Panorama Business Intelligence

I never thought of it until one of my users said it. Sorting the KPI can be a very good idea. Instead of always having the same indicators (gauges, traffic lights, etc.) in the same position of the screen, sorting it can make the viewer expect that the most relevant indicator will be placed in the top-left corner of the screen, the second most-relevant will be placed after it, etc.

Sorting the KPI is a very easy thing. Every end user, even with no clue in MDX can do it by following this:

In the Define KPI wizard, go to the “Select Set” step. Copy the current set. For the example, let’s say that the current set is [Products].Members and you want to sort it according to the Sales measure in descending order. Click on the advanced button on the right of the set (The button with the “…” on it) and enter the following MDX statement:

Order([Products].Members, [Measures].[Sales], DESC)

If you want to order in ascending order you can replace the DESC with ASC or not to mention it at all.

This very useful option in Panorama can prevent much pain. Often, you don’t want your CEO(s) to play with the views you created in Panorama. The beautiful dashboard page you created is what you want them to see and that’s it.
In the dashboards site, select the component holding the desired view and in its Toolbar options, check the “Disable Analysis” checkbox. This will prevent the user from slicing and dicing with your view.

Your customer/company may want to get the effect shown by Analysis Services 2005 when browsing a dimension (see the picture below). He’ll want to see some properties of the members shown in the rows, along with the usual measures. Panorama  does not have this option in the GIU. The solution is this code:

Create Member CurrentCube.[Measures].[MyProperty] as
iif(IsLeaf([MyDimension].[MyHierarchy].CurrentMember),
[MyDimension].[MyHierarchy].CurrentMember.Properties(”MyProperty”),
Null)

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This post is not about how to customize your Dashboard (well, not only about it). Its purpose is to say it loud: Customize your Dashboard!
When the executives of your company (Yeah, I guess you work in a company. Does someone building Bi Portal for himself?) see the customized gauges with their company logo on it, they’ll love it. No matter what these gauges will show them, you got their attention and their sympathy for the Dashboards site you made. Now, everything is easier. The bosses are in your hands.

Some technical stuff:

1. Follow this link to learn how to do this.
2. Do NOT start working before you backup your E-BI/KPI folder !
3. I recommend using Notepad++ or another good XML editor when writing in the XML files. Otherwise, you can mix the whole file and you’ll have to start all over again.

Enabling SSO in the Panorama Dashboards site is quite easy, but you have to be careful.

Here’s a story that happened to me last month: We wanted to establish SSO in our dashboards site. In a matter of fact, the responsibility for this was under the skilled hands of our system team. After a short time they succeeded and SSO was established in our site. We saw it when we entered the site: Instead of login page we directly entered the dashboard page we wanted.

After a few days, when I entered into the settings section of the dashboard site, I saw this:

Yes, that’s right. No security at all. This is why we entered directly to the dashboard page instead of the login page…

The system team claims that they never said that the SSO succeeded and we say they did. No one will prove he’s right, so there’s no one to blame. But blaming is not everything. The important thing here is to learn for the next time: When you think you got a feature – check it. Things not always as they seems to be.

Administrating Panorama NovaView is a great responsibility. The NovaView Administrator (NVA) must carefully read the documentation which was shipped with the product (You’ll find it in C:\Program Files\Panorama\E-BI\Documentation). Nevertheless, the NVA must also read the Panorama Knowledge Base once in a while and he has the responsibility to install the Hot Fixes and Planned Fixes when they published in the support site.

Considering the fact that the NVA may have difficulties with all this responsibility, here are some tips for the beginner NVA:

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