Undo/redo (works with CTRL-Z/Y) – full solution to be added in a later release
• Cut

We also have short comings in the collaboration area.

• Share private version – will be added in a later release
• Discuss cell – will be added in a broader scope which allows addressing more widgets (objects) on a canvas page

Roadmap

In release 2016.03, the Table widget (Dynamic Table Control) moves out of beta mode. Reports have been disabled for new installations and are planned to be disabled for all environments in a near term future release. Existing users of reports should now actively transition from using reports to using stories with Table widgets.