Xcelsius Dynamic Lookup Logic: Selecting a range

by Ryan Goodman

Here is a scenario that many people have…. You have a connected model and the web service returns tabular data, but Xcelsius does not have the ability to lookup multiple rows of data with their selectors. Unfortunately, with Xcelsius 4.5 you have to rely on some Excel skills to assemble a layer of logic that will scale. The good news is I have put together a lightweight solution with the available supported Excel functions for Xcelsius. The bad news is that is painful to explain…

I did my best to point out the key components to make this model work. Your best bet is to download the Excel file and beat it up and look at the comments within the bold titles. I didn't feel that it was extremely important to build an Xcelsius model for this one, but if it would help, shoot me an email and I can put something up.
Click here to download the Excel source file

Xcelsius Reset Button

by Ryan Goodman

Here is a simple trick that will allow you to reset a dashboard back to its original state when featuring what-if capability. The only limitation in design, is that all of your insert in cells will need to remain contiguous.


Download the Source Files

As you can see, the original values reside in column C. It normally, we would link our single value components to these original cells. In this example, we are going to link our single value components to our target range in column A. Finally we are going to use a selector to move the data from column C to column A. This way, every time you make a selection, it will affect column A, leaving your original data in column C un-effected. Hopefully this little trick will help you in building calculator based applications.

Getting Lost in Visualization

A term that I have always alluded to when instructing users best practices in dashboard design with Xcelsius is getting “lost in visualization,” that is becoming distracted with all of the shiny widgets available and loosing sight of the objectives.

The collective business users of the world are adapted to navigating information through traditional web based (browser) navigation, the same way we are adapted to using a mouse as our human-to-computer interface. The web-page paradigm has become the standard for how business users rate ease of use for navigating through information. Since the purpose of many web sites is to captivate and draw attention, the same way that television commercials do, web pages have incorporated a lot of sex and sizzle to make them more appealing. Many dashboard products like Xcelsius have incorporated similar visual aesthetics making them a marketer’s dream.

In the case of Xcelsius, I believe that it is the selectors (drop down menus, list boxes, radio buttons, etc) that draw customers to the product and not necessarily the charts and gauges (though they are important). Creating a simple, web-like interface for navigating through enterprise data is the goal of all business users. So if Xcelsius provides great components for navigating and viewing enterprise data... where exactly do user's get lost?

• Overcrowding the screen with analysis
• Color choice
• Component sizing
• Layout design and positioning components on the screen
• Incorrect choice of graphs for the given analysis
• Use of selectors to slice data when its not necessary
• Adding unnecessary JPG images

Personally, I am a fan of flat and simple graphics with easy to read, crisp text. In Xcelsius, I always use the halo skin because it uses minimal gradients. Many people are unaware that you can even change the skins (In Xcelsius, click View>Change Skin). I think there is a little room here and there for embossed solid backgrounds to clearly identify a visual break in content, or even using a picture menu for displaying brands that are quickly identified instead of text. At the end of the day, assuming that the designer does not add un-necessary graphics and components, I believe that a dashboard must serve to display content that:

• Is easily digestible
• Requires minimal training for end users
• Is easily navigated with few clicks
• Is presented in a simple and non distracting interface.

I will touch more on this topic of how to design better dashboards with Xcelsius in future posts.