Microstrategy Blog

Another in the “Basic” series (because that’s about my knowledge level) .

One of the things that you might come across as an Administrator or a Project Manager is a “Time Out Error”. Now most Architects or Project management people will set this in such a way that it allows for your reports to develop, but also times out if your users somehow manage to work themselves into some sort of weird outer cross join magic.

So, say the standard 10 minutes on install isn’t enough because you’re dealing with a million rows joined to 13 tables. (It happens. Trust Me.)

Right click on your project name and select Project Configuration. Or, highlight the project you want to adjust and under the Administration Menu, select Project Configuration.

You can click through to the image below for a larger view.

On the left hand side the third option down is called Governing. This is in MicroStrategy 9 by the way, so it might be slightly different order in 8. The first option is called Results Set. As you can see in the highlighted section, this is where your interactive and scheduled reports timing is governed. Adjust them based on seconds. Keep in mind, if you make it too high, you’re going to have a cranky analyst calling and asking why his report won’t stop running, as opposed to why his report just timed out. Either way, remember it’s his fault.

Administrator, Basic Series

Did you know you can actually create on the fly reports in MicroStrategy Office? Of course you did…I mean, even I saw the video lauding how it can be done.

I just never took the time to figure out how. On the video it say’s “here’s the wonderfulness of creating reports”, however, it never says the settings that need to be changed. When I click on “File”, all I see is the image below. There’s now “New”.

So, there’s a couple of key settings you have to change. In your MicroStrategy Office application, click on “Tools -> Options“, and then click on the first option under General, which is Server. If you did an upgrade like we did, you’ll see that your Web URL is blank. Here’s where you enter your actual MicroStrategy web URL, usually: http://localhost/microstrategy/asp/main.aspx as seen below.

Hit save, and voila:

Now you get the pleasure of this when you create a new Blank Report:

Web is now integrated with Office, making you Excel snobs who refuse to Migrate to a strictly web environment content…at least for the time being.

Basic Series, MicroStrategy Office, Reports, Tips and Tricks

Who is your top customer? Your client probably knows. But can they name the top ten…in order? Some of your clients will be able to, but most won’t. What about the bottom 10…there’s a big no go, but in Business Intelligence, this is all important. How do Sales Reps know who to spend money on to court, and who just isn’t paying off…whether that be revenue, margin, ad count etc?

The Rank function takes care of all of this. The power isn’t that you can rank everything necessarily, but that you can decide at what point the rankings are broken up. Who was your best customer in 2008? How is your worst customer now?

The Rank function is the easiest way to tackle this. When creating a metrics, simply use Rank([Fact]) or Rank([Metric]). That’s the easy part, the next part is what requires a little bit of critical thinking. Rank is only valuable when you’ve broken down some sort of parameters. To set the parameters, click on the word “Rank” with your mouse and select Rank Parameters from the Tools option in your metrics editor, or right click on the word “Rank” and select parameters. What you will see is this:

You set the specific attributes you want to break by in the parameter screen. In this case, I’m interested in seeing the top customers by Year and Business Unit. You can add as many metrics as you want in this screen, keeping in mind that you have to build the reports with those specifications in mind…rank metrics can act funny if you’re not very aware of how you’re aggregating them and you just start throwing them into any old report.

Basic Series, Metrics, Tips and Tricks

How to find that elusive column in your SQL server.

Tip of The Day:

SELECT
name
FROM
sysobjects
WHERE
id IN (SELECT id FROM syscolumns WHERE name like '%COLUMN_NAME%')

All Things Data, Basic Series, Data Warehouse, Tips and Tricks SQL Column Search

This is a common sense thing, but I have to reiterate it, because nothing drives a developer crazier than people who don’t document their work, except maybe people who do bad work, and over document. It’s frustrating working on SQL code when there’s absolutely no notes. Deriving the intent of a script can be near impossible is we’re dealing with code only. At the same time, Dashboard and Visual Developers need to understand that naming your objects in Report Services is just as important.

Notice this little box? My assumption here is that you’re doing your dashboard designing in web, because frankly, designing Dashboards in Desktop is a test of anyone’s patience. This box is where you can drop down and list your elements. There’s nothing more frustrating that seeing “Line64″ or “GridGraph66″. It means nothing, and complicated Dashboards with panel stacks can obscure elements and design nuances. A designer who is making adjustments doesn’t want to have to find that specific pixel that gets you to select that line that’s drawn under the report title. They want the ability to just select it in the menu seen above.

As a developer, the first step is to find a naming convention that works and plan out your items. Before just naming items, find a system that works for you. In my case.

• GRID_EXPENSES
• GRAPH_REVENUE
• GRAPH_REVENUE_TITLE
• GRAPH_REVENUE_TITLE_BORDER
• DASHBOARD_BACKGROUND
• PANEL_EMPLOYEE_BACKGROUND

The idea in this system is that you start with the central items in your report…which is your data, and then group the visual modifications of that data using similar tags. This way, you’re not seeing three titles listed next to each other…you’re seeing the titles as they pertain to the item they represent.

To Name an item…Right Click on it, and select Properties (the last option on the list). Make sure that the General tab is selected, and next to “Name”, type out your predetermined identifier. You can also utilize “tooltip” in the same tab, and create a “rollover” type hint for your Dashboard User. This can be a more comprehensive description similar to what you would put in a Grid description.

Basic Series, Dashboards, Documents, Tips and Tricks, Web Dashboard, MicroStrategy Web, Naming