I’ve had this error pop up while trying to open Excel files (Excel 2007) after installing Live Office on several machines where it says “There was a problem sending the command to the program“. A couple other people ran into the same issue, so I’d like to post a quick solution.

1. Open the Excel program
2. Go to Excel Options
3. Go to Advanced
4. Go to General
5. Make sure “Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)” is unchecked.

That’s all!

Thus hopefully writing this article will get the practice of using filtered rows ingrained in the
Xcelsius Developers minds.

I’ve created a video below that shows 2 scenarios below using VLOOKUP and filtered rows. I’ve shown how much easier it is to use filtered rows and how much easier it is in the future to maintain.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnk3J2QXbVI

I’ve also attached the source files from the 2 examples so you may do your own comparisons.

You may download the source files here

I’ve attached a video and the example xlf source file which shows how to use the push button as a default/reset button.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2ECKzjfb5g

If you have any additional examples that you would like to share, please post them on the comments section below.

Please download the source file here

I’ve attached a video which shows a couple examples on using dynamic color binding.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCEnMUwdrUw

If you have any additional examples that you would like to share, please post them on the comments section.

I totally recommend that Xcelsius developers use the Canvas container method to group objects instead of the old grouping method.

I am curious of the canvas container performance and if it is buggy as I have not experienced any problems yet, so please feel free to comment with your experiences.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBxNOM7PrUM

• Learn how to enhance your data models with advanced Excel functions
• Learn powerful dashboard design and charting techniques
• Learn tricks that will help to optimize the performance of your Xcelsius dashboards
• Gain a solid understanding of XML and XML connectivity in Xcelsius
• Create server-based logins for your Xcelsius dashboards
• Learn how to pass parameters from one Xcelsius dashboard to another
• Learn how create detailed drill-throughs in Xcelsius using encoded URLs
• Learn how to use your Xcelsius dashboards to write back to your server

Much more…

Microcharts for Xcelsius provides us with the advanced table features that Xcelsius lacks. Well there are Xcelsius workarounds that can produce similar results but at the cost of performance, maintainance and formatting problems.

Microcharts is still fairly new so there a few bugs that you will encounter, but if you contact the author, he responds very quickly and is very helpful. In addition, I found that when it first loads with Xcelsius, it takes a very long time. Navigating through the data table properties was a little confusing but once you get used to it, it’s okay. Finally the objects in Microcharts lack the wow effect that the built in Xcelsius objects have.

In this article we will go through an example of the Microcharts data table with items that can be reproducible in Xcelsius and the consequences of using workarounds to produce the same end product. Feel free to play around with the table below by sorting and moving the columns around.

To accomplish this, We would first select the “MicroChart Table” object from “Inovista Grids”

Next we would add the 5 columns. In the properties window, Click on the “General” icon on the top left and the “Chart Columns” tab. Insert each column by pressing the insert button on the Data window. Once that has been completed, we want to change each chart type to the appropriate type and set the header text accordingly. For text and numbers choose the “TextNumberIndicatorChart” type. For sparklines choose the “MicroLineChart” type. Finally for the alert circle, choose the “ShapeIndicatorChart” type.

Now we want to set the data values for each column. To accomplish this, just scroll down to the Data Source column and enter your values in either the Chart Data or Text Value sections. Because each column is independant to each other, we can put the data where ever we want on the spreadsheet.

The next screenshot shows how we can further organize our data by putting the sparkline data in a seperate worksheet.

If you notice, we are able to manage multiple columns and charts in just one component in a very efficient manner. Now let’s talk about how we can replicate this using Xcelsius workarounds.

To emulate the table structure we will first need a table object and have the values formatted accordingly on the Excel spreadsheet. You will need to leave blank spaces on the columns that contain the sparklines and alert circles. You’ll notice that it will take a decent amount of time to play around and get the formatting correct.

Once that is finished, you’ll need to create and and setup all the sparkline charts. If you’re table contains 10 rows, you’ll need to create and setup 10 sparkline charts. Just think about how long it will take to fill out the data source values, size the charts and fit them carefully onto the data table.

Finally you’ll need to insert the alert circles and to do this you can simply use the label based menu trick found on Ryan Goodman’s blog. However with this method, the sizing of the label based menu object and table on the design screen is different than what you see when the swf has been exported. Thus when creating scorecards, sometimes you’ll need to spend alot of time playing with the object sizing in order to get things looking correct.

In conclusion, my thoughts on Microcharts is that it provides a powerful addon to Xcelsius on representing data in a manner where users can read what is going on very easily. Although it provides some stress on the development environment, is a little bit buggy, and performance hasn’t really been compared at an enterprise scale level, the benefits that it offers in my opinion outweighs the negatives. The amount of time developers can save from maintaince problems and development time is huge. The author of the product, is extremely responsive to any bug reports and will usually answer or even “FIX” any problems within the same day of contacting the author which is great. As the microcharts plug-in matures, hopefully the bugs will be ironed out and the look and feel will be improved.

In my next article about Microcharts, I will speak about some of the components that users may find very powerful which cannot be emulated using Xcelsius.

You can download the xlf and swf source file here

Please view my video on how to simply accomplish this using a grid component in Xcelsius

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oxXZrvxOb4

Please visit my post on “MyXcelsius” for a more advanced example of conditional formatting in Xcelsius involving dynamic sliders and charts.

You can download the source file for the example here

You can download the pdf instructions on all the opendoc parameters here opendoc detailed instructions

I’ve also provided instructions on drilling down to a Web Intelligence document from Xcelsius here

And an Xcelsius open doc worksheet template that you can use here

One of the very powerful new additions to Xcelsius 2008 is the ability to create scorecards easily. If we wanted to create scorecards in Xcelsius 4.5 we would need to manually insert trending icons into each row in order to create a scorecard.

In Xcelsius 2008 however we can use a label based menu with alerts. The alerts will act as the trending icons and from there we only need one object to show our indicators.

Here are some simple instructions to create a scorecard.

1. Create an Excel file with measures that you want to evaluate. In this example I’ve created a revenue table that contains Net Income for years 2001 -> 2007. In our scorecard we will have indicators that show red for negative income, yellow for income 0 -> $1000, and green for income $1000+

2. Import the Excel file you created in Xcelsius 2008 and insert a spreadsheet table object containing the data from the Excel file

3. Now insert a label menu object and align it vertically. Make sure that it lines up nicely with your table and that the object is layered underneath the table. Now on the label menu properties, go to the alerts section and check Enable Alerts. The alert values will be the values on the Net Income. After that you can setup your alert thresholds accordingly.

We now have a simple scorecard setup, however here’s a common problem that developers will run into when they mix tables with label menus. The text on different objects will be rendered differently depending on the size of the swf you end up placing onto your page. This is a bug that the Xcelsius Developers are working on fixing hopefully for the next release.

I have shown 2 examples of the same swf but of different sizes.

The first swf you can see has incorrect alignment, whereas the second swf has the correct alignment.

There are 2 solutions on how to solve this problem.

1. Manually play with the swf size so that the displayed swf has everything aligned correctly.

2. Global Embedded Fonts
To set global embedded fonts, go to File -> Document Properties and check Use Global Font, then select Use Embedded Fonts.

Using global embedded fonts has the following advantages from my experience.

-Smoother fonts on display
-Objects always render with consistent alignment no matter what size you set it to.

The only thing you will have to note is that while developing, you will have incorrect alignment when building your scorecards, but after exporting things will look fine.

I recommend using global fonts because of the smooth font look and the consistent rendering of text after exporting to a swf. You can download the scorecard example I used here