UNIT V: REPORTING:

Reporting Options: Differentiate between alerts and

trends and the appropriate uses for each - Distinguish
the appropriateness of Self-Serve reports and their
application in common scenarios - Differentiate
between best uses for BI techniques in order to ensure
effective reporting - What Makes a Good Report:
Compare layout options and identify appropriate
presentation choices for maximum effectiveness -
Differentiate between good and bad report
implementations and the potential impact of poor
implementation - Constructing Reports: Distinguish
between when to use reporting tools versus analysis
tools - Use core tools to build report and dashboard
layouts to achieve maximum effectiveness
What is data reporting?
• This is the process of gathering data from
various sources, analyzing it, and presenting the
findings in a concise form.
• Typically, the purpose of such reports is to allow
decision-makers to assess the situation and
come up with specific data-backed action
points.
• Reports can take various forms – from simple
tables and graphs to automatically updated
dashboards that show key metrics in real time.
Data visualization is an important part of data
reporting.
Information, presented in a visual format, is more
compelling and easier to work with.
Another major trend is automated data collection.
As the number of data sources keeps growing,
updating reports manually is often
counterproductive and too time-consuming if you
need to do this regularly.
Automation allows you to streamline this process
and make data management and data reporting
seamless and effortless.
Why is data reporting important?
When performed effectively, data reporting brings
many tangible benefits, (importance) such as:
i) Enabling data-driven decision-making.
ii) Monitoring performance.
iii) Building forecasts.
iv) Enhancing efficiency.
v) Improving collaboration
i) Enabling data-driven decision-
making.
• When all the latest data from across
the organization is instantly available
in one place, this creates ultimate
transparency.
• Through data analysis, stakeholders
can explore the situation from
various angles and take action
exactly where it’s needed.
ii) Monitoring performance.
• Be it tracking (tracking means the
direction in which someone's job )
business performance, analyzing cash flow,
or looking into employees’ performance
on certain projects – efficient data
reporting is crucial.
• Monitoring performance is important for
accessing current progress and adjusting
strategy accordingly.
iii) Building forecasts.
Data reporting allows us to analyze
historical data, blend it with information
on expected changes, and build
projections for the future.
This is a great way to assess the
feasibility of new initiatives or prepare
in advance for an increase in customer
demand or an upcoming business
challenge.
iv) Enhancing efficiency.
Quality reports allow professionals to
identify the best-performing strategies,
as well as define areas of improvement.
This helps optimize processes, use funds
efficiently, and allocate resources
proportionately to what a task requires.
v) Improving collaboration.
Presenting and discussing reports allows
everyone to be on the same page.
If you share the information on crucial
KPIs and actionable insights across the
organization, it helps to better align
different departments and coordinate
their efforts
Reporting options-Differentiation between alerts
and trends and appropriate uses for each:
(A) ALERTS:
• Monitoring data with alerts
• Detect outliers and anomalies in your data
quickly with alerts, without the need to open
the app. You define conditions based on
measures or dimensions of the data that
you want to monitor. When the conditions
are met, a notification with a preview of the
data is sent to you.
When to use it
The two main things to consider when setting up an
alert are:
Which data do I want to monitor?
a) We can monitor any measure, including measures
used in a visualization and master measures. If we
want to reuse measures, we can create master
measures before setting up the alert.
b) We can also split up the data with a dimension to
see more detailed data
c) We can filter the data using selections. You can
either use current selections, or selections from a
bookmark
When do we want the alert to be triggered?
• We can set up multiple conditions that need to be
fulfilled to trigger the alert. Each condition
compares one of the measures or dimensions in the
alert with a value, another measure, the last
evaluation, or the current set.
• For information on conditions, see Conditions.
• We can evaluate the alert every time the app data is
refreshed or set a fixed time schedule. You can also
set a snooze to stop notifications for a limited time.
• We can share the alert with other users that have
access to the app. They will get the same
notification, but they cannot edit the alert.
Other ways to share data insights
• If we want to receive regular chart or sheet
updates based solely on a schedule, we can
create a subscription.
• If you want to generate customizable reports
based on an entire app and send them to
recipients outside of your Qlik
Sense environment, see
Automated reporting using the Qlik
Reporting Service.
Prerequisites
( in generally prerequisites mean something that
must exist or happen before,something else can
exist or happen)
• There are some prerequisites for creating an
alert:
• Data alerts must be enabled on the tenant. A
tenant admin can enable data alerts in
the Settings page in the Management Console.
For more information, see Managing alerts.
• We need to have view permissions for the app
in which we want to create an alert
3) If we want to share an alert that we created
with other recipients:
– The sheet must be public if you want the recipients
to be able to go to the sheet from the notification.
– All recipients must have view permissions for the
app. Alerts can be shared with recipients who do not
have view permissions, but in this case the
evaluation of the alert will fail.
– If the app data is reduced with section access the
recipients must have access to data used in
selections in the alert. Alerts can be shared with
recipients who are not defined in the section access,
but in this case the evaluation of the alert will fail.
Creating an alert:
We can create an alert based on a
visualization that want to monitor, or any
master measure or dimension in app.
The following steps are required.
1. Right-click on a visualization and select
Alerts and then create new alert.
2. Enter a title and description for the alert.
The title is copied from the title of the chart but
you can change it.
3) The measures in the chart are
automatically added to Add data
to the alert. You can drag the
measures to reorder them.
We can also expand the measure
to edit the name and expression,
or delete the measure from the
alert
We can see the result in Preview data.
4. Click Add additional measure to add one
or more additional measures to display in the
notification. We can use master measures,
and measures based on an expression.
5. Tip note
6. Later when we define the conditions for
the alert, we can only use measures that are
defined in the alert, so we should add them
now.
7. We can get more specific results by
splitting up the measure values by a
dimension.
The first dimension in the chart is selected by
default, but we can select another dimension
in Show by dimension.
8. If we want to show more detailed data,
expand Selections.
We can show the result using the current
selections in the app, with no selections or
with selections from a bookmark. We can also
click Edit to make a custom selection.
The selections are stored in the alert. This
means that they are not affected if you delete
the bookmark.
9. When the result displayed in Preview data
meets your expectations, click Next.

10. Add the conditions that you want to use

to trigger the alerts. You can compare a
measure with a value, another measure, the
last evaluation, or the current set. We can also
define an offset when comparing the values.
We can combine multiple conditions with AND
and OR.
Editing an alert
We can edit alerts that our own. There are two
ways we can edit an alert.
1) We can edit an alert in the Alerts page.
To open the Alerts page, click Alerts from the
left-hand panel in the hub or click Alerts from
the user profile menu..
2) We can also click an alert to open it, and
then click Edit alert in app.
Conditions
We can set up multiple conditions that need to
be fulfilled to trigger the alert. Each condition
compares one of the measures or dimensions
in the alert with:
1) Another value that can be fixed, or
calculated by an expression.
2) Another measure.
3) An aggregation of the current data set.
4) We can combine multiple conditions with
AND and OR. You can also create multi-step
conditions by grouping conditions and
applying them in order.
5) We can also compare using an offset, a
value that you want to offset the returned
value by.
Customizing alert notifications

•By default, we will receive notifications when:

a)An alert our own or subscribe to is triggered.

b)We are added to an alert.
c)An alert our own or subscribe to stops or
fails.
We can receive notifications in several ways:

a)Web:
b)Push: On your mobile if you have the Qlik
Sense Mobile SaaS app installed.
c)Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS Government
note.
d) Email:
e) Daily email digest:
Data Alerts:
• It sends the alert when your data in dashboard
changes the limit beyond you set.
• Alters can be set only for KPIs, Gauge, Card
Visuals in Dashboard pinned tiles.
• Alters only work with Numeric data types.
• We can manage these alerts by using Manage
Alerts option.
• Set up data alerts for the Power BI dashboard
Set up data alerts for the Power BI dashboard
Step 1: Create an alert
• In the Power BI service, open the dashboard you
created in the last task.
• On the card with the single number, click or tap
the ellipsis (. . .).
3.Click or tap .
4. In the right pane, click or tap Add alert rule.
5. Look at the options that are available for alerts,
such as how frequently an alert should run. Enter
a value of 25 for Threshold, then click or tap Save
and close.
• The alert won't fire right now even though 56 is
above the threshold of 25. It will fire when data
is updated, which we'll see when we
run through the scenario end-to-end.
• When the alerts fires, Power BI sends email to
the creator of the alert, and we'll see how to
send additional mail using Power Automate, in
the next step.
TRENDS:
• Analysis of trend lines:
• A trend line is a straight line connecting a
number of points on a graph. It is used to
analyze the specific direction of a group of
values set in a presentation. There are two kinds
of trend lines viz.,
1) an uptrend with values going higher, and
2) a downtrend where the direction of the line
gradually drops to the lower values.
Predicting the future:
• Trend lines allow business to see the difference
in various points over a period of time.
• This helps foretell the possible path the values
will take in the future.
• This will help reveal performance, value, and
competitiveness of specific products and
services.
Add a trend line in Excel Chart (2013 onwards)
 For this we need Office 2013, then we create a trend line to
complement of our reports by right clicking the data series.
 Another option is to click our Chart tools, and in the Design
Tab, click Add Chart Element where another drop down list
will appear.
 At the bottom part of this we will see Trend line, click this for a
list of options that will best fit of our data. Those are as
follows.
a) Exponential trend lines:
b) Linear trend lines.
c) Logarithmic trend lines.
d) Polynomial trend lines.
e) Power trend lines
f) Moving Average trend lines
•
Comparison between the appropriateness of
Self-Serve Reports and their application in
common scenario:
Introduction:
With more companies requiring their employees
to participate in creating reports and generating
insights as well as the need for the insights to be
produced in a more time-efficient manner.
There are two different approaches to generating
reports and visualizations.
• 1) Traditional Reporting and
• 2) Self Service Reporting
1) Traditional Reporting:
• Traditional Reporting involves a centralized data
management system, where IT professionals
collect, clean, and analyze data, and create
reports that are distributed to end-users.
• End-users typically have limited control over the
content and format of these reports, and they
may need to rely on IT professionals to make
changes or updates.
• Traditional reporting is often considered more
reliable and consistent since it follows strict data
governance and standardization practices.
2) Self-Service Reporting
• Self-service reporting software is a type of
business intelligence tool that enables non-
technical users to generate reports and
visualizations without the need for IT support or
specialized technical skills.
• Self-Service Reporting empowers end-users to
create their own reports and visualizations using
self-service reporting software.
• End-users can access data from various sources,
create their own reports, and customize them
according to their specific needs.
Benefits of Self Service Reporting tool
• It improves flexibility and agility within the business
departments by providing user independence.
• IT departments are not overloaded in data requests
or drowned in information. Their primary and
straightforward tasks are removed or reduced,
which reduces their overall workload.
• IT department can focus more on value-added tasks
and help the organization with a higher degree of
expertise from their department.
• Tackle business problems at the right time with self-
service BI’s flexibility. The flexibility it offers to the
users with the information is precious.
Self-Service Reporting Tools:
1. Holistics
• Holistics is an analytics-focused self-service BI
tool that enables non-technical users to explore
data and generate actionable insights without
having to use SQL.
The Pros
• Budget-friendly - built for Growth: One of the
Holistics’s pros that truly stands out is its pricing
structure.
• Code-based data modeling layer:
Data teams are able to centralize business logic in
the Holistics modeling layer.
• User-friendly drag-n-drop report builder:
Business users can perform self-service analysis
and data exploration without knowing SQL or
relying on data teams..
Git version control available:
Data teams can write analytics as code, commit it
to Git and track every change, and consistency
and maintain codebase quality easier.
• The Cons
• Limited Data Source Integration:
Holistics supports integration with major SQL based
data sources, however, compared to other major
players in the market such as Tableau or Power BI
which supports 50+ data sources, the number of
supported data sources supported by Holistics falls
short.
No Predictive Analytics Feature:
At the moment, Holistics does not support
predictive modeling. For instance, you can’t deploy
machine learning models to forecast propensity to
buy based on your data in Holistics
2. Metabase
• Metabase is an open-source business intelligence
tool that helps users answer their data questions
using different visualizations.
• The Pros
• Open-Source:
Metabase has an open-source version that is free
and hosted on your own company’s server.
Question Feature:
Metabase has this question feature that lets you
answer your simple and daily data questions. In
“Simple question” mode, we can filter, summarize
and visualize data.
The Cons
• Heavily Dependent on MySQL for Complex
Analysis:
If your query is too complex for the question
feature, you need to write your own MySQL script
to get your desired results..
• Lack of Automated Data Mapping:
• Unlike its competitors that automatically do the
data mapping between database tables and
business logic once the datasource is integrated.
3. Looker
• Looker is an enterprise cloud-based self-service BI tool
owned by Google that sits on top of your SQL database
and helps you model and visualizes your data.
The Pros
• Strong Data Modelling Capabilities:
Looker has its own data modeling language called
LookML. With LookML you can define your dimension,
metrics, calculations, and data relationships in A SQL
database.
• Predictive Analytics:
• Looker offers various data tools that can help you get
the most out of your analysis including ML models that
can be deployed in your dataset.
The Cons
• Eye-Watering Price Point:
Looker does not disclose its pricing publicly and
companies must request for quotation to receive
pricing details. However, a Looker subscription can
cost you somewhere between USD $3k to USD $5k
for 10 users per month.
4. Tableau
Tableau is a BI and analytics platform that empowers users
to explore data and discover insights.
The Pros
• Deployment in Multiple Environments:
Tableau can be deployed on Cloud, Linux, Mac, Windows,
and on-premise.
Supporting Integration with Various Data Sources:
Tableau supports connection to 60 native data sources
including JSON files, BigQuery, PostgreSQL, Google
Analytics, etc.
Tableau Public:
Tableau Public is the free version of Tableau where you can
explore data visualizations and share it publicly with other
The Cons
• Difficult to Use for Non-Technical Users:
Unlike other BI tools such as Holistics or Looker that allow
non-technical users to explore data and generate insights,
the majority of Tableau users are experienced analysts or
developers as setting up data models and generating
insights sometimes need programming knowledge such as
SQL, R and Python. Business users can self-serve with
Tableau, but it often involves a lot more training.
Difficult to Embed to Organization’s Products:
We can embed Tableau into external applications such as
internal knowledge bases, CRMs, and blog posts.
However, It can be a real challenge for an organization
from both financial and technical perspectives to
seamlessly integrate Tableau
5 Power BI:
Power BI is Microsoft’s business analytics tool with
that users create interactive visualizations to make
sense of the data.
Pros (advantages)
• Excel Integration:
“Analyze in Excel” allow we to bring Power BI
datasets to Excel and use Excel features such as
Pivot tables, charts and slicers to interact with the
data.
• Custom Visualization:
Power BI offers a wide range of customizable
open-source data visualization tools. We can use
Power BI visual SDK (software development kit) to
create interactive data visualizations.
• Power BI Desktop:
Power BI Desktop is the free version of Power BI
that is installed on our local machine and it
enables us to connect, transform and visualize
data
• Cons:
• Most Favorable to Excel users: Power BI has been
designed in a way that proficient Excel users will
have the least problems getting themselves familiar
with the interface and how each feature functions
within Power BI.
• Limits in Defining Table Relationship: Power BI
works great with processing simple relationships
between tables within a data model. However,
Power BI may not process complex relationship
between tables .
• No Mac(Media Access Control Address) version: if
we use Mac devices, we cannot install Power BI
desktop version
APPLICATION OF SELF SERVE REPORT:
• Self-Service BI scenarios focus on supporting
self-service BI activities, in which analytical
responsibilities are handled by people
throughout many areas of the organization.
• The self-service BI scenarios presented primarily
emphasize the use of managed self-service BI in
which data management is centralized.
Business users take responsibility for creation of
reports and dashboards as well as the application
of self service report scenarios as follows:
i. Managed self-service BI scenario
ii. Customizable managed self-service BI
scenario
iii.Self-service data preparation scenario
iv.Advanced data preparation scenario
v. Prototyping and sharing scenario
i. Managed self-service BI scenario
• The goal is for many report creations to
reuse shared datasets. This scenario
describes decoupling the report creation
process from the dataset creation process.
ii.Customizable managed self-service BI
scenario:
• This scenario describes publishing a
customized data model where some tables
are new while others are dependent on the
existing shared dataset.
iii) Self-service data preparation scenario:
• This scenario describes creating Power BI
data flows to avoid repeating data
preparation Power Query logic in many
different Power BI Desktop files. A data flow
can be consumed as a data source by
numerous datasets.
iv) Advanced data preparation scenario:
• This scenario describes use of multiple
workspaces based on purpose, staging,
cleansed, and final.
v) Prototyping and sharing scenario:
• Prototyping techniques are very useful for
validating requirements for visuals and calculations
by subject matter experts.
• Prototyping solutions may be temporary, short-lived
solutions, or they may ultimately evolve into a
solution.
• This scenario describes using Power BI Desktop
during an interactive prototyping session. It is
followed by sharing the Power BI service when
additional feedback is needed from a subject matter
expert