Designing Templates for Speed (PUW2)

with

Presented by Seung Yoo

Te n a n t : f o c u s . b i 3 6 0 . c o mU s e r s : s p e e d a d m i n 0 2 @ b i 3 6 0 . c o m –s p e e d a d m i n 3 0 @ b i 3 6 0 . c o mP a s s w o r d : f o c u s 2 0 1 8

Agenda

Goals and Objectives

Increase Speed by Reducing Selection Groups

Increase Speed through Excel/BI360 Settings

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Before vs. After Comparison of Reports

Summary & QA

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Goals & Objectives

• Objective: Build reports in the most efficient way possible by using

BI360 and Excel functionality.

• Goal: To apply these concepts on your templates and improve report

speed performance.

Why is speed so important?

• If you take a report that goes from 4 minutes to 2 minutes, and this report is ran 1,000x a year

by departments, you save 2,000 minutes = 33.33 hours a year waiting.

• Now if you have 10 reports that you end up making 2 minutes faster, you are saving 333.33

productivity hours. That’s equivalent to 41.66 working days = 8 weeks and almost 2 days!

• And usually those minutes spent waiting can’t come at a worse time (ie. You need to run 10

reports for financial review meeting).

• Who likes waiting for reports? It sucks when you need something now!

• Efficient report design makes maintenance easier.

Report DesignDesigning for Speed

• Reduce selection groups

o Use Ranges

o Use Attributes

Setup

Usage

o Use Nested Groupings

o Use Trees in Rows

Setup

Usage

• Excel formulas and other BI360 Settings

o Formulas (Index Match)

o Excel Sum vs. OSR Sum

Report Design

Use Ranges for Filters

Using Ranges

for filter

Attributes are customizable descriptors of the dim

(dimension). Account Description is attribute to

account code which is the dim.

What is it?

How do you create it?

• Go to Configuration > Dimensions > Account.

• Click

After creating Rollup Level 1

• Export Account table.

• Edit Rollup Level 1 in Excel.

• CSV import back into DW.

Report Design

Setting up attributes

Report Design

Filtering and grouping on attributes

R e s u l t :

Selection groups within selection groups.

What is it?

How do you create it?

Once a selection group is created, hover over box

edges to encompass more rows or columns.

What’s the purpose?

Creating a report that expands by the rollups, and

within it, account expansion.

Report Design

Use Nested Groupings

Similar to attributes, you can group dims into related

buckets. Pros over attributes is that they are easier to

maintain and gives user a visual hierarchy.

What is it?

How do you create it?

• Go to Data Warehouse > Overview > Dimension.

• Click either

Smart coding

• Notice the tree nodes REV01 and REV02.

• These are created in the dim with the numerical

suffixes so that you can establish an

alphanumerical hierarchy on the report.

• General rule: Don’t use non smart coded tree

codes.

Report Design

Tree Setup

• Drag and drop nodes. Assign nodes as parent.

Establish parent-child relationship. Intuitive

interface.

Adding Importing

• Allows for an Excel upload.

• Export tree first. Review existing tree to see

format. Same format used when importing new

tree or modifying existing tree via import.

Report Design

Tree Setup (cont.)

1) Outer nested group on Parent.

2) Inner nested group on Child.

3) Filter for the parent codes.

4) See result below.

Use Account Tree

Report Design

Using Trees in rows

Report Design

Reducing Selection Groups

• If Expanding is

checked, this grouping

will render one row

per account.

Use Ranges for

Filters

• Accounts can be

categorized into

descriptive buckets.

This can then be

grouped and

expanded in report.

Use Attributes

• Expanding groups

within expanding

groups. Allows user to

create the least

possible number of

groups in layout editor.

Use Nested

Groupings

• Generally used with

nested groupings.

Similar to attribute

expansion. Harder to

use on the report, but

easier to maintain and

has some distinct pros

over attributes.

Use Trees in

Rows

Reducing Selection Groups

Exercises

Report Benchmarks

Rendering Speed

• 4 minutes

1. Summary

Groups

• 2 minutes

2. Expanding

Groups

• #3 (1 level expansion)

20 seconds

• #4 (2 level expansion)

13 seconds

3 and 4. Nested

Expansion

• 14 seconds

5. Tree Row

Expansion

Consider the following situation:

You have revenues and allocation percentages.

Revenues are multiplied by allocation $ that differ by

account and period.

You have single selection group rows and columns so

that cell references are static. You needed to do this

because you didn’t know how to account for

expansion.

This slows down report greatly. What to do?

Why?

Excel Formulas

Using Index Match

Index Match Demonstration

Use Index Match to account

for expansion on both revenue

and allocation percentages.

Formula:

=Index(desired data array,

match(account, account

array, 0), match(period,

period array, 0))

Since accounts go down the

row, $ (absolute) needs to be

placed on the column (letter).

Since period go across the

column, $ needs to be place

on the row (number).

Usage

Excel Formulas

Using Index Match (cont.)

Excel Formulas

Using Index Match (cont.)

Index Match is better than lookups

• Dynamic reference leads to fewer errors.

• Insert column/row immunity.

• Easier to drag and copy.

• No array restriction.

• Right to left lookup.

• Lower processing need (excel).

• Use Excel sum formulas to replace OSR Sums.

• Faster than OSR Sum because this is a formula

native to excel and doesn’t affect report rendering

speed.

• Use sumif to replace subtotal sums in nested

expansion.

Excel Sum OSR Sum

• Right click on cell to create OSR sum for any

expanding measure.

• OSR Sum creates a named range. The more it

exists on a report, the slower it will be. Absolute

no-no with a multi tab.

• Generally very useful when doing sums within

nested expansion.

Excel Formulas

OSR Sum vs. Excel Sum

Summary

• Slow performance = too many selection groups

• Use fewest groups possible.

o Ranges - filter ranges and expand by those values

o Attributes – expand by user customized by attributes

o Nested Groupings – expansions within expansion

o Trees (in rows) – expansion by tree hierarchy. Parent-child

relationship

Summary (cont.)

• How do you reference excel formulas to fields that are expanding?

o Index Match!

• Excel Sum vs. OSR Sum

Q&A

• Q&A

• Related Sessions

• Improve Templates with Advanced Excel Functionality

• Move from Private Host to Cloud

• Advanced Period and Date Functionality

• Demo of BI360 Cloud

Next Steps

Solver’s goal with

BI360 is to enable

world-class decisions

(top 1% in your

industry) for your

organization

A new eLearning experience…always there when you need it

QUESTIONS?

SOLVER ACADEMY

NEXT STEPSContact us at info@solverglobal.com or contact your BI360 partner