Microstrategy Blog

It’s the little things in life that make me smile. A brand new video game…a good sci-fi book…cheese…and now, notes.

I’ve been playing around with my 9.0 Development installation, and I really like what see. Integrated Narrowcast functions, a smoother ride in the “new” environment, and gee golly, “Notes”. One of the reasons that we rely so heavily on MicroStrategy Office in our organization, is because the 8.X version of MicroStrategy does not give users the ability (short of SDK or creative RSS) to communicate with each other. So we pull our reports out of MicroStrategy, into PowerPoint, where notes are added, and then printed into a PDF where they’re distributed. It’s a complicated process that usually involved as much time being spent formatting the visuals as is spent actually understanding the data. With 9.0, that can come to an end. Now, Administrator and report users can communicate back and forth…complete with time stamp (editable of course), without the complexities and time drain of exporting.

While not exactly as “stylized” as some might like (I prefer my style in the report itself, not the explanation), this “Notes” feature can be seen in the Object Manager, in a collapsible menu underneath your Dataset Objects. “Notes” can be added to Reports, Dashboards and Documents, adding the benefit of not only dynamic formatted data, but the explanations necessary to give the report viewer the context in which those numbers matter. Once the explanation is added…MicroStrategy 9.0 then allows you to send that report to whomever you please, whenever you please.