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Tag Archives: Dashboards

4 Important CRM Dashboards Every Banker Needs

December 7, 2019   Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Our goal is to help banks make better decisions, streamline operations, manage data and information more effectively, and ultimately build a better bottom line.

After working with 1,800 financial services organizations across the country, including more than two-thirds of the top 100 U.S. banks we know they all want fast, efficient access to data. Based on all their feedback, here are four dashboards we feel every banker, and their teams, should have in order to be more productive:

1) Branch Scorecard Dashboard

The Branch Scorecard dashboard offers a quick and concise ways to measure KPI’s (key performance indicators) and gives a clear indication of how well the branch is working to achieve their targets.

Keeping a pulse on the number of accounts opened or closed in a given time period can help indicate what campaigns might be driving new account openings, or conversely which competitor campaigns are driving closed accounts.

Deposits remain the cornerstone of retail banking and while it’s important to focus on a bank’s overall deposit growth, it’s more important to focus on the deposit performance of individual branches. And measuring against goals gets at the heart of a branch’s viability.

Tracking expenses and income against an operating budget provides a way to track financial goals that provide an insightful measure of a bank’s overall efficiency.

Being able to quickly see the breakdown of products and services within a branch can help identify additional referral opportunities and highlight a branch’s ability to grow deposits within its existing branch.

2) Retail and Commercial Overview

A lot of banks talk in terms of a credit culture, but not necessarily a deposit culture. A deposit culture is just as important. It emphasizes sales leadership, sales governance, measurement against sales and marketing goals.

A sales overview dashboard provides the closed loop marketing insights needed to measure the effectiveness of each marketing campaign, from campaign –> leads generated –> pipeline impact –> revenue generated.

3) Retail CSR Dashboard

A Customer Service Representative (CSR) dashboard can be a “cockpit” for a bank representative, providing information in an easy and accessible way. A segmented list of the activities requiring my attention helps keep things organized and prioritized. Having a calendar gives me the ability to determine availability and quickly schedule new activities for myself or others.

4) Customer Account Overview

If customer information is scattered across different bank systems it will be difficult to get a clear picture of a customer and their lifecycle across products and services. Banks need to move from siloed customer data to an integrated, single view of the customer. After all, the customer is the bank’s most important asset and the bank needs to maximize the value of its relationships.

A consolidated customer profile opens up new opportunities to strengthen a bank’s customer relationships. It can include increased efficiency for customer services representatives, better risk assessment leading to quicker and more accurate lending decisions and more targeted marketing offers and more effective cross-selling activities.

Crowe CRM for Banking

Your bank can get all of these dashboards, any many more, in Crowe CRM for Banking powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Crowe CRM for Banking empowers bank staff with the tools and information needed to efficiently deliver high-quality, personalized service – for all interactions across all channels.   It gives managers and team members the information they need to be effective.

Crowe CRM for Banking on Microsoft AppSource

For more information, contact us at crminfo@crowe.com.

By Ryan Plourde, Crowe, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Gold Partner, www.crowecrm.com

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Announcing new contact lists for reports and dashboards in the Power BI service

October 26, 2019   Self-Service BI

When using data in reports and dashboards, end users frequently need to ask authors and experts questions, raise issues about the data they see, or seek confirmation that conclusions are sound. All too often, it’s unclear who to ask these questions or the answers don’t come quick enough. The new contact list makes it easy to support end users by providing a list of contacts that can include multiple users or groups for reports and dashboards in the Power BI service. When used with the New Look for the Power BI service, end users can quickly find and contact someone to make timely data driven decisions.

The contact lists for reports and dashboards described in this post have already rolled out to the Power BI service.

How to configure a contact list for reports or dashboards

When you publish a report and or create a dashboard, in the settings pane for the item you’ll now see a Contact box. Below we’ll show the UI experience for reports, but it works the same for dashboards.

You can use the content list for the workspace and open the settings pane. It’s under the Gear icon —> Settings

Screenshot showing the contact setting for reports available in the report’s settings pane.

The default contact for the item is the person who created it.

You can customize the contact it in several ways. You can replace the initial author with another person. If your author changes job roles, you can now ensure the current author is listed. You can add more people. Often, reports are supported by multiple authors, all of them can be added to contact list. This helps end users because the contact is up to date and if you provide multiple people, there’s always someone around to answer question even if the primary author is on vacation.

Additionally, you can put Office 365 Groups, distribution groups, and email enabled security groups in the contact list. This is great for teams who manage many reports and dashboards. It helps them centralize help requests, can give visibility on which items get the most help requests so they can be improved, and fosters a more responsive and faster data culture.

Lastly, you can remove the contact from the item entirely. When you do, the workspace’s contact information is used instead. The new workspace experience provides a workspace level contact list  that allows the same customization as the item contact list.  For classic workspaces, the Office 365 Group is used. This means that if you want to manage contact information centrally for your entire workspace you can, just by removing the item specific contact.

How do end users use the contact list

For users who are using the New Look for the Power BI Service, the item information card shows the contact information.

Screenshot showing the contact list is available in the item info card that is part of the New Look for the Power BI service.

When the user clicks the contact information, an email is created with the contact email addresses. It’s perfect for when the data just doesn’t seem right, and the end user needs to quickly ask the right people for help. It’s also a great way to send feedback to the authors to help improve reports and dashboards.

Screenshot showing an email that is automatically created when a user presses or click the contact list in the item info card.

Additionally, those on the contact list for an item get emails related to that item. For example, when a user requests access to the item, everyone in the contact list is notified. Lastly, we’ve started to display the contact list on our error dialog in some cases where the author can resolve the issue. Altogether, this will speed up how quickly end users can get help using data to make more effective and timely decisions.

The item level contact list doesn’t get pushed into apps when they are published. The new app navigation experience provides a support URL you configure to help manage feedback from large number of app users.

As always, we’re eager to hear your feedback on how the new contact list feature. Drop a comment below or make feature suggestions on our User Voice page.

Next steps

Read the contact list documentation

Learn about New Look for the Power BI service

Learn about the New workspace experience

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Sisense BloX – Go Beyond Dashboards

January 23, 2019   Sisense

Your boss comes to you at the end of the day and wants you to create an analytic web application for inventory management. Your first instinct is probably to get down to business coding. First, you create a sketch board, go through the UX and UI, review all the specifications, start development, QA, develop some more, and then QA some more…you know the drill.

What if I told you that you could do all of that in less than 10 minutes instead?

At Sisense Labs, we’re driven by how people will consume data in the future. So, over the past year, we have been creating a framework for developers to create their own analytics and BI applications – packaged BI capabilities for specific needs – that can be placed anywhere. We call it Sisense BloX.

Loops = Value

The idea for Sisense BloX comes as the next step in our journey to embed analytics everywhere. The idea was inspired by this piece on The Upshot, which gave us our “Eureka! moment” to give interactive functionality to our customers wherever and however they need it. Back in November 2017, I presented the idea internally here at Sisense as “Loops = Value.”

Here’s my original slide:

For Shelby 1 770x572 Sisense BloX – Go Beyond Dashboards

The slide may be pretty bare bones, but the idea was there: data allows you to create applications, applications allow you to take concrete actions, and these actions allow you to create more data. The benefit of higher user engagement with the ease of use to support and deploy in a low-code development environment enables companies to become more data-driven by tying business action with their data. As such, they can speed the monetization of their data investments.

So what is Sisense BloX?

Sisense BloX makes it easier than ever to create custom actionable analytic applications from complex data by leveraging powerful prebuilt templates to integrate application-like functionality into dashboards.

Sisense BloX is the next evolution of our Sisense Everywhere initiative in which we unveiled integrations with products like the Amazon Echo and a smart bulb. It’s another step in Sisense Lab’s pursuit of democratizing the BI world and increasing the value of data for everyone. With Sisense BloX, we transform the world of analytics into an open platform that customizes business applications in order to be more efficient with the way that we interact with our data.

Let’s break that down step by step.

BloX Blog 770x250 Reg 770x250 Sisense BloX – Go Beyond Dashboards

First, the Sisense BloX framework includes a robust library of templates to ensure that you can get started quickly by adding new visualization options or integration points with other applications. That tedious development cycle we mentioned earlier is a thing of the past.

Then, because we live in a world where customization is key, you can customize the code of your analytics app using both HTML and JSON. Essentially, what this means is you can take code from anywhere on the web (like, this) and simply add it to a BloX application. This helps non-developers create applications they only dreamed about before and gives developers the UX layer for their BI.

And, finally, the Sisense BloX framework includes an easy-to-use interface to expose and access many API capabilities directly in the Sisense UI using standard CSS and JSON. What we’ve done is create a low-code environment that makes these APIs accessible to a much wider range of developers and even to non-developers. You can integrate whatever action you want right into your dashboards. Anyone can create an actual BI application using this new UX layer.

Sisense BloX is currently available as a plugin in Sisense Marketplace but make no mistake, the vision is clear—soon every developer will be able to connect data with actions by using a simple coding framework and add buttons, interactivity, animation, and just about anything HTML will allow.

The Future Belongs to Action

Interacting with data is complex. With unlimited use cases and ways to use data, ensuring we provide the right analytical solution in the right scenario is critical. Sisense BloX will integrate BI with UX together in one platform, creating BI apps of all shapes and sizes.

Sisense BloX empowers the data application designers to create business applications with actions wrapped in one container, which create a narrative and have a deeper impact on the organization’s business offering. With Sisense BloX the paradigm shifts from dashboard designers to analytic applications builders and makers. Maybe you want to create a calculator, a slider, or a form that connects and writes back to Salesforce. Sisense BloX allows for this and much more.

I’m excited to introduce Sisense BloX to the world.

BloX Blog 770x250 Reg 770x250 Sisense BloX – Go Beyond Dashboards

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Kaggle users can now create Google Data Studio dashboards

December 6, 2018   Big Data

Kaggle, a Google-owned community for AI researchers and developers that offers tools which help to find, build, and publish datasets and models, is integrating with Google’s Data Studio. The Mountain View company announced the news in a blog post timed to coincide with the NeurIPS 2018 conference in Montreal this week.

Starting this week, users can connect to and visualize Kaggle datasets directly from Data Studio using Kaggle’s Community Connector tool. It’s as simple as browsing for a dataset within Kaggle, picking a file, launching Data Studio with the selected file, and creating an interactive dashboard with Data Studio’s built-in tools. From that point, the dashboard can be published and embedded in a website or blog.

Google is also making available the connector code for the integration in open source in the Data Studio Open Source Repository, which it says will help Data Studio developers and Kaggle users to build “newer and better solutions.”

“[With] this new integration, users can analyze these datasets in Kaggle; and then visualize findings and publish their data stories using Data Studio,” Minhaz Kazi, a developer advocate at Google, and Megan Risdal, product lead at Kaggle Datasets, wrote in a blog post. “Since there is no cost to use Data Studio and the infrastructure is handled by Google, users don’t have to worry about scalability, even if millions of people view the dashboard … The hassle-free publishing process means everyone can tell engaging stories, open up dashboards for others to interact with, and make better-informed decisions.”

The integration comes a little over a year after Google’s acquisition of Kaggle, which was announced in March at the Cloud Next 2017 conference in San Francisco. Google claims that it’s the world’s largest online community of data scientists, with over two million users (up from 1 million in June 2017) and over 10,000 public datasets. Users compete against each other in competitions, testing techniques on real-world tasks for prize pools.

“We must lower the barriers of entry to AI and make it available to the largest community of developers, users and enterprises, so they can apply it to their own unique needs. With Kaggle joining the Google Cloud team, we can accelerate this mission,” Fei-Fei Li, chief scientist of Google Cloud AI and Machine Learning, wrote of the acquisition in an earlier blog post.

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Webinar 10/16: Build Impactful Financial Dashboards Using Microsoft Power BI with Avi Singh

October 13, 2018   Self-Service BI

Crowd Favorite Avi Singh is back next week presenting on his favorite topic: 

Building Impactful Financial Dashboards Using Microsoft Power BI

As a Financial analyst, rather than wrestling with data and queries, wouldn't you rather focus on serving your customer—the business—by providing smart analysis, insights and financial guidance? Meet Microsoft Power BI: the latest and greatest BI tool by Microsoft that's making waves. Power BI makes it super easy to clean up messy data; combine data from multiple sources (e.g., general ledger, personnel); define magical measures that you can use everywhere—say goodbye to filling your sheets with endless formulas; and create beautiful and impactful visualization that you can interact with and ask questions (no more walking out of the meetings with 20 action items). Discover all of this and more as we walk through building an actual financial dashboard using Power BI.

When: Tuesday, October 16, 2018 10:00 AM-11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada).

Where: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Webinars-and-Video-Gallery/Build-Impactful-Financial-Dashboards-Using-Microsoft-Power-BI/m-p/541198

EN WBNR Headshot Avi Singh Webinar 10/16: Build Impactful Financial Dashboards Using Microsoft Power BI with Avi Singh

About Avi Singh
Avi Singh is a Power BI trainer and consultant based out of Seattle. He is a Microsoft MVP, co-author of the top-selling book “Power Pivot and Power BI: An Excel User’s Guide” and a regular speaker at conferences and user events.  Avi has personally experienced the transformation and empowerment that Power BI can bring, going from an Excel user to building large-scale Power BI solutions. His mission now is to spread the word and share his knowledge about Power BI.  You can follow him on his blog at www.avising.com or video blog http://www.youtube.com/c/AviSingh

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Configuring Dashboards for Business Process Flows

October 12, 2018   Microsoft Dynamics CRM
bpf dashboard 300x225 Configuring Dashboards for Business Process Flows

Business process flows help to guide users through a defined set of stages and related steps required to complete a business process. Utilizing process flows can result in improvements in user adoption and provide greater visibility into the sales pipeline. This topic describes how to build process-centric dashboards in Dynamics 365 using out of the box entities.

Each business process flow configured in the Dynamics 365 corresponds with a related process entity that includes information such as active stage, status and start date. As a system customizer, you can edit the sitemap to display these process entities, manage permissions for each process via security roles and build custom views including process data as well as attributes from supporting entities. The custom views can also be used to create visualizations such as charts, sub grids and list views of records.

In this example, the organization is utilizing two types of sales processes that are relevant to opportunity entity. Each of these process entities have been added to the sitemap under the Business Processes section to support a process-centric view for a sales user.

101218 1736 Configuring1 Configuring Dashboards for Business Process Flows

The user can select a specific business process from the sitemap and double-click a process record from views to continue progressing the opportunity further.

101218 1736 Configuring2 Configuring Dashboards for Business Process Flows

We can configure a Sales Process Dashboard in CRM, leveraging system capabilities together to reduce the number of clicks and improve user experience.

Follow these steps:

1. Create a system dashboard called Sales Process Dashboard from the customizations area.

101218 1736 Configuring3 Configuring Dashboards for Business Process Flows

2. Insert a chart component into the dashboard by selecting a business process flow entity, a related view and chart visualization based on the stages of the process.

101218 1736 Configuring4 Configuring Dashboards for Business Process Flows

3. Insert a list component into the dashboard by selecting the same business process flow entity and a related custom view that combines information from the process and its supporting entity.

101218 1736 Configuring5 Configuring Dashboards for Business Process Flows

4. Save and publish the Sales Process dashboard.

Here is a sample Sales Process Dashboard configured to display information for two sales processes for an organization. As a result, sales users can view process-driven information in a user-friendly manner and identify opportunities that require attention.

101218 1736 Configuring6 Configuring Dashboards for Business Process Flows

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New B2B Customer Experience Dashboards Promise Better Business Visibility

July 13, 2018   CRM News and Info

MaritzCX on Tuesday unveiled preconfigured business-to-business customer experience templates that monitor key financial indicators; metrics for customer touchpoints, including Net Promoter Score and Overall Satisfaction; business-specific outcomes; and overall account performance.

The dashboards are integrated into the MaritzCX Technology Platform.

“The dashboards become a hub that aggregates all of the data being monitored,” said Jennifer Rubin, MaritzCX associate practice leader.

They give businesses “a centralized, holistic view of their information to make more informed decisions,” she told CRM Buyer.

Among the factors monitored:

  • Net Promoter Score and trends in NPS over time;
  • Response time to follow up requests;
  • Text analytics, to surface issues that have to be addressed;
  • Performance across accounts and account managers;
  • Revenue at risk by account size; and
  • Performance by industry or product and service offering.

The dashboards address a number of pain points: multi-tier distribution models, OEM and branded products, incomplete customer information, and the volume of disparate data. The templates help users better visualize account needs and opportunities, focus retention strategies, and profile NPS.

“As more and more companies move to account-based selling, understanding the overall health of accounts is important,” noted Rebecca Wettemann, VP of research at Nucleus Research.

“This includes top-down measurements like NPS and also bottom-up views of account activity, and the strength of individual relationships with influencers,” she told CRM Buyer.

Action Planning Built In

A team of customer experience designers and consultants will help configure dashboard templates to a company’s specific needs.

Companies also can use
CXEvolution with the dashboards. CXEvolution is MaritzCX’s proprietary customer experience assessment model for designing CX roadmaps and building customer experience programs.

CXEvolution is the world’s largest study of CX practitioners, with more than 10,000 CX participants from 1,000 companies spanning 40 industries, MaritzCX’s Rubin said.

It measures performance in terms of CX strategy, people, processes, technology, customer alignment, existing customer growth and other financial indicators.

Companies are placed within one of four CX success stages — emerging, attentive, responsive or proactive — to provide a benchmark and pathway for realistic areas for improvement, Rubin said.

CXEvolution identifies and quantifies “individual roadblocks to success; benchmarks a CX program against other companies in [the user’s] industry; and provides prescriptive-action scenarios correlated to predictive financial returns,” she added.

Preconfigured B2B dashboards show company-specific information, Rubin said. Linking them with CXEvolution lets enterprises use the information from the study to see how their CX programs compare with others. They also can see a typical return on various CX initiatives other companies have implemented to help them determine where to invest their resources to get a similar type of return.

Each dashboard has action planning built in, so account managers can be held responsible for their customers’ experiences, and at-risk accounts can be monitored at all times.

“Understanding and presenting a view of this data is just the first step,” said Nucleus Research’s Wettemann. “Leadership will go to those who apply advanced analytics and AI to not just present the data, but use it to recommend best actions based on the data in context of the overall relationship.”

However, the dashboards “look like a play [by MaritzCX] to sell their research as a service through ongoing CX measurement,” Wettemann observed.

“I see MaritzCX more closely competing with the customer satisfaction research firms like Qualtrix,” she added.

“Most of the big CRM vendors have partnerships or organic capabilities to help large enterprises understand account health and customer satisfaction,” Wettemann said.
“I don’t see anything particularly special here.”

The Need for B2B CX

More than 60 percent of B2B organizations consider CX impact and data in their operational decisions, according to data from a panel presentation at 2018 CXEvolution.

However, much needs to be done in the area of B2B CX, which is
“an industrial wasteland,” according to Bertrand Duperrin, head of employee and client experience at Emakina France.

The B2B client “is a B2C client that walks through the office door,” he said, adding that enterprise consumerization means B2B clients have the same expectations as consumers. That means going digital isn’t about thinking marketing, but thinking value and services.

Meanwhile, the
B2B buyer-seller gap has been growing, and purchasers increasingly have been relegating salespeople to specific parts of the process.

More than 70 percent of 500 B2B companies worldwide surveyed prefer to wait to engage a seller until the seller has a clear understanding of their needs, according to CSO Insights, the research division of
Miller Heiman Group. Nearly 58 percent of buyers saw little difference among sellers, and only 23 percent consider vendor salespeople a preferred problem-solving resource.

“The intent of the dashboards goes beyond sales,” Rubin pointed out. “Delivering personalized service and account-level support is a trend that’s as important as the trend to use self-serve purchasing.”

Having access to the consolidated information the dashboards offer “is very helpful to personalizing the type and amount of support an account needs,” she noted. “The dashboards show how the account perceives the relationship with the company, alongside key financial and operational data, so that clients can identify revenue at risk as well as accounts that may be well positioned to expand sales.”

B2B procurement officers opt for self-service over live salespeople for convenience,
Avionos has found. Ninety-seven percent of the 160 procurement officers at U.S.-based B2B companies recently surveyed considered a supplier’s online customer portal a critical factor in selection. Eighty-nine percent reported making more purchases online than they had a year earlier.

If an organization delivers a poor experience, “it doesn’t matter how easy it is to buy a product or service in an automated fashion,” Rubin said. That organization “will not likely be among the companies on procurement’s consideration list.”
end enn New B2B Customer Experience Dashboards Promise Better Business Visibility


Richard%20Adhikari New B2B Customer Experience Dashboards Promise Better Business Visibility
Richard Adhikari has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2008. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, mobile technologies, CRM, databases, software development, mainframe and mid-range computing, and application development. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including Information Week and Computerworld. He is the author of two books on client/server technology.
Email Richard.

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5/29 Webinar: Building Spectacular Power BI Dashboards with Zebra BI visuals

May 26, 2018   Self-Service BI

During Matt Allington’s webinar: Time intelligence for retail and wholesale industries with Power BI the request was made to have a webinar on the best practices for visualizing business data particularly Time On Time like YOY changes.   Next week we have Andreje from Zebra BI to come show how many of the internal teams at Microsoft are doing this with Zebra BI visuals.

Building Spectacular Power BI Dashboards with Zebra BI visuals

We will present advanced data visualization methods for building insightful Power BI dashboards. This lecture will demonstrate how to implement popular datavis techniques like the small multiples and the IBCS® semantic notation by using the Zebra BI custom visuals. We’ll also take on the challenge of presenting the P&L statements in Power BI.

In our presentation, we will build a real-life sales and financial dashboard from the scratch and reveal practical tips&tricks for designing advanced, mobile ready and fully responsive dashboards.

When: May 29th 2018 10AM PST

Where: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3Dh6aBOO7A 

 5/29 Webinar: Building Spectacular Power BI Dashboards with Zebra BI visuals

About the Presenter: Andrej Lapajne

Andrej Lapajne is the founder of Zebra BI and a founding member of the IBCS Association. In his 20 years of experience as a consultant, Andrej has implemented reporting systems and BI dashboards across a wide range of industries including pharma, telco, retail, FMCG, manufacturing, insurance, banking, energy, media, public sector and the high tech industry. His experience includes helping Coca-Cola bottlers, Swarovski, Bayer, Roche, Danfoss and many other international companies achieve consistent and efficient reporting. 

In the last 5 years, Andrej has led the Zebra BI team in developing fully IBCS-compliant custom visuals for Power BI as well as the popular Zebra BI Excel Add-In. 

As a speaker, Andrej has lectured at McKinsey&Co. in NYC, the AFP Annual Conference in Denver, several IBCS annual conferences and at many other international conferences and events. He is a guest lecturer at Faculties of Economics and Computer Science and Informatics in Ljubljana.

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Healthcare Dashboards: Examples of Visualizing Key Metrics & KPIs

April 7, 2018   Sisense

The world of healthcare analytics is vast and can encompass a wide variety of organizations and use cases: from hospitals to medical equipment manufacturers, emergency rooms to intensive care units. And while some of the dashboard metrics tracked by healthcare organizations can be fairly similar to the ones monitored in other industries – such as finance or marketing – the use of business intelligence in hospitals presents a unique set of potential insights that can help physicians save lives by providing more effective and resourceful care to patients.

This article will examine a number of ways in which visualizing healthcare data can help physicians and management gain a better understanding of going-ons within hospitals, and suggest ways to visualize commonly tracked metrics. But first, let’s understand where this data is coming from.

Common Data Sources in Healthcare

  • Electronic Medical Records (EMR) – these are essentially a digital version of the patient’s paper chart, used by clinicians to monitor the patient’s condition, treatments he or she is due for, etc. These are usually kept within the bounds of the facility in which the patient is being treated.
  • Electronic Health Records(EHR) – a broader set of digital records pertaining to the patient’s overall health, including information regarding previous treatment administered by other healthcare providers, specialists, laboratory tests and more. These would typically move with the patient and be shared by various providers.
  • Specific departmental data – gathered by specific divisions or units within the healthcare organization.
  • Administrative data – collected in Healthcare Management Systems (HMS) and looks at the hospital’s overall operations. Would typically be used by a hospital’s senior managerial staff and may include information regarding matters such as resource utilization and human resources.
  • Financial data – often stored in proprietary financial management systems for larger organizations.

As you can see, many healthcare providers often find themselves working with many disparate data sources. However, there can often be unique benefits in connecting data stored in these various sources to find correlations between them. Consolidating the data can be done in an enterprise data warehouse, which is a project best undertaken by heavily staffed IT departments.

Examples of Data Visualization in Healthcare

Once you’ve gathered all the required data and undergone the prerequisite data modeling steps, you can start looking at effectively monitoring key hospital analytics metrics and thinking of insightful ways to visualize them in a healthcare dashboard. Here are a few healthcare analytics examples, with the disclaimer that these are by no means the only things a hospital would generally be looking at, nor necessarily the most crucial ones.

For the purposes of this article we’ve used sample data. You can click on any image to enlarge.

Cost of Admission by Department

cost of admissions bar chart 770x346 Healthcare Dashboards: Examples of Visualizing Key Metrics & KPIs

This is a very simple visualization, but nevertheless one that can help hospitals understand how their financial resources are being utilized. By using a bar chart we immediately provide additional information that might have been more difficult to notice in tabular format – such as shifts in the relative costs between departments, as well as peaks that could indicate an issue that needs to be addressed, or at least further investigated.

A different way of visualizing the same data would be a line chart:

cost of admissions line chart 770x342 Healthcare Dashboards: Examples of Visualizing Key Metrics & KPIs

This visualization gives us a clearer idea of trends and outliers, and some people might find it more intuitive to examine the data regarding to a specific department in this format – the significant information becomes more apparent immediately. However, this is largely dependant on what the viewer’s emphasis is on when examining the data.

Another common way to look at the same data would be via the following visualization, which gives the exact revenue figures and a very clear idea of each department’s costs on an annual basis:

cost of admissions phased bar chart Healthcare Dashboards: Examples of Visualizing Key Metrics & KPIs

As we’ve mentioned before, an effective dashboard reveals detail on demand. This means that after providing a high-level KPI overview, you might want to give the dashboard viewer the ability to drill into the data – in this case, the admission costs of the various units within the operating rooms. We chose a line chart as it gives us an immediate indication of highs and lows in admission costs:

line chart breakdown of admission costs 770x214 Healthcare Dashboards: Examples of Visualizing Key Metrics & KPIs

ER Admissions and Length of Stay

This visualization gives us a single-glance view at data from several different sources. In our sample dataset, we had to join data from admissions, divisions, and ER tables. Combining these datasets gives us a clearer idea of hospital resource utilization by examining the amount of patients being admitted to the emergency room and the average time these patients spend at the hospital. This sets the way for further investigation into peaks, trends, and patterns.

average stay in days data viz 770x349 Healthcare Dashboards: Examples of Visualizing Key Metrics & KPIs

Leading Diagnoses by Number of Patients, Cost and Stay

Here we’ve kept the data in tabular form. However, by combining financial and administrative data with departmental records, we gain the ability to quickly get answers to specific questions which can shed further insight into the various treatments being administered and how these affect hospital finances and room availability. Applying filters will enable us to examine specific dimensions such as region, time or facility.


Hospital Donations

If your organization bases its budget around donations, like so many do, it’s important to track trends in order to understand how to plan for the year ahead. A donations dashboard can help you to find ways to increase engagement of donors and ensure financial stability. If donated amounts are different from what you expected them to be or change dramatically you can analyze the retention level of donors and find ways to engage more.

donations Healthcare Dashboards: Examples of Visualizing Key Metrics & KPIs

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Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

January 16, 2018   BI News and Info

When you think about reporting, two tools come to mind: SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and Power BI. SSRS is an excellent choice for detailed, line item style reporting or reports with some basic graphs. You may have heard of this style as paginated reports in SQL Server 2016. At the other end of the spectrum is Power BI, an outstanding tool for creating self service analytic dashboards.

But what about the middle ground? What about the user who wants a higher-level view of their data than normally found on an SSRS report, but has no desire or time to generate their own dashboards with Power BI? This is where Mobile Report Publisher comes to the rescue!

Don’t be misled by the name. Mobile Report Publisher isn’t just for creating reports on mobile devices such as phones and tablets, although it does that well. It can be used to create beautiful, functional, and useful dashboards for the web. Because Mobile Report Publisher renders all its reports in HTML5, the reports look the same whether you are using Edge on a Windows computer, Firefox on Linux, or Safari on a Mac or even an iPad!

Mobile Report Publisher operates within the framework of SQL Server Reporting Services, so you’ll need an SSRS 2016 (or later) server to be able to use it. Sorry those of you on older versions of SQL Server, but this will at least give you another reason to get your boss to upgrade!

Of course, we’ll need some data to report from as well, so for this article we’ll be using the WideWorldImportersDW sample database. This is the data warehouse version of the new Wide World Imports sample introduced with SQL Server 2016. You can download the database backup, or download the source code and build the database yourself.

One way that Mobile Reports can get the data is through Excel spreadsheets. Mostly likely, you’ll want to see data from a database. To access that data, data sources and datasets must be set up in SSRS. Before we begin creating reports, let’s set up the data source and datasets in the SSRS report portal.

Data Sources

The first step is to create a data source. Most folks have folders setup within their Reporting Services portal for things like data sources and datasets as you can see in this next screen shot from my system.

word image 106 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

If you’ve worked with SSRS before, you’ve likely used data sources and datasets already, but briefly you’ll first need to create a data source to connect to the WideWorldImportersDW database.

  1. Navigate to the Data Sources folder (or create one if it doesn’t exist).
  2. Click the New button in the toolbar (shown above in about the middle of the image).
  3. From its menu, pick Data Source.
  4. For the name, enter WideWorldImportersDW.
  5. For the Connection Type, pick Microsoft SQL Server.
  6. You’ll next enter the connection string. If you need help, there is a handy Learn more link beside the Connection String title that has a lot of great information. For this article we’re accessing SSRS from the same computer it is running on, so we can use localhost. Therefore the connection string reads:
    Data Source=localhost;Initial Catalog=WideWorldImportersDW
  7. For credentials you have two basic choices. As the user viewing the report is a great option if you have authentication (Active Directory, Kerberos) setup correctly, or you are running your reports on the same computer as SSRS (i.e. localhost). If you are going to be running the report unattended, or you are on a system such as a development box you can also pick Using the following credentials and enter your (or an appropriate) user id and password.
  8. Always be sure to click the Test connection button to ensure everything works.
  9. Click Create to apply the new Data Source to the server.

Datasets

With your data source setup, you can now create your datasets. You can think of a dataset as a query that is saved for others to easily use. In this case it will be a SQL query, but had a different data source been used, such as SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Services), it might be an MDX or DAX query. There are two utilities that can be used to create a dataset, Visual Studio and Report Builder. As Report Builder is a bit simpler, we’ll use it for this article.

Inside the report portal, click New, then in the drop-down menu select Dataset.

c users arcan appdata local temp snaghtml4b33a5 p 2 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

When you do, you’ll get a dialog that SSRS is attempting to open the Report Builder app. If you don’t have Report Builder, there is a big Get Report Builder button you can use to download it. If you already have it installed, and are in Microsoft Edge, you’ll get a second dialog asking Did you mean to switch apps? This is a safety feature of Edge, in this case we can just say Yes.

When Report Builder opens, it comes to the first step in creating a dataset. On this window you’ll have to select the shared data source for your dataset.

word image 107 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

If you have used Report Builder before, it will remember the previously selected data sources and list them, as you can see above. If the data source you want isn’t listed, but is already on your SSRS server, you can click on the Browse other data sources link to find and add it to the list. Once it is in the list, click on it, then click the Create button in the lower right.

Once the data source is selected, Report Builder opens to a dataset designer which will allow users to navigate a tree, select fields, create filters, and the like. This is meant for business users who are not familiar with the syntax of SQL. If you are though, you can take a short cut and enter SQL directly into the dataset designer. Simply click the Edit as Text button in the toolbar.

c users arcan appdata local temp snaghtml57170b p 2 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

It’s likely that, as part of your routine, you’ll have developed the query you wish to use in a tool such as SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) or the new SQL Server Operations Studio (see the article A Walk Around SQL Operations Studio for more info on this tool). That’s what was done here, so just paste the already tested query below into the Query Designer in Report Builder.

SELECTd.[CalendarYearLabel]

       ,SUM(s.[TotalIncludingTax])AS[YearlyTotalIncludingTax]

    FROM[WideWorldImportersDW].[Fact].[Sale]s

    JOIN[WideWorldImportersDW].[Dimension].[Date]d

      ONs.[InvoiceDateKey]=d.[Date]

   GROUPBYd.[CalendarYearLabel]

   ORDERBYd.[CalendarYearLabel]

It’s a good idea to test within Report Builder to ensure the query still functions as expected, so click the red exclamation mark at the top. The grid at the bottom should then populate with data.

word image 108 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

Yea! It worked! Now it can be saved; just use File, Save or click the floppy disk icon in the upper left. You’ll need to save it to the server, so if the Look in: area at the top doesn’t already read the name of your server, use the Recent Sites and Servers button to navigate to the server. Then on the server navigate to the Datasets folder, or a similar folder where you wish to store it.

Name this dataset Yearly Totals.rsd and click OK to save it.

For the report we will be generating, a second dataset will be needed. If you closed report builder just refollow the steps above. On the other hand, if Report Builder is still open simply click File, New. In the New Report or Dataset window, click New Dataset. From here, just follow the same steps you’ve already done.

In either case, use the code below for the new datasets query.

1

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3

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5

6

7

8

9

10

SELECTd.[CalendarYearLabel]

       ,c.[StateProvince]

       ,SUM(s.[TotalIncludingTax])AS[YearlyStateTotalIncludingTax]

    FROM[WideWorldImportersDW].[Fact].[Sale]s

    JOIN[WideWorldImportersDW].[Dimension].[Date]d

      ONs.[InvoiceDateKey]=d.[Date]

    JOIN[WideWorldImportersDW].[Dimension].[City]c

      ONs.[CityKey]=c.[CityKey]

   GROUPBYd.[CalendarYearLabel],c.[StateProvince]

   ORDERBYd.[CalendarYearLabel],c.[StateProvince]

Save the dataset as Yearly Totals by State.rsd. You can now close Report Builder.

Installing the Mobile Report Publisher

Now that the groundwork has been laid, it’s finally time to start generating a mobile report. To do so, we’ll need to get the Mobile Report Publisher tool installed. In the SQL Server Reporting Services Report Portal, go to the New menu, then click on Mobile Report.

c users arcan appdata local temp snaghtml8d3191 p 2 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

When you do, you are prompted that SSRS is opening Mobile Report Publisher. If you don’t have Mobile Report Publisher already installed, there is a button you can click, Get Mobile Report Publisher, that will take you to a webpage where you can download and install.

word image 109 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

If you’ve not installed Mobile Report Publisher, go ahead and do so now. It’s a free download from Microsoft. Once it is installed, and you only have to install it once, then you can simply close this window once it is open.

If you are using Microsoft Edge to view your SSRS portal, you will get an additional security prompt.

word image 110 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

Simply click Yes to launch Mobile Report Publisher.

Alternatively, you could first install the tool without going through the New step. In the top of the report portal, on the right side is a down arrow. This is the download menu, clicking it will bring you to the various sites to install SQL Server Reporting Services tools. Also, once Mobile Report Publisher is installed it isn’t necessary to go through the SSRS portal to open it; you can simply use the Windows menus to launch it.

Designing the report

When Mobile Report Publisher opens, it first needs a connection to a SSRS server. In the dialog that appears, simply fill out the required information and click Connect.

word image 111 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

The computer used in writing this article is a virtual machine with both SSRS and Mobile Report Publisher installed, so for the server name we can use localhost. Alternatively, we could use the real computer name hosting SSRS.

As this is just a virtual machine setup for this article, similar to using your home computer, no authentication was created, so Use secure connection is unchecked. If you are in your enterprise where you are using Active Directory, it is likely you will need to check this on.

If you wish the users of the report to connect using their credentials, leave the Use current Windows account checked on, otherwise enter the credentials you wish to use to run the report. When done, just click Connect.

The Designer

Let’s take a look now at the designer. To make discussion easier, sections of the designer have been outlined in various colors.

word image 112 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

On the top left, highlighted in red, are four buttons that control the designer. In the image above, the Layout is being displayed. In Layout mode, under the buttons are various report elements that can be dragged and dropped into the design area, highlighted in green to the right. In addition to Navigators and Gauges, scrolling down will reveal Charts, Maps, and Data grids.

Above the green design area is the report name, which defaults to New Mobile Report. Simply click in there to change the report title. Next to it are sliders which control how many grid rows and columns appear. For this report just use the defaults.

To the right of the row / column sliders are two drop downs. These control the layout configuration (Web, Tablet, or Mobile) and color scheme. Those will be explored in a bit. Under the grid of rows and columns is a big blank gray box. This will hold the properties for the various components that will be placed on the report, you’ll see those appear as we begin creating the report.

Before we begin, though, there’s one more area to point out, highlighted in gold in the upper left. These are simply the file handling icons, from left to right New, Open, Save, Save as, and Server Connections. The first four are obvious, the last one simply allows you to alter the connection information to the server that you entered when you first opened Mobile Report Publisher. This is useful for developing on a local machine, then later changing to a production server.

Creating A Report

Now that you are familiar with the Layout mode of the designer, let’s begin creating a report. In the report elements area (highlighted in blue) scroll down to the Charts area. Find the Category chart, drag and drop it into the layout area in the very upper left square.

word image 113 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

After doing so, you’ll note a sizing handle. Clicking on it, drag until the chart takes up an area five boxes wide by two boxes high.

word image 114 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

In the area under the layout configuration is the properties for this chart. Click in the title area, and change the title from the default of Category chart 1, to Yearly Sales.

word image 115 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

Note that once you tab out of the Title property box, the title over the left side of the chart will update as well.

Next add a map. Scroll down to the Maps area in the report elements area, click on the Gradient heat map, and drag and drop it into the square on the very left just under the chart. Expand it to be three rows high by five wide. In the properties area at the bottom, change the Title to Yearly Total by State.

While in the properties, scroll to the right. The default map is USA, but clicking the Map dropdown will allow you to pick from other maps, or use a custom map. The Value direction area lets you set whether larger numbers are better, or smaller numbers. Leave these at the defaults, but just know they are there when you begin to create you own reports.

Finally, let’s add one last report element. In the Data grids area, move a Simple data grid onto the configuration area. Place it in the blank square in the upper left, and expand to take up the remaining space. In the properties area, change the Title to Sales Details. Your designer should now resemble the following image:

word image 116 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

In the button area, click Preview to see your report.

word image 117 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

The preview shows not just the layout, but populates the various components with data. The Sales Details area can be scrolled up and down to look at values. But where did it get the data from?

Data? What data?

Click the arrow to the left of the report title (New Mobile Report in the previous image) to return to the designer. The next step is to add real data to the report. Click on the Data button in the button bar.

word image 118 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

The main area shows the data for each dataset. Datasets can be selected by using the lower tabs (highlighted in red in the above image). The properties pane on the bottom is used to tie each report element, on the left, to a dataset. To change the dataset for a report element, simply click on an element in the elements pane on the left. Then in the properties area the various data properties can be set.

Right now, the data area is showing sample data. Each report element contains a sample dataset of its own. This allows you to get a realistic feeling of how the report will look like. It’s time now to add some real data.

Click on the Add data button on the top right. You will then be prompted for the source, Excel or a Report server. We went to a lot of effort earlier in this article to setup datasets on our report server, so that’s the option to select here. Next, you will be show a list of servers the report knows about. It got these from the options you selected when initially creating the report. If you don’t see a server you need, simply cancel, then use the Server Connections button to add another server. Then return to add data. Assuming your server is listed, just click on it.

The next screen shows you a list of datasets in the last folder you accessed on the report server.

word image 119 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

In this example, Mobile Report Publisher defaults to the last folder that was accessed, in this case Demo, but it has no datasets in it. Just use the up arrow to return to the folder above it until you get to the root folder.

On this server, all the datasets are stored in a folder name Datasets, so once it was clicked on we see a list of all our datasets. All that is needed is to scroll down the list of datasets and pick Yearly Totals.

word image 120 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

The new data now appears as a tab in our report data area.

word image 121 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

You can view the data, but cannot change it. Also notice the icons to the left of the tab names. Simulated datasets have red icons, whereas imported datasets have black ones, providing visual cues as to the source of the data.

Next, repeat the steps above to add the Yearly Totals by State dataset from the report server.

Datasets and Report Elements – Better Together!

The next step is to tie the existing report elements to the new datasets. Start by clicking the Yearly Sales report element on the left. Then in the properties area at the bottom, use the dropdown to change the Series name field to YearlyTotals. The drop down to the right indicates the series to use, in this graph what should each bar in the chart represent. For this example, ensure it is set to Calendar_Year_Label. It should be noted, Mobile Report Publisher doesn’t handle spaces well. In dataset names, it simply strips out any spaces it finds, for field names it replaces spaces with an underscore.

The Main series area are the values that will be plotted. Simply validate it is set to Yearly_Total_Including_Tax.

word image 122 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

Next, click on the Sales Details report element on the left. In the data properties area, change the Data for the grid view to YearlyTotalsbyState. To the right is the Data grid columns pane. In here, you can clean up the titles of the columns; these are the labels that will be presented to the user. You may also uncheck a column to prevent it from appearing. Finally, you may also use the ‘hamburger’ icons (the stack of horizontal bars to the left of the check boxes) to rearrange the columns. Simply click and hold on the icon then drag it up and down to rearrange the order.

Take a moment to clean up the titles that will be shown to the end user. For this sample, change it to Year, State, and Total Including Tax, as shown below.

word image 123 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

As the last item for the data grid, click on the options button beside the bottom total column. In the pop up window that appears, change the String format property to Currency.

Finally, we’ll set the map properties. Click on the Yearly Total by State map in the report elements area. Change the Keys to YearlyTotalsbyState so it knows which dataset to use. To the right is a drop down that indicates the key to use for geography. This needs to be the name or abbreviation of a state, country, or some other similar geographic key. As this dataset has the State_Province column, select it in the drop down. The values can be left at the Yearly_State_Total_Including_Tax.

word image 124 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

As a last step before we preview, click in the New Mobile Report title at the top. Change the value to State Sales Totals. Now you can click the Preview button.

word image 125 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

We now have an attractive report but there’s still more to do. Before proceeding though, there’s one thing that should be pointed out regarding the simulated datasets.

Use the arrow to return to the designer. Next click on the Layout button, then click on the Data button to go back. You should see the simulated datasets have vanished. Whenever you return to the data, Mobile Report Publisher checks to see if there are any simulated datasets that are no longer in use, and removes them.

Putting the Mobile in Mobile Report Publisher

We’re finally ready to bring the Mobile to Mobile Report Publisher. Return to the Layout, then click on the white drop down in the upper right.

c users arcan appdata local temp snaghtml10427ab 1 2 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

Thus far all the work has been done in the Master layout. This is the layout that will appear when any web browser is used to access this report on the report portal. And Microsoft does mean any. Mobile Report Publisher is HTML5 compliant; your report should render the same whether viewed on Edge in Windows, Firefox on Linux, or Safari on a Mac or iPad.

But what about when you wish to render a special layout when using a mobile device, such as a phone or tablet? For those situations Microsoft has provided the Power BI app. Yes, the same app you can use to view Power BI reports may also be used to view Mobile Report Publisher reports. First though, the layouts for those platforms need to be created. Click on the Tablet option in the menu above.

The layout now updates to (by default) a grid of eight rows by six columns. Begin by placing the Yearly Sales in the upper left, and make it three by three in size. Then place the Yearly Total by State map directly next to it, also three by three. Finally place the Sales Details under them, taking up the remaining space.

word image 126 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

Return to the layout menu now, and pick Phone. The layout updates to six rows by four columns. Place the Yearly Sales chart in the upper left, and expand to two rows high by four wide. Next, place the Sales Details underneath, and expand to take up the remaining space.

word image 127 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

At this point some of you may be going “But Robert! What about the map?” It’s not required you use every report element when creating a layout. For this report, on a layout as small as a phone, the map wouldn’t render large enough to provide useful information, so it was omitted from this report. This is a decision though that should always be made in conjunction with your end user, and based on the data being rendered in the report!

Making It Colorful

Using the layout menu return to the Master layout. Then click the colorful rainbow icon to the right, and you will see a variety of themes appear, from which you can colorize your report.

word image 128 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

Currently it is not possible to select individual colors for each element, only an overall theme. As this is written the US is in the middle of a wintery cold freeze, so for this example let’s select the Snow theme. Be sure though to look at your selection in all three layouts, Master, Tablet, and Phone, to ensure your data renders visibly with the theme you selected.

Save, Save, Save

Typically, you will want to save your work as you go, but for this article we’ll save our work now. Just click Save, then select the spot to save it to. During development you may wish to save to the file system, then at the end use Save As to save to the server. For our purposes, pick Save to server.

You’ll then be prompted for the report name, this is the name that will be shown on the SSRS report portal. By default, it uses the report title, but you may change it if you wish. It then asks for the server, and finally the location. It is likely you will want to change the location, so use the Browse button to do so. For this example, it will be saved to the root folder of the report portal, to make it easier to find.

word image 129 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

And here it is! On our report portal, you will now see the new State Sales Totals report.

word image 130 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

Mobile Report Publisher Everywhere

Below is our report, as displayed in Microsoft Edge, running on the SSRS server.

word image 131 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

But then you’d expect it to render well on Edge. But what about on another platform all together? Perhaps from a MacBook running on your network?

Well that may require one additional step, depending on where you are running SSRS. If you are running this in an enterprise, your network administrator has worked out the connectivity issues ahead of time, and you likely won’t need this section. But what if you are a developer or student, using the developer edition of SQL Server on your Windows 10 PC at home in order to learn?

Well for those folks, there is one additional step. You will have to open Port 80 on your Windows 10 (or 8 or 7) computer which is running SSRS in order for another computer on your home network to be able to access it. It’s not difficult, but there’s quite a few steps involved, so I’ve put complete instructions on my blog at https://arcanecode.com/2018/01/02/opening-port-80-in-windows-firewall-to-support-calling-ssrs-from-another-computer/ .

So, assuming you have your network configured correctly, either by yourself for your network administrator, how about that example of viewing the report from Safari, running on MacBook Pro? Well take a look:

word image 132 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

You’ll note I used the IP address of the computer running SSRS, adding the /reports to the end (i.e. http://192.168.0.113/reports for this example). That’s because this network doesn’t have any type of domain setup, so just using the IP address is the simplest method. (To see the IP address, just open a CMD window on your SSRS computer and type in IPCONFIG and press enter, it will show you the IP address.)

But let’s really push the edge, beyond just a PC. Here’s Safari running on an iPad Pro:

word image 133 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

As you can see, when viewed as a webpage Mobile Reports really show up nicely, and consistently, across a variety of browsers and platforms. But what about mobile?

First, you’ll need to get the Power BI app from the AppStore of your preferred device. When you launch it for the first time, you’ll be asked whether you wish to connect to a Power BI server, or a Report server. For this article we’ll pick Report server.

word image 134 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

Next, it prompts you for the name of the server to connect to. In the lab used to create this article there’s no domain controller, so the IP address of the computer running SSRS was used. Don’t forget the /reports on the end! For the Advanced options a friendly name for the server was given.

word image 135 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

Finally, you will be asked for your login credentials. Provide them and press sign in.

word image 136 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

If you have connected to a different Power BI or SSRS server previously, all you need to do is press the menu icon in the upper left, click on the gear in the pop out menu, then click connect to server, and it will walk you through the above steps.

Once in you will be shown the report portal. Simply scroll down to find the mobile report that you just created and tap on it. Here is our report as displayed on an iPad:

word image 137 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

Setting up on a phone follows the same steps as above, only the report will be formatted for the phone:

word image 138 Mobile Report Publisher – Dashboards Everywhere

Summary

Mobile Report Publisher is a great tool for creating dashboards. It nicely fits the niche between the line item reports native SSRS is great at producing, and the self-service dashboards Power BI is used for. With a pool of datasets ready to go, dashboards can be assembled quickly and easily, to fit a variety of needs.

This article just tapped the most basic of Mobile Report Publisher’s capabilities. Report elements can be linked together so one report element can act as a filter for another. Drill through is supported, so you can open another Mobile Report, a website, or a SSRS paginated report from a Mobile Report. As you saw, there are also many other report elements available to explore.

Even if you don’t plan on running reports on mobile devices such as tablets and phones, Mobile Report Publisher is still an excellent tool for creating dashboards for use across your enterprise.

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