Yellowfin launches “Facebook for BI”
Timeline records a users’ specific activities and interactions within Yellowfin in real time, providing a searchable, personalized, chronological catalogue of the particular movements of each user.
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Global BI and analytics vendor Yellowfin has updated its BI software, Yellowfin, to version 6.3, adding a Timeline module which customers have called “Facebook for BI.” Yellowfin CEO Glen Rabie said that the release, available for download now, focuses on extending the collaborative capabilities of Yellowfin.
Timeline records a users’ specific activities and interactions within Yellowfin in real time. The result is a searchable, personalized, chronological catalogue of the particular movements of, and anything related to, each individual user within Yellowfin.
Rabie says this personalized Facebook- and “wall”-like feed displays everything relevant to a user -- which reports they’ve viewed; the discussions they’ve engaged in; the content they’ve created, shared, or need to approve; and any alerts and notifications.
Users can directly interact with each other and analytic content via their respective Timelines, which are configured to ensure data security. Users can set their Timeline to private, meaning other users can only access their Timeline upon request.
“The all-new Yellowfin Timeline encapsulates a users’ relationship with Yellowfin in one place,” said Rabie. “Timeline stimulates the type of user engagement, transparency, and communication required to instill an organizational culture of data-based decision making and achieve BI ROI. We anticipate that, over time, Timeline will replace the dashboard as the default logon interface for most Yellowfin users.”
Besides the Timeline feature, new collaborative BI features and functionality make it easier to share and consume data and analysis. A new discussion module makes engaging in dialogue with other users -- and linking BI content (reports and storyboards) to those discussions -- more useful and user-friendly.
Enhanced usability throughout the application makes content creation and analysis faster, simpler and easier. These enchantments include:
- Dashboard sub tabs enable users to create multiple tabs within a single dashboard tab. Sub tabs allow users to logically group content together by passing filters, between tabs, across dashboards.
- Dashboard help assists users to understand how to utilize key features of a Yellowfin dashboard via informational pop-ups. Pop-ups appear over key dashboard elements and explain their purpose and usefulness.
- The Confirm Edit Message is a pop-up notification that activates when a user attempts to edit or delete BI content, including reports, dashboards, and discussion groups. This addition enables users to understand the impact that alterations to BI content would have on specific users and user groups, allowing them to communicate any changes (or intended changes) to those affected.
Yellowfin 6.3 includes several fresh data visualization features to make it easier to build more insightful and intuitive BI content while supporting deeper, faster analysis. Additions include:
- Brushing enables users to quickly select or exclude data points on a chart. Users can simply point, click and drag to highlight the area of data they want to eliminate from their data set, or isolate and explore in greater detail.
- Colored metrics for series selection allows users to assign a specific color to each metric, supporting easier data analysis through consistent coloring.
- Report summaries encapsulate the key metrics and trends within a report, and are displayed as mini KPI-type charts along the top of a report, for easy at-a-glance understanding.
More information is available at www.yellowfinbi.com.