Interactive Dashboard Reports inside Lotus Notes? In minutes? Author: Michael Butcher

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1 Interactive Dashboard Reports inside Lotus Notes? In minutes? Author: Michael Butcher Creating Reports in Lotus Notes is difficult We all know that it is a pain to create reports from Lotus Notes Data. Think about how many times you have been asked to add an export button to a view or even worse write a LotusScript Agent that will automatically generate a report. It is only a matter of time before the data export breaks your Manager s Excel macro and you are asked to fix it. Not good. Soon you find yourself trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of new, change & ad hoc report creation requests. What a waste of your development talents. You have other applications to support and new ones to develop. IntelliPRINT Dashboard Reporting This product claims to allow USERS (yes, I mean business users, not developers!) to create charts from Lotus Notes Domino Data. The publisher (Synaptris) claims that with minimal training, users will be able to create any report they want when they need it and do this inside Lotus Notes! They also claim that developers will spend less time creating reports and be able to focus on other more exciting development work. Looks like a dream product for a developer like me! I downloaded and installed the demo version on my computer. In all, this took about 5 minutes not bad. IntelliPRINT Dashboard Reporting is fully integrated into Lotus Notes. Once it is installed you simply click Actions->IntelliPRINT Dashboard Reporting to start the application. Dashboards are made up of widgets - charts, tables or pivot tables - from one or more databases. You can have dashboards with different layouts, using 1 to 4 widgets in a dashboard. The product uses a Wizard to guide you through each step required to build a widget. To get started you pick the database, views & columns you want to report from. Next you pick the Chart type Bar, Column, Pie, etc (there are 9 different Chart types to choose from). Then you build your widget by dragging & dropping the fields you need into the respective areas (X, Y & Series). Now to the developer s claim of IntelliPRINT Dashboard Reporting being a tool that business users can use. You can t beat Excel? To effectively compare this product with what most business users are familiar with Ms Excel - I picked a report that I use to look at data from a Helpdesk application. I created this simple chart showing the number of Open Helpdesk Tickets per owner. It took me 15 minutes to export the data to an excel format and then use its Chart Wizard to build.

2 It looks ok, it gets the point across and since most businesses already have Excel the price is right. However, I had to export the data. As soon as I export the data (to Excel or any other tool) I lose data integrity and Notes built-in Security. For example, I will need to create 7 copies of this report to distribute to each of the owners above, with each containing the respective owner s data. Also if this is a report I will need to create every week / month I have to go through the same steps each month. Another issue is how to share the report with other users of the application. I would have to send the spreadsheet as an attachment or put the file on a network share. This is a problem since other users may edit the file or even delete it! Native Dashboard Reports inside Lotus Notes? I m a believer! Now, I tried the same chart using IntelliPRINT Dashboard Reporting. I was scarcely able to believe myself when I looked at my watch when I was done! It took me less than 3 minutes to create!!!

3 It looks amazing and is right there, inside my Notes client! The product allows me to share this report with anybody that has access to the database and I don t lose any of my Notes ACL settings! Each user gets to see just their data! It gets even better! - Interactivity and Ease-of-use In the pie chart above, most of the owners seem to be assigned a comparable number of open tickets and I figure that a Column Chart might help me see the minor differences better. Again, I was really surprised at how easy this was. It took me a few seconds to rightclick, pick Edit Chart Type, select Column instead of Pie and say OK!

4 Now, I am able to easily visualize the differences in the numbers of open tickets and if I am worried about the open tickets of any of the owners above, I can single them out for a deeper dive. While creating this chart, I can pick fields that I might want to use to Drill-Down into. I can also easily edit this chart and add these fields by simply dragging & dropping them into the X-axis. By simply clicking on any of the columns above, I can look at the next level of detail, Ticket Category. For example, clicking on John Bradley shows me that he has a large number of open Messaging tickets to deal with.

5 Since the data never leaves Lotus Notes, I don t lose any Data Integrity or Security. I can share my Dashboard with other users via a link or I can export to a PDF and it. In a matter of minutes I have been able to look at my critical data in real-time, identify possible issues and isolate its cause. The time and energy that I have saved can now be invested in finding solutions. All I have to do is save this report to the server or on my local machine and every time I run it, I get to look at real-time data and act on it in an incredibly productive & informed way! THE END? Not yet!! The product allows you a lot more interactivity and flexibility, that continues to be really easy to use. You can customize reports, filter data, create multiple formats (called Layouts ) of the same report and do a host of other things. You can also transform the above report into an analysis model by simply rightclicking and picking Analyze. The analysis mode gives you unlimited ability to drilldown and also look at the underlying data itself as an excel-like grid! And what s more, this grid has all the cool features that excel boasts off and even more. For example, you can create groups, sub-groups, etc by simply dragging and dropping columns!!

6 Does it cost a bomb? Surprisingly, no! IntelliPRINT Dashboard Reporting has an attractive pricing structure that will fit the needs of both small & mid-sized businesses as well as large enterprises. More important than the cost itself is the return on investment, and Synaptris claims that customers have experienced returns on this investment in an amazing one to four weeks. I don't see any reason to disagree! The bottom-line It is a great investment for organizations of all sizes that need really productive, interactive reports and would like to leverage their existing investment in Lotus Notes Domino data. My final word - Product Evaluation Score Card Criteria Score Comments Ease of Use 9 Its short-learning curve will have most users creating reports in minutes Interactivity 9 Dashboards Reports are fully interactive Data Visualization 10 Creates visually stunning charts Value 8 ROI in 1 to 4 weeks Compatibility 10 Integrated within Lotus Notes Domino IT Overhead / effort 10 Almost no IT overhead involved / minimal training No on going maintenance Overall Score 9.3 Excellent Rating 1-2 Poor 3-4 Fair 5-6 Average 7-8 Good 9-10 Excellent About the Author Michael J. Butcher is an Applications Developer for a Financial Services company in Ohio. He has 13 years experience in software development, specializing in Lotus Notes Domino. He has written several Product Reviews for online magazine Domino Files. He has also presented database design ideas at CONDUG, a Lotus Notes Users Group based in Central Ohio. When he is not working, he enjoys playing with his 2 daughters and playing the guitar. He can be contacted at [email protected].