Last week I attended the Wisconsin-Illinois User Conference in Milwaukee, WI. It was great! If you are new to SAS user conferences are a great way to get more training and if you are a seasoned SAS…
[Read the full article at the Http://www.bi-notes….
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 […]
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] […]
While at the SAS Global Forum, someone said to me – “You cannot write code in SAS Enterprise Guide.” It was a little shocking to me that the person thought SAS Enterprise Guide was all wizards, flow diagrams, and magic. After talking to a few other folks I have found that it is a common myth. News Flash! You can just code in SAS Enterprise Guide! Today I’ll show you how I pull data from Outlook into SAS Enterprise Guide to create a tweet. And I’m just going to code. Mythbuster! You can Code in SAS Enterprise Guide If you tweet a lot then you might be familiar with the #FF hashtag. It means people the Tweet-er suggests that you follow. Lately I have been getting more Twitter followers and some I think are really worth checking out. However, trying to cut and paste all the names into a tweet is a buzz kill. Here’s how I automated my process with SAS Enterprise Guide. By the way – if you think I could add some efficiency to my code – speak up in the comments (with examples please!) Step 1: Setup a MS Outlook Rule Here’s the initial process: […]
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?”. […]
Maybe you are like me and your SAS programs frequently bounce from PROC SQL to data steps depending on the task at hand. Some things you cannot do in PROC SQL as easily as the data step and vice versa. Here’s 3 data set tricks that I have successfully used with PROC SQL. These are some time savers that you can use in your work. However, if you know some others add them in the Comments section – I double-dare you. Trick #1: Drop and Keep Options You can use the DROP and KEEP options on the FROM or CREATE statements. This is handy when you want to exclude or include a list of variables. Consider this example where I saved myself some typing because I know the only variable I don’t want is country. Otherwise I would have had to type out all of the other variables just to exclude a single one. proc sql; create table Newtable as select * from sashelp.prdsal2(drop=country);quit; Trick #2: Limit the Observations OBS allows you to control the number of observations input to the procedure. I would use this if I had a particularly large data table and I just needed to test […]
Today I’m blogging at the All Analytics site about how you encourage users to adopt your dashboard (or really any reporting tools). Join the Dashboard E-Chat Tomorrow When I was at the IFSUG conference, I attended a presentation by Stephen Harris, a senior VP at Bank of America. He discussed very thoroughly the issues he had getting users to accept the BI Dashboard as a reporting tool and the methodology he later developed to overcome the issues. There’s an E-Chat with him tomorrow at 3 PM EST where he will be discussing some of the issues and providing advise. It’s a great chance for you to “speak” directly with an industry expert. If you cannot attend the e-chat – just leave a question here (quick site registration required) and then you can check back afterwards for his answer. Facebook and Privacy Plus … check out my All Analytics vblog about the data Facebook shares with other sites when you use the quick log-in features. Please join the conversation – I would love to know what you think. Now I have to go get ready for my red carpet interviews … <ha ha>! Related content: SAS® Global Forum: Is Google […]
Check out the results of my SAS Enterprise Guide code – 41 days til SAS Global Forum 2012 in Orlando, Florida! I’m excited – I can’t wait to meet some of my Web friends face-to-face finally! Oh and also catch up with some of my old buddies! Why Should I Attend SAS Global Forum? Here’s the reasons I like to attend: Like Minded PeopleWorking in smaller organizations, I was sometimes was one of a handful of data geeks running loose in the halls. It’s great to meet 3,000+ others who actually know what “code or let SAS EG do it?” means. The SAS users are one of the things that make this a great product to use. There are several meetups planned (think it use to be called Birds of a Feather) – I want to check out the joint SAS-L, SASCommunity, and SAS Discussion meetup. Plus after you arrive there are others – for instance, new SAS users, SAS BI users, etc. Oh and the .. Kick Back Party … you know you want to show off all your groovy dance moves! Don’t worry I’ll have my camera! Exchange of IdeasEach time I attend – I come away with […]