How to Uncover Business Intelligence Insights with ReportPlus – Playing With Dashboards

ReportPlus is a business intelligence and analytics tool that empowers you to create intuitive, interactive dashboards right from your mobile device. Not only can you get insights at a glance by just looking at your dashboards, but you can also play with dashboard widgets to uncover new answers hidden in your data. What is more – you can create dashboards and delve into your data all by yourself, without needing any help from your IT department! ReportPlus is that simple to use.

So let’s open ReportPlus and get started.

What can you do with your dashboards?

In this post, we’ll help you learn how to take full advantage of ReportPlus’ easy-to-use interactions such as:

• Scrolling, Zooming & Panning
• Performing Drill Down & Up
• Applying Quick Filters
• Applying Global Filters
• Changing Global Variables

Maximize Widgets and Access Widget Interactions

ReportPlus dashboards are composed of tiles called widgets, where each widget displays a different piece of information contributing to the illustration of the big picture.

Tap any widget to maximize it. This allows you to  access a larger display of a particular piece of information and the available interactions for the widget will be enabled.

Scrolling, Zooming & Panning Widgets

These are well-known basic interactions that are very straightforward to use.
Horizontal and vertical scrolling are available only for the Grid view, and you will find them very useful to quickly navigate through any huge matrix of data.

 

Even though all Chart views support both zooming and panning, Map views are the ones that benefit the most from these features.

You can use Map visualizations in the cases when you need to display information graphically on a map, navigating back and forth as needed.

Drill Down & Up Through Your Widget’s Data

ReportPlus allows you to drill down & up through your data when the underlying data model supports it. This is a great way to examine your data in depth, moving from aggregated information to more detailed one.

In the example below, you can see employee absences over time summarized by year.

As you drill down through the data, you can take a closer look at the year 2011 disaggregated by month.

Dynamically Filter Your Widget’s Data (Quick Filters)

By applying data filters you can refine your data set, focusing on important information and excluding irrelevant or useless data. With ReportPlus’ quick filters you can apply data filters to a widget and dynamically adjust your information as desired, all without actually editing the dashboard.

Once a widget is maximized, quick filters are displayed in the top left corner of the screen. You can see up to four filters at the same time, each one based on a different data field.

In the example below, the Hires over time information can be filtered by one or more Departments.

Sometimes there can be a correlation between several filters - a common example would be filtering by a Country first and then by one or more of its Cities. Let’s say that in your first filter you select a Country like Japan, then in your second filter you will find only the cities that belong to Japan. In this case, the list of possible values displayed in the second filter are dynamically changed based on the first selection (Japan).

Dynamically Filter Your Dashboard’s Data (Global Filters)

You can use global filters to apply contextual data filters to several widgets in a dashboard at the same time. The dashboard below includes widgets displaying different pieces of information that can be filtered by Office (Cranbury, Tokyo, etc.).

For example, in the center of the dashboard you can find the Hires over time widget aggregated by year for each Office. In this case, maximizing the widget is a good idea, as there is plenty of information packed into this widget!

Global filters may require a selected option at all times or no selection at all. In the screenshot below you can see how the information in the whole dashboard changes dynamically when the Tokyo, Japan Office is selected.

Multiple selection is also possible, to enable side by side comparison between different collections of data. In the example above, you could select Tokyo, Japan and London, UK offices at the same time and compare Hires over time aggregated by year for these offices only.

By this time, you’ve probably noticed the Play icon on top of the Global Filters pane. By pressing the icon you can start a slideshow that automatically changes the selected global filter value every 5 seconds.

Evaluate What-if Scenarios in Your Dashboards (Global Variables)

What-if analysis or sensitivity analysis is commonly used to determine how changes in an external variable would impact other dependent variables in a specific scenario. A dashboard including a global variable allows you to change the variable’s value to dynamically adjust all dashboard data accordingly.

You can enter any value for a global variable, as they are not restricted to a set of predefined values. For example, in a dashboard showing a forecast analysis you could have a global variable for the interest rate. Every time you change the value of the global variable (interest rate) the dashboard will dynamically adjust itself.

FINAL THOUGHTS

ReportPlus is a mobile business intelligence tool that not only empowers you to create dashboards, but also provides you with the ability to navigate and interact with your dashboards as needed. To get the most out of ReportPlus, you can start by simply following the above tips on playing with the widget and filter options.

Want to empower your whole team with the best self-service analytics tool on the market? Contact us and discover how we can help everyone in your company make better, informed decisions based on real data, no matter where it is stored.