Flash charts are beautiful and I wanted the simplicity of PHP as the backbone. Apart from this, there are so many wonderful open source tools that are being leveraged in this product namely jQuery for Ajax, jqGrid for Table portlets that it really helps to keep the cost down.

The best part is there will be a “publish to web” menu and a button in the InfoCaptor Desktop Dashboard Designer which will let users to simply publish to PHP based engine. I am also planning to include a light weight web server so that you will see the web dashboard in action everytime. No need to contact any IT person and if you keep your PC on, you may even forward the dashboard URL to your colleagues within your network (be sure that you are inside your VPN or network).

The look and feel will be different because the desktop version is Java based and it uses jFreechart engine for charting whereas for the web based we are using a Flash charting engine.

InfoCaptor has already expanded into the desktop market by channeling into documentation tools and small business dashboard solution. What do you do if you are just a 1 or 2 person company? You certainly don’t need a web server when you can view the reports and dashboards on your PC.

But as you grow, it makes sense to have a true web based version and this is what InfoCaptor web based version will allow you to achieve.

I am excited with this release as it opens up so many possibilities, joint ventures and dashboards as SaaS, and OEM Dashboards

So stay tuned, the big release is coming!

-Nilesh

Here is a brief process of how you build dashboard with Excel data

1. Open Excel File ( create as many connections to multiple excel files)
2. Visually join all worksheets or query single worksheet
3. Create parameters (pivot tables)
4. Launch the chart factory
5. Create as many charts
6. Repeat the process from step 2 to build another set of charts

Check this video

Visit Excel Dashboards . This is a dedicated website for Excel Dashboarding process.

Here is a brief flow of how the task can be accomplished.

1. Connect to the Database or Excel file
2. InfoCaptor presents a wizard that allows you to build a blank dashboard or build a query on existing dashboard
3. Once you have the dashboard created you launch the query builder, drag all the tables you need, join them accordingly and create a valid SQL query.
4. The above SQL query is now your starting point
5. You create a tabular portlet or Qlet
6. From this Qlet you add all the needed parameters
7. It is necessary to decide all your parameters because it updates the table query accordingly which will form the basis of all the Charts
8. Once you are ready, click on the Qlet title and launch the chart factory.
9. Pick a chart type
10. Pick the columns
11. Pick the aggregations
12. Click on create chart
13. This presents you with the chart editor and shows you how the chart SQL looks like. You can rename the chart title or change other properties you may wish at this point (you can leave it as it is and update them later)
14. Click Apply
15. You have your chart created.

Stay tuned for detailed steps with screenshots and videos

NOTE: This is a work around until we enhance the connection wizard to include instance name

To connect to SQL Server, we use the jtds driver http://jtds.sourceforge.net/faq.html#instanceName

and the default jdbc url with InfoCaptor does not support additional properties.

In order to connect with properties the URL is as listed below

jdbc:jtds:<server_type>://<server>[:<port>][/<database>][;<property>=<value>[;...]]

Assuming that your normal connection to SQL server through Microsoft tools (such as SQL Server Studio) is

e.g Myhost\MyInstance

1. Goto InfoCaptor directory and there is a file called drivermap.txt

2. Edit the file in a notepad

3. Add a new line

“SQL Server Named Instance – net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver”, jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://<HOST>:<PORT>/<DB>;instance=MyInstance“;

Where MyInstance is your named instance.

4. Save the file and restart InfoCaptor.

5. Now goto connection wizard and select ‘SQL Server Named Instance …’ from the driver list

6. Enter the user, password, host, port and the database name.

In this example we are using the northwind sample database

Click on connect

Once connected it will open the Option wizard

Since there is no dashboard open, the “Build New Query” is disabled.

Click on the “New Blank Dashboard“

Enter some name for the dashboard “Northwind Dashboard”

Click OK

This Action immediately launches the Query Builder interface

Expand the node on the left

This displays a list of available tables

Double click on any table and it brings the table in the Query Builder window

You can now select columns and join then

To create joins, just drag the mouse on a column in the orders table. Once you see the join link appear you may release the mouse button. Now go to the second table and click on the column to which it needs to be joined.

Click on the SQL tab and you can see the SQL query that is automatically built for you

Now click on the “Create Table” button

This action creates a Qlet and places it in the dashboard

You can now right click on any column and create a drop down parameter

The parameter now automatically refreshes the qlet when you change the value

Step by Step Dashboard Video, Watch Now

The second best enhancement is the ability to change the dataset that you get from your SQL query. You can use excel like cell,row or column operations to derive totally new data set.

Excel like operations

• Add rows
• Add columns
• Add cells
• Add blank rows
• Add blank columns

Transpose

• You can easily Pivot your data with the use of the transpose function

Grand Totals

• Add grand total for all numeric columns
• Add grand total for just single column
• Custom position for the total label
• custom name for the total label

Sub Totals

• Add subtotals on a column

Other enhancements

• Disable scrollbar
• provide update sql in javascript
• custom size and location of the dashboard browser
• Default date values for the date parameter. You can now use MONTH_BEGIN, MONTH_END, CURRENT
• Default null value for field type parameters

You need to also make the Excel file available on the webserver so that the dashboard can connect to this Excel file and display information. You want to update the information in the Excel file on regular basis and upload or copy the file to the webserver directory.

Note: The dashboard uses ODBC connection to connect to Excel files. ODBC works only on windows machine. So technically you cannot connect to any Excel files over the internet or using http URL.

InfoCaptor internally has a mechanism to connect to files that are stored on the webserver and can access the excel files through URLs

When you launch the dashboard, it transparently connects to the Excel file by creating a local cache on the user’s machine.

To achieve this, you need to pick the following Excel Web File driver

and then provide the direct URL to the Excel file as shown above.

Click connect and it will create a local cache and connect.

You can also control how often the Excel cache is updated locally.

Click on the options button and then the Excel Cache settings tab

Set the number of days you want the Cache to expire.

So what if your data is not classified by a column. If you had different columns representing each stack, you can still create a stack bar.

Here is the Excel screenshot of some sample data. Each column represents the amount spend by a Person on different things such as measl,travel,gas,car and hotel. You want to see a stack bar for each person where each stack represents each column value.

You connect to this Excel file through InfoCaptor

Create a Dashboard and add the stacked bar chart.

Click Apply and you get the below stack bar

so there is no need for any special logic. You can do it with three columns or multiple columns

Let say you have two databases. Both databases have similar tables and you need to display the difference in the number of rows from these two tables.

InfoCaptor allows you to connect to multiple databases and display information on the same dashboard page. But in this situation we are required to create two distinct queries from two seperate databases and do calculation on the returned values.

This can be accomplished as illustrated below

Create first parameter with the total row count from 1st database table

Create second parameter with row count from second database table

Now create a Qlet that will do a difference between the two parameters

Right click on the text editor, will show the parameter list. Select the parameter Display value, remove the single quotes and the comments and then select the second parameter display value.

Once you select the p32 Get Display the Qlet text editor shows as below

Remove the single quotes and the comment section as shown below

Add a minus sign after the above string and then select the second parameter display value

Thats it – you get a Qlet that represents the difference of row counts between two seperate databases.

Now how about applying some conditional formatting to the Qlet

For the Qlet, enable the Javascript option by setting ‘Run Dynamic Java Script = ‘Y’

and then enter the following script

if (numericValue < 0 )
{
renderer.setForeground(Color.red);

renderer.setBackground(new Color(153,153,250));

}
else if (numericValue >0 && numericValue <100)
{
renderer.setForeground(Color.yellow);

renderer.setBackground(new Color(153,153,250));

}
else if (numericValue >100 )
{
renderer.setForeground(Color.orange);

renderer.setBackground(new Color(153,153,250));

}

Alternatively you could create a meter chart with the same query

http://www.infocaptor.com/user_help/dashboard_meter_chart.htm