Xcelsius Utilities

This week, I wanted to share a few utilities that I use when building dashboards.

Flynet Web Service Generator for Databases
Flynet's Web Service Generator for Databases allows you to generate webservices that can transact data from any OLEDB or ODBC datasource. These web services can then be easily integrated into an Xcelsius dashboard. This is a great tool for standalone applications for delivering live data.

Special Character Converter
It isn’t sexy, but it does help in scenarios where I link Xcelsius dashboards to other web pages or documents using the URL link button. You must replace all special characters with their respective HTML conversions when using the URL button. So what if you don’t have an HTML book handy? Here is a great conversion tool that I use constantly:
I use the Find and Replace functions to automatically replace special characters in my model. The most common that I find is the “$” symbol.

I have added a sample Excel file showing how I automate the replace functionality
Download Source Files Here

Color Scheme Picker
Here is another great tool that I use for choosing colors that are complimentary but are different enough to differentiate each other in a series. For those of you who are not great at choosing color schemes, I highly recommend this tool.