Dashboard Reporting: Never Look at Your Data the Same Again

We are proud to introduce one of its most powerful features to date: dashboard reporting. Dashboard reports are a powerful Business Intelligence (BI) platform, and SpreadsheetWEB’s dashboards allow you to create fully customized, interconnected charts, graphs and maps in a user-friendly and interactive environment.

This feature is a huge leap towards the future of data visualization. SSW’s dashboard reporting already boasts an exhaustive repertoire of features, including charts, filters, grids, maps, pivot tables, static text fields and multiple tabs/worksheets. These dashboards come in two flavors: cube-based and application-based.

Cube-based dashboards are linked solely to an imported data set. This means that you can now use SSW’s Control Panel to import all of your existing data records in a .CSV format. These can be set up as their own data set with no link to a SSW application. You then have the option of updating this data set in the future by importing new .CSV files and appending the data to the original cube. This means you can keep your data collection external but still use SSW’s advance dashboard technology to develop your BI platform!

Perhaps even more impressive is the application-based dashboard feature. You can now link your application and its corresponding data set to its own dashboard, meaning that your BI platform will constantly be updated with the newest information. All data collection that occurs in the application will become incorporated directly into the dashboard in real time, requiring no manual work on the part of the user. Everything is updated and streamlined so that you can always have your updated information in whatever format suits your needs.

Customization of SpreadsheetWEB Control Panel

Cascading Style Sheets (or CSS) is a “style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics (the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language.” Using CSS styles or themes allows the user of a CSS-supported web page to quickly and easily manipulate and customize all visual aspects of the website.

This formatting style is often used for blogs and community-driven websites, allowing users to change everything from the document presentation, the layout, the colors, and the fonts of the web page. This offers a custom theme presentation that appeals directly to the user’s needs and desires.

With the newest release of the SpreadsheetWEB Control Panel, CSS editing and formatting has now entered the frontier.

This means that users will be able to design a control panel that directly fits their unique desires. All companies have special requirements when it comes to the creation of their custom web pages, including their logo, as well as a form-fitted color scheme that matches their corporate image. By using CSS themes, the SpreadsheetWEB Control Panel can fulfill that requirement by allowing the users to decide exactly how they would like their control panel to look.

New Feature: Scripting Support in SpreadsheetWEB!

With the release of Pagos SpreadsheetWEB 3.0, a host of brand new features will enter the framework of SpreadsheetWEB. One of the most pertinent new installments is the addition of scripting support. Support for scripting enables end-users to implement Javascript code as well as html tags into their web-based applications, broadening the functionality of their finalized web pages. Using Javascript, end-users will be able to seamlessly integrate utilities hosted by other organizations with open APIs into their own web applications.

SpreadSheet Web Scripting support screen

Adding new script to an existing spreadsheet is as easy as writing Javascript code in an HTML editor. Developers will be able to reach HTML fields and even spreadsheet cells by adding Javascript/HTML codes from the script editing page. They will be able to validate their forms, override before and after calculation calls and even integrate 3rd party products such as Google Maps, PayPal, 3rd party charting and visualization products, etc… with their final web pages. Since scripting also supports adding HTML tags directly, users will be able to add new input fields, styles, embedded scripts, embedded objects (like Flash)  directly to their final pages.  Scripting gives unlimited flexibility to development-oriented users to integrate their custom web pages/parts with SpreadSheetWEB generated web pages.

For example, PayPal is an e-commerce business that allows users to make safe and secure payments and money transfers over the internet. Since PayPal offers an open API to users, it’s possible to incorporate PayPal’s payment system into a SpreadsheetWEB-created web application.

This is a rudimentary example of PayPal integration with a SpreadsheetWEB application. The cost calculator is on top, allowing the client to select the type of good that they want as well as the quality. The page automatically calculates the tax, shipping, and total costs and then allows the client to use PayPal directly to pay for their purchase.

With just the click of a button, the client is forwarded to PayPal’s website where they can safely transfer money to make their purchase.

With scripting support, the possibilities for integration become endless.

SpreadsheetWEB 3.0 Preview – Control Panel

Upcoming version 3.0 of SpreadsheetWEB includes exciting new features. First of all, we are completely updating the user interface of Control Panel. Screenshot below is a preview of the new interface.

Collect, Analyze, and Visualize Data with SpreadsheetWEB

SpreadsheetWEB Version 2.5 includes advanced data visualization and dashboard features that enhance existing data collection, analysis and reporting features. SpreadsheetWEB users can create advanced dashboards through a user-friendly browser based editor.

There four main components of dashboards supported in SpreadsheetWEB:

1. Filters
2. Data grid
3. Pivot tables
4. Charts

SpreadsheetWEB supports several filter types including listbox, combobox, radio button, checkbox, and sliders. Depending on the field type and characteristics, appropriate filter type can be selected by the user. 

Data Grid lists selected data fields in a tabular view. Data is refreshed in realtime based on the filter selections. Data grid is optimized for performance to display very large data sets. Data Grid also supports visual icons to represent data similar to conditional formatting in Microsoft Excel. SpreadsheetWEB includes a large icon library and a formula editor to map them with data.

SpreadsheetWEB dashboards can also be enhanced with crosstab tables also knows as pivot tables. Standard formulas like Sum, Count, Average are supported to aggregate data in pivot tables. User can drill down in the data using built-in expand/collapse features.

SpreadsheetWEB supports various chart types and associate them with data fields. Dashboard users can interact with data visually through these charts. Following chart types are supported in this version:

• bar
• line
• scatter
• area
• pie
• polar
• bubble

Charts also include common expressions like Sum, Count, Average for data aggregation. Other chart features include zoom and print.

In conclusion, dashboard support in SpreadsheetWEB Version 2.5 provides an evironment for organizations to collect, analyze and visualize data all in one platform.

Meet the Sparklines

The upcoming version (2.4) of SpreadsheetWEB introduces a new feature for our users: Sparkline Chart.

Sparkline charts are compact and data-dense figures, and serve, at its best, to show the trend movements and variations of a given data range. SpreadsheetWEB will initially support 8 types of different sparklines to characterize and support your data:

• Line
• Bar and Discrete Bar
• Area Chart
• Pie Chart
• Icon
• Bullet Graph
• Scale

To make it easier for user to create sparklines, sparklines are created as worksheet formulas. Once the formulas are built in the original spreadsheet correctly, the SpreadsheetWEB wizard will automatically detect and convert sparkline charts to web applications. It is quite easy to create the formulas, and you will be able to find the detailed instructions on SpreadsheetWEB Help Page soon. Now let’s see what sorts of things we can do with these charts, and how they look as web applications.

Now let’s see what sorts of things we can do with these charts, and how they look as web applications.

LINE

SparklineLine is designed to show the numerical variation in related data in a line form. The line will curve depending on the data, and give you the impression on the fluctuation of the data line.

You can optionally have the maximum and minimum points the first and the last points and the overall points on the line, defined with dots.

BAR AND DISCREET BAR

SparklineBar and SparklineDiscreet both give the opportunity to follow the up and downs of a given data with respect to pre-determined thresholds. While SparklineBar forms a vertical figure  (Threshold= 5), the SparklineDiscreet charts go horizontal (Threshold= 0).

AREA

SparklineArea is a two-dimensional line chart. Any points on the line can be emphasized with dots, and a black border can be applied to the entire area in order to obtain a sharper look. Optionally, the area can be colored. Sure the charts look better when they are red or orange .

Below is the SparklineArea, SparklineLine and SparklineDiscrete charts combined in a web application:

Figure 1. SparklineArea, SparklineLine and SparklineDiscreet

PIE

Pie chart is a very effective and common way of displaying information. Now you can export them to web applications, and enjoy their colorful looks.

Figure 2. SparklinePie

ICON

Adding an icon next to a line of text can enhance the power of your statement. For example, if there are increasing, decreasing or stable values pointed out in your web application; additional arrows showing up, down and right would bring the whole application to perfection.

Below is the set of icons initiallly supported by SpreadsheetWEB. You will note that these icons are also consistent with the icon sets in Excel. In the next version, new icon libraries beyond supported by Excel will be included:

Figure 3. SparklineIcon Sets

BULLET GRAPH

Bullet Graphs can be either horizontal or vertical .

You can decide the bullet color, as well as the actual and target values displayed in the graph. The size of the bullet will be determined by the density of the data range.

Figure 4. SparklineBullet

SCALE

SparklineScale enables the creation of upside-down or reverse position charts in the web application.

The scale widht again changes upon the density of the data range. The volume of data will affect the way the scale will look in the end, along with the starting and finishing numbers, and the number of intervals pre-defined.

Once you define the settings for your application using Excel, SpreadsheetWEB will convert the sparklines without a hitch.

Creating a Sales Dashboard with Interactive Mapping using SpreadsheetWEB

This dashboard is designed specially for sales/business executives to visualize the annual revenue performance of facilities, products and sales representatives in their business. It incorporates the sales analyses of up to 20 sales representatives, products and the industries that the company currently holds. While calculations are made accordingly in Excel using various worksheet formulas, the query results are visualized by charts or interacive maps in the dashboard. In this dashboard total revenue for each region is displayed on the map which is interactive and acts as a control to filter results by the region. The map is supported with additional graphs that display the revenue by sales representative, industry and product in particular. This dashboard is especially useful for companies with large product portfolios, large customer-dealer marketing networks, and that conduct worldwide sales operations. SpreadsheetWEB supports over 500 maps covering every region and country which makes it ideal to generate interactive dashboard that contains regional data, i.e. by country, state, province, county, etc.

Figure 1. Sales Dashboard with Interactive Mapping (Excel Version)

Data can be transmitted to the dashboard from a database or can be entered manually into the spreadsheet. The user is empowered to treat the content in the most suitable way for their specific choices.  SpreadsheetWEB  requires no extra programming or programming knowledge. Basic knowledge of Excel is sufficient. The whole process is optimized to effectively reduce the usage of extra spreadsheets,  and  transfer the complete treatment to the web. SpreadsheetWEB also offers a user management module to set access control and exclusive security features.

Figure 2. Sales Dashboard with Interactive Mapping (Web Application)

Automating Project Management with SpreadsheetWEB

Project Management is a critical business process for any organization. In this respect, professionals seek for the best way to optimize the implementation of their projects. There are many commercial and open source software packages that allow organizations to manage project management and collaborate among team members. However, the type of project and requirements varies so much accross industries, countries and size of organizations that makes it practically impossible to apply a single project management software.

SpreadsheetWEB offers an alternative to managing projects, collaborating across team members, and building custom workflow with ultimate flexibility. It distinctively enables you to view and manage completed projects, ongoing projects, approved projects waiting to start; projects waiting for approval and canceled projects of your company, from all departments, on your Web browser.

Let’s assume that you are about to start a human resources project called ‘Employee Engagement Survey’.  After uploading the data file to SpreadsheetWEB, you will open it on your Web browser and start entering the relevant information. Below, it shows the name of the project/department and name of the project manager. You type in the estimated start and end days of the project, as well as the budget for it.  The dashboard offers five basic phases, namely ‘Requirements and Specifications’, ‘System Analysis and Planning’, ‘Development’, ‘Testing’ and ‘Deployment’.  You enter the data such as estimated start/end dates and the duration to each section. Note that with SpreadsheetWEB, each field can be customized. You can build a project template with as many fields as your projects require. It is also flexible to change the look-and-feel of the template to reflect your corporate identity and style.

Figure 1. Data Collection

Figure 2. Project Details

An important aspect of project management is collaboration with team members. Typically, number of people need to review, add/edit data, change project status, etc. SpreadsheetWEB supports such collaboration requirements. Suppose that you are collaborating with someone called Jennifer Myers on this project. Since you are the admin of the program, you have all rights to authorize new users to contribute your files with limited restrictions or free access. Supposedly, Jennifer is a co-worker and already user of SpreadsheetWEB. She has to work over your files too. So you transfer the project data to her along with your notes.

Figure 3. Data transfer to Jennifer

Then Jennifer signs in to her account and receives the pending file. She opens it and enters some new data. She will then transfer the account back to you with her notes and status change. This way, you will be carrying on with your project,  recording the essential data and collaborating with other team members in real time. You can manage as many projects as you wish and add as many contributors to your projects as desired!

Figure 4. Received data from Jennifer

As the number of projects increase, it could get more dificult to oversee especially for senior managers and department heads. It is not uncommon for a medium size company to have hudreds of projects at any given time. Project management dashboards are extremely useful in those situations. Dashboards present a summary of all projects along with numerous key indicators including number of projects in different statuses i.e. completed, ongoing, approved and canceled, project budgets, estimated and actual. Project dashboards can also be built with various realtime calculations i.e. deviations from estimated budget, uptodate expenses, etc.

Figure 5. Project Management Dashboard

SpreadsheetWEB offers a flexible and highly customizable platform to automate project management process. It can handle every aspect of project management including template creation, data collection, workflow, collaboration among team members, management reporting and dashboards.

SpreadsheetWEB Releases a New Dashboard: Hotel Dashboard 2

SpreadsheetWEB introduces the new generation of business intelligent dashboards for hotel operators and management companies all over the world. SpreadsheetWEB Hotel Dashboard is exclusively designed to collect the essential data of hotel engagements, analyze them in depth and visualize them interactively for the correct observations. It is user-friendly to cope with complex information and visually enriched with flexible graphics.

The user will find three sheets within the template after opening it in Microsoft Excel. One of them is particularly prepared to enter the raw data into the system. This raw data consists of some items essential for hotel management such as  “the number of rooms sold”, “rooms available”, “revenue per available room” (RevPAR), “average daily rate per occupied room” (ADR), “occupancy rate” and the revenues of food & beverage, telephone and other likely services.

Figure 1. Raw Data

In the second sheet, labeled “Calculations”, given data is calculated and it appears in appropriate cells like seen below.

Figure 2. Calculations

When the user enters the data manually, let’s say, in a traditional file environment, calculation works exactly like seen in screenshots. However, once the raw data sheet is converted to a web application via SpreadsheetWEB, the user continues to work only with relevant cells and see the results instantly after hitting the “Calculate” button. See the screenshot below.

Figure 3. Hotel Data Form in the web broswer

In this sense, the user will just be adding a few data entries on daily basis and viewing the result in the web browser, a plain white page without the redundancies.

Just type:

• The number of rooms sold/available, taxable/nontaxable
• The revenue per room
• The revenues of food & beverage, telephone and other services

And quickly see the results for ADR, RevPAR and the occupancy rate.

On the other hand, there is the dashboard sheet which still remains unveiled. Now let’s turn back to our Excel file and examine how the sections on dashboard layout change, depending on the data processed in side sheets or via SpreadsheetWEB.

The dashboard will normally display the following graphs:

• On the upper left, monthly revenues of rooms, food & beverage, telephone and other services are indicated in numbers. Same rates are demonstrated in an additional chart, a cake chart in the middle.
• Average ratios like ADR and RevPAR and the occupancy rate for each day in the week are projected in two extra boxes.
• On the right side, a chart reflects the changes in food & beverage, telephone and other revenues from day to day in line graphs, and the three charts below that do the same for ADR, RevPAR and the occupancy rate.

Figure 4. Hotel Dashboard in Excel

Obviously, this hotel dashboard gives the best result when used via SpreadsheetWEB.

Because with SpreadsheetWEB,

• The user may customize the dashboard creating preferred web forms and applications, manage them by inputting new data to the system and monitor the outcome in the web brower.
• Instead of adding the data into the Excel file manually, the user is prompted to set up an online customized database and have the data feed the content in real time and automatically.
• It is easy-to-use and feature-rich in both implementation and presentation. The user may put extra images like the company logo on dashboard page.

Figure 5. Hotel Dashboard as web application

• The user has file-sharing capability with others in a secure environment. That is to say, the user may authorize the others to work on the same file, modify the content, and send it back and forth between one another. It is flexible to license.
• It is fast and cost-effective to work the things out.
• Only basic Excel knowledge is required to use it.

What’s New in SpreadsheetWEB 2.3

We have recently released the Version 2.3 of SpreadsheetWEB and it is more functional than ever. Now let’s see in what ways SpreadsheetWEB helps users to create high-performance web applications or web forms out of your Excel spreadsheets.

The features of SpreadsheetWEB 2.3 are listed in the following sections:

• Mapping Support
• Web Services Support
• Comment Support
• Validation Support

Mapping Support

You can create classy looking web based mapping applications with SpreadsheetWEB easily. The Wizard prompts you to begin the process by selecting the region you want to capture after clicking on the “Maps” option under the SpreadsheetWEB add-on menu.

The regions include the World and  continents. You will choose a  map  from  the “Select Map” list and continue with  identifying certain IDs within the  spreadsheet that will correspond to  location on the map under the option  labeled “Data Label Range”. The second  option, “Data Range”, will let you select  the  range of data that corresponds to the  labels.  On the third page you will be able  to customize the map in terms of colour,  labels, shadows, and tooltips. After  pressing “Finish” and converting the  spreadsheet into a web application, it will look something like this.

Web Services Support

SpreadsheetWEB supports Web Services in two levels. It could either enable a specific worksheet formula to connect to an external Web Service or render an Excel file to be a Web Service itself and permit external applications to connect to it and retrieve information afterwards.

To do so, the Wizard will come to your help and ask you to insert a WSDL for the Web Service as well as a username and password if it is necessary.

Finally a formula will be created in the active cell that will look like the following: =SpreadsheetWEBWSGET(wsdlAddress, operationName, username, password, outputRange, inputRange1, inputRange2…)

and the data will be filled in and the Web Service can be modified by altering the formula.

Comment Support

You can convert the comment boxes within the Excel files into their web applications too.

The figure above shows a typical comment box in Excel and the figure below shows how it looks on a web application.

Validation Support

Version 2.3 of SpreadsheetWEB introduced support for the validation function found in Excel. This function forces you to input a value that fits to certain rules that are supported within Excel including changing allowable values to solely whole numbers, decimals, dates, times, or within certain text lengths. Criteria within those ranges are also supported with functions such as “between, not between, equal to, not equal to, greater than, less than, greater than or equal to, less than or equal to, and minimum/maximum fields.”

Error Alert messages can also be created within Excel and converted using SpreadsheetWEB.

Simply check “Validation” under the Advanced Input Control Properties and make it function properly.

Try it now?

To start using  SpreadsheetWEB, just go to our website, download the free trial version and publish your first web applications in minutes!