Tag: Building Business Intelligence

Web Report Studio: Changing a Style to Your Colors

On a recent project, we needed to change the colors of the bars to match the customer’s website style.  I had heard this was a daunting task requiring lots of white magic and prayer. Turns out what is difficult is if you want to completely re-do a style but it’s fairly simple if you just want to make a few changes. Changing the Style Color  First my goal was to change the default colors on the bar chart.  In the following example I used some crazy colors to ensure I knew it was working.  Thus, red, green and yellow.  Also notice I named my style Tricia and it was added to the Report Style menu.  If you only want to change the bars for a single report, read this Chart Makeover post for a quick how-to. Update an Existing Style Note: Refer to the Customizing SAS Web Report Studio Report Styles in the SAS User Documentation for a more in-depth discussion.   SAS provides a sample cascading style sheet (CSS) file that you can use as a basis for your new style design.  CSS is a flat file that you can edit using Notepad or like application.  [More on CSS here]  The sample […]

Web Report Studio: Recognize these 2 Gotchas?

If you aren’t paying close attention to the messages in Web Report Studio, you may run into some puzzling issues.  The messages that SAS produces may not be obvious enough if you are expecting a different behavior, thus making troubleshooting a bit difficult. Gotcha 1: Why Won’t My Changes Save? This reminder comes from Shri Sastry.  She had asked a co-worker to make a simple change to a Web Report Studio and she  noticed the change still was not made days later.  Shri inquired and the co-worker told her she had made the change several times but the application would not save the changes. This sounded odd and frustrating! She observed the change being made and this is how the Gotcha was discovered! When using an application like MS Excel or MS Word, when you exit the application a sanity check window appears asking if you want to keep the changes.  However, the Web Report Studio sanity check explains you are discarding the changes.  So – read closely or fail victim to the GOTCHA! To save the changes to the report, use the File > Save menu choice or click the Save icon. Gotcha 2: Why Can’t I Create or Remove […]

Quick HTML Guide for SAS Programmers

The SAS BI web clients each have their own link (or URL).  When working across many customer sites or even just using my own demo sites –  there can be a lot of links to track (BI Dashboard, Portal, WRS, etc). Certainly I can add bookmarks to my browser –  but when moving to different systems I found it’s easier to just have a little .HTML file that I can edit as needed. Set Your BI Toolset Quick Ref Bookmark If you are not sure what I’m trying to describe –  the following page shows an example. It’s really just a simple web page that has the links to the SAS BI Web Clients listed.  In this example –  the customer had two different servers –   Development and Production. Using this quick reference, I can edit the HTML file to match the system I’m using, open the page in the browser, click on the link and it starts the client I want. To make this web page easier to access – I set it as a default so it appears when I start Internet Explorer.  You can set your default home page in the Tools > Internet Options window.  [Other browsers have […]

Business Intelligence: Good Things to Share!

I have been very busy in the past month writing guest post for some of the different blogs that I follow and find interesting.  I’ve also been reading some books that I wanted to share with you! Blogging! Blogging! and More Blogging! Here’s some of the guest posts that I have contributed around the web.  Password Encoding with SASPaul Homes writes the most incredible blog (Platform Administrator) for SAS system administrators.  I was honored when he asked me to contribute to his blog – considering I’m nowhere near the powerhouse of administration knowledge he is. However, I did have one tip about how to encode your password and use it in SAS programs or SAS Enterprise Guide profiles.   User Conferences = Busy SummerWaynette Tubbs seems to be the social media face for SAS.  Her blog about the SAS User Groups always has a few gems.   She asked to reprint one of my other blog posts about the conferences I’m planning to attend this summer. I did appreciate that folks who have already contacted me to let me know I would be seeing them in Milwaukee, London, and Long Beach.  Woot! Woot!  [Make sure you follow Waynette on Twitter – @waynettetubs]  […]

SAS Enterprise Guide: Import Odd Spreadsheet Data

Perhaps you took my advise a few weeks back and took advantage of the amazing (trumps blare!) SAS Enterprise Guide ability to import MS Excel spreadsheets.  However, if your spreadsheet is a little different – then you may run into some issue when you go to import it.  For instance, look at this import:  Oh it’s so horrible – the columns names are not there and it’s going to be a lot of work to clean it up. Urgh .. it’s giving me a bad day already.  Looks like the default approach to importing this spreadsheet didn’t work out as well. Curses – there must be a better way! Your Data Needs Some Special Lovin’ So let’s look at a spreadsheet similar to the one imported above.  You’ll notice that the actual data I want starts on row 3 not on row 1 as the default import would like.  So row 3 contains the column labels and row 4 contains the data. When you go with the default…  If I go with the defaults and select First row of range contains the field name – the Import wizard default assumes row 1 is where I want to start.  Basically when […]

Web Report Studio: Adding Drill-Down Filter Based on a Date

When I was creating the Summary and Detailed reports for the SAS Global Forum paper, I was demonstrating how to link from the weekly chart to the detailed report about the week.  On my first try with my Week Filter based on the date value – it just would not work.  Eeek!  To fix the problem I made a new data item that was a character value.  This posts talks about my strategy.  [You can read our paper “Get Your Fast Pass to Building Business Intelligence with SAS and Google Analytics”.  The presentation goes into more detail, but here’s some past articles about Google Analytics. ] What Should Happen When you click on the bar that represents the week – you actually drill-down to the Weekly Detailed report. You cannot use a date value as this filter – you must use a character based filter for this prompt.  If you need help setting up the filter or creating the link – just refer to the  ”Get Your Fast Pass to Building Business Intelligence with SAS and Google Analytics” paper. Creating the Proper Filter in the Information Map First you need to create a data item based on the date variable.  I used a CASE statement to test if the week was […]

SAS BI: Does Your Organization Have a BI Strategy?

One of the best things about attending the SAS Global Forum is all the brilliant people you get to meet.  Guy Garrett’s presentation about planning a BI strategy was quiet popular and I have to say he was very witty.  Turns out implementing a BI strategy is similar to dating – who knew?  Anyway – here’s a follow up from Guy – I encourage you to sign-up for the Achieve Intelligence monthly newsletter for more goodies. What is Your BI Strategy?  I recently had the pleasure of presenting a paper on “How to Create a Business Intelligence Strategy” at the SAS Global Forum in Orlando. I started off by asking for a show of hands if the organisation the audience worked at had a current existing BI strategy. Out of approx 150 people only 20% put up their hands. I then followed this up with a further question: “Keep your hands up if your BI strategy is documented and accessible so that all information consumers at the organisation know what the strategy is.” Three hands remained.  Check the Roadmap! Anyone who has kids knows the heart crunching moment when you’ve just started on a long journey and they say “Are we there yet?”. […]

SAS Stored Processes: 3 Tips to Improve Your Prompts

SAS stored processes are similar to SAS programs in that they use the same programming language.  Many of my SAS programs I created early on were only used by me, so I could live with  a little uncertainty and it was easy enough to check the logs for any issues.  If anything went wrong then I knew what I had to change. Stored processes required a whole new level of thinking – my first few stored processes back in the SAS 9.1.3 days were – well they left a lot to be desired.  When I would roll out a new stored process I would often get a call from a user who had done something crazy and the stored process wouldn’t work.  For instance, why would anyone put a state name in a customer name field to see if it would return all the customers from that state?  Only one thing could happen – no report!   Here’s some usability tricks that I have learned with my SAS Stored Processes to make them more robust and harder to break.  Really the out-of-the box prompts provide a lot of functionality that really helps. That’s right – let’s build a better mousetrap! Tip #1: […]