DIY
Xcelsius: Using the Push Button for data input
Xcelsius is a great tool to build interactive what-if scenarios based on MS Excel models. We recently got a request to build such a dashboard and one of the user interface requirements was that the user should be able to change a value by clicking something like a +/- button. Clicking the plus had to increase the value with 1, and clicking the min had to decrease it with 1.
Luckily, Xcelsius provides us the Spinner component. This would have been a good and easy solution, if another 
requirement wouldn’t have been that the dashboard had to be used on a (multi)touch screen. Touch means big buttons for user input and as you can see on the right, the Spinner component is way too detailed. So we needed something else to do the job.
To solve this we used the new Push Button components. The Push Button simply does what its name says and pushes a value from a source cell to a destination cell. To solve our little problem we used two of these Push Buttons and some basic MS Excel logic.
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Posted in: DIY, Knowledge sharing, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, XcelsiusGoing paperless in 2010 part 2
As I wrote earlier on this blog 2010 will be the year that I am ditching paper media. Unfortunately I have to wait a while for the QUE or the Apple iSlate to be available for purchase later this year. In the meantime I already started my next ‘going paperless’ project.
In the first week of this year I needed a new paper binder for our home administration. Looking at a bookshelf filled with binders for the last 10 years of administration I realized that this doesn’t quite fit with my ‘less paper’-goals for 2010 (duh). And how can I quickly find a document that was filed over a year ago? Okay, I have a sorting system for the docs I put in those binders, but that is kinda mehh. I should be able to search through my docs by tags, just like I search for an old e-mail and find it within a few seconds.
Besides the search problem there is another issue with my current administration. The last 2+ years I receive more and more invoices and other interesting/important documents by e-mail. Also when I buy software, the serial keys are always distributed by e-mail. So my home administration is stored in more than one place, which of course tilts me as a BI consultant.
To improve this situation I had to create some kind of HPW for home administration.
Posted in: Going Paperless, LifehackingEasy Lifehack: Shared calendars
It’s almost 2010 and I still see people manually adding ‘standard’ calendar events to their iCal, Outlook or whatever calendar app they use. For example the yearly (school) holidays, but even more frustrating the numerous matches of their favorite sports team! With the upcoming FIFA World Cup in South Africa I expect to see a lot of this unnecessary data entry work being carried out in the next few months.
Let’s end this now and start using ‘shared calendars’. A shared calendar means that you publish your calendar from your calendar app to the web so others can read (not write to!) your calendar. The best thing is that the calendar ‘receivers’ are able to get all the updates automatically.
To get started with these shared calendars, have a look at iCalShare and MarkThisDate. Choose your calendar, click ‘Add to Calendar’ and pick your calendar app from the list. On my Mac iCal opens and asks me if I want to subscribe to this calendar. According to this article subscribing a calendar to Outlook seems to work in the same way. Nice!
Powerpoint, Xcelsius and Twitter DIY
A few weeks ago Timo Elliot (SAP BusinessObjects) launched his free PowerPoint Twitter Tools on his SAP web 2.0 blog. With these tools you are able to integrate Twitter in you presentations and use it i.e. to receive live feedback during your presentation. Lots of updates and improvements have been published since then and the high number of positive comments (on Twitter) confirm what a great idea this is.
A drawback of the tool is that you can’t configure the layout yourself. Also there is a SAP logo on every slide plus the e-mail address of the author. I like SAP but I think it is a bad thing to stuff your slides with logo’s. Also, why would your audience care?
So, let’s build a custom Twitter tool for PowerPoint ourselves, step-by-step.
Requirements:
– A copy of Xcelsius Engage or Xcelsius Engage Server (get a free 30-day trial here);
– MS Excel;
– MS Powerpoint.
