iqbs Solutions BV

Excel 2013 – Cont’d

rberends — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:24:06 +0000

You can find the official Microsoft documentation on what’s new in Excel 2013 here:

http://officepreview.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/whats-new-in-power-view-in-excel-2013-and-in-sharepoint-2013-HA102901475.aspx#_Toc328733057

Microsoft named a Self-Service Business Intelligence Leader by Forrester Research

rberends — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 12:10:45 +0000

Forrester Research has positioned Microsoft as a leader in the “The Forrester Wave: Self-Service Business Intelligence Platforms, Q2 2012” report. In this report, Forrester highlights Microsoft’s approach to delivering self-service BI through the familiar tools of Excel and SharePoint.

The research discovered that “Microsoft enables business users to look no further than Excel for self-service BI. Microsoft has built on its broad, omnipresent, SQL Server-based BI functionality, which already includes Integration Services, Reporting Services, and Analysis Services.

“It now offers a very respectable PowerPivot and Power View in-memory data analysis and discovery engine. Think of this as Excel on steroids. If you are already using Excel (and who isn’t?) look no further for your self-service BI platform – especially when you already have it anyway, as most likely it’s already part of your Enterprise SQL Server and/or SharePoint license.

“Microsoft may only offer around 80% of advanced BI functionality as compared with other leading vendors, but what it lacks in features it more than makes up for in cost/benefits ratios.”

Download the full report here.

Excel 2013

rberends — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 12:22:48 +0000

This week, Microsoft announced their latest version of the Office Suite: 2013. As you can imagine, Excel will offer very nice improvements for analyzing data. The most important improvements over Excel 2010 are:

Calculated fields for OLAP cubes (you’ll need to know MDX)
Recommended charts: which chart type fits best with my data?
Charts preview when you create a chart or alter an existing one
Easy change of a charts’ color scheme
Embedded Power View reports

You can find a nice preview here.

PowerPivot for Excel

rberends — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:12:12 +0000

With Excel version 2010, a new type of pivottable has become available: PowerPivot. As the name suggests, this type of pivottable is very powerful opposed to the standard pivottable in Excel.

PowerPivot can also be used on top of iqbs. Shortly, we will publish a whitepaper on how to do this. We are also developing a special training on how to work with PowerPivot. It’s expected to be available in autumn 2012.

Excel number formatting tips

rberends — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:38:13 +0000

In this post you can find tips on number formatting in Excel, also usable in PivotTable reports. In iqbs, numbers in PivotTables come pre-formatted (based on what is defined in the cube). In Excel 2002 and 2003, there is no pre-formatting at all because the PivotTables in these versions do not support pre-formatting.

The general pre-formatting in iqbs is done like this:

Amount and price fields: thousands punctuation and two decimals
Quantity fields: fields: thousands punctuation and one decimal
Days fields (lead time, deviations): thousands punctuation and zero decimals
Percentages fields: thousands punctuation and one decimal
Counts (orders, order lines): thousands punctuation and zero decimals

For example, when you choose the field ‘Net Amount’ in a Sales cube, the number would be: 1.000.250,95 (using the Dutch regional settings).

Tip #1: format to thousands
To format a number to the 1000s, go to Format Cells, Number, Custom and use: #.##0.
(or #,##0, when you 1000-separator is a comma).

The number 1.000.250,95 will show as 1.000 then.

Tip #2: format to millions
To format a number to the 1000s, go to Format Cells, Number, Custom and use: #.##0..
(or #,##0,, when you 1000-separator is a comma).

The number 1.000.250,95 will show as 1 then.

Tip #3: Format positive numbers > 100 with 2 decimals, < 100 with currency Euro, zero as 0
Formatting can be done with filters: [ > =100]0.00;[ > 0]€#;0
(or [ > =100]0,00;[ > 0]€#;0 when you 1000-separator is a comma).

More tips will follow!

Reporting Services and Report Builder information

rberends — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 11:04:40 +0000

The webbased reports in iqbs BI are Reporting Services reports, the reporting tool that is shipped with the SQL Server platform. Reports can be made using the Report Builder software, which comes in two versions, depending on your SQL Server version:

SQL Server 2008: Report Builder 2.0
SQL Server 2008R2: Report Builder 3.0

The two versions are for a large part identical, with some ‘subtle’ differences. Most report programming tips and tricks are applicable to both versions. However, the usefull links below are split up between versions. In most cases however, the Report Builder 2.0 things are also valid for 3.0.

Report Builder 2.0

MSDN Tutorials
Reporting Services Tutorial (from Accelebrate)
Reporting Services Tutorial (from MSSQLTips)
Report Builder 3.0 Tutorial (from MSSQLTips)
Introduction to SQL Server 2008 Report Builder 2.0
Stairway to Reporting Services (free account on SQLServerCentral.com required)
Bullet Charts in Reporting Services 2008
Reporting Services Development Tips

Report Builder 3.0

Excel PivotTable information

rberends — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:37:48 +0000

Excel reports in iqbs are all based on the pivottable. Pivottables are very rich in functionality. This post contains links to existing blogs on Excel pivottables, which might provide you with some additional tips and tricks.

Each Excel version has it’s own pivottable version; therefore the links are organized by Excel version.

Excel 2003

Excel 2007

Excel 2010

SQL Server 2012

rberends — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:59:19 +0000

This month, March 2012, Microsoft will announce a new version of SQL Server: SQL Server 2012. This version has a lot of new features compared to the SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 releases. The most compelling new feature for BI purposes is the so called ‘BI Semantic Model’ (BISM), also called ‘Tabular’. This is an alternative for the existing ‘Multidimensional Semantic Model’, better known as OLAP cubes.

Currently, iqbs BI is using OLAP cubes to power the datasets. In SQL Server 2012 this still remains possible. Currently we are propotyping Tabular based datasets and comparing the pros and cons with OLAP based datasets.

Tabular and BISM come with additional powerfull reporting capabilities: PowerPivot and Power View. However, these new tools require extra licensing. See the Microsoft site for an overview: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/future-editions/sql2012-licensing.aspx.

For a comparison between the new SQL Server 2012 editions, see http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/future-editions/sql2012-editions.aspx.

We will keep you posted in this blog about iqbs BI development on the new 2012 platform.

Update 2012-03-06: Microsoft announced today that SQL Server 2012 has released to manufacturing. Customers and partners can download an evaluation of the product today and can expect general availability to begin on April 1.

Update 2012-03-20: A detailed licensing datasheet and FAQ can be downloaded here.

Klant: Hyva Group

jadegeest — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 14:19:24 +0000

Hyva kiest internationaal voor Analyse en Managementrapportage met iqbs 2009

De Hyva Group heeft gekozen om de Business Intelligence applicatie van Korade voor gebruikers van Infor / Baan, iqbs 2009, wereldwijd in te gaan zetten. De implementatie, die reeds is gestart, zorgt er voor dat Hyva internationaal deze betaalbare oplossing kan gaan gebruiken op meerdere bron systemen zoals Infor Baan ERP en Infor ERP LN. iqbs 2009 is gebaseerd op Microsoft standaarden zoals MS SQL, Office en SharePoint. Voor Hyva is met name de snelle start met de vele standaard meegeleverde rapportages en de multitaligheid -waaronder het chinees- van groot belang geweest voor de keuze op iqbs 2009 als Business Intelligence applicatie.

De Hyva Group is wereldwijd de leidende leverancier van vernieuwende en uiterst efficiënte transportoplossingen voor bedrijfsvoertuigen en de milieudiensten verlenende industrie. De onderneming richt zich op de ontwikkeling, productie, marketing en distributie van onderdelen welke gebruikt worden in hydraulische laad- en lossystemen op vrachtwagens en aanhangers. Zijn producten worden wereldwijd ingezet binnen een groot aantal sectoren waaronder transport, bouw, mijnbouw, materiaalverwerking en leveranciers van milieudiensten.

Hyva maakt ‘s werelds krachtigste front end hydraulische telescoopcilinder, vaste en rijdende vrachtwagenkranen, hefsystemen voor containers zoals haakladers en tipladers, mobiele en statische compactors en andere units voor afvalverzameling. Hyva’s portefeuille omvat: Hydraulica (cilinders en kipapparatuur), systemen voor het verwerken van containers (haak- en tipladers), vloeren (horizontale laad- en losvloeren) en kranen (vast en mobiel). Deze producten worden ontworpen en op de markt gebracht onder verschillende gerespecteerde merknamen: Hyva, Kennis, F.lli Ferrari en AmcoVeba. Hyva is ook distributeur van high-value componenten

De onderneming is opgericht in 1979 en het hoofdkantoor is gevestigd in Alphen aan den Rijn in Nederland. Belangrijke productiefaciliteiten zijn gevestigd in Brazilië, China, Duitsland, India, Italië en Nederland. Het bedrijf heeft wereldwijd in ruim 130 landen meer dan 1.600 medewerkers met 35 dochterondernemingen en 11 productiefaciliteiten. Hyva heeft ruim 25.000 klanten.

Korade levert en implementeert de iqbs Business Intelligence applicatie en geeft Hyva zo de mogelijkheid een State Of The Art Business Intelligence applicatie in te zetten voor een redelijke prijs.