Clarizen project data in Tableau

As we get more and more questions about if it is possible to use CLARIFIED for Clarizen data in Tableau, I will show you some examples below.


With Tableau it is very easy to create dashboards and analytics on CLARIFIED for Clarizen data. A connection to the CLARIFIED Cube can be made in minutes with the Microsoft Analysis Services connection in Tableau. In addition, Tableau has also a server version in which you can share your worksheets with other users. Read more about Tableau here: www.tableausoftware.com or view the Tableau product demo here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37Mx3uZRwBE

Below are some examples that we have created with Tableau and the Clarizen Demo environment:

- Profitability By Account

- Profitability by Project Type

- Profitabilty by Project Manager

- Active Projects per Project Manager

- Resource Utilization

Profitability by Account


Click here to view the original screenshot.


Profitability by Project Type


Click here to view the original screenshot.


Profitability by Project Manager


Click here to view the original screenshot.

Active Projects per Project Manager

Click here to view the original screenshot.


Resource Utilization

Click here to view the original screenshot.

Resource Utilization

Click here to view the original screenshot.

30-Day free Trial

You can use CLARIFIED for Clarizen free for 30 days to make sure you like it. We don't ask you for a credit card when you sign up, so if you don't like it, there's nothing to cancel. And because CLARIFIED is Cloud Based, there is nothing to install! Click here to try it free for 30 days.

More information

Visit our website at www.clarified.biz for more information about CLARIFIED for Clarizen.

CLARIFIED for Clarizen version 1.3.3 released

We are proud to announce that we've released CLARIFIED for Clarizen version 1.3.3 with improved backend processing and increased overall performance! Watch the product video here.

Reporting for billing purposes is now even easier with the added fields:

• Billing Type (Actual Cost, Fixed Price, Not Billable)
• Has Fixed Price, Has Fixed Cost
• Cost Type (Actual Cost, Fixed Cost)

We've also added new count measures:

•  New count measures (Work Item Count, Project Count)

Added value
CLARIFIED for Clarizen’s added value consists of:

• Within a few clicks access to all your Clarizen Project data.
• Out-of-the-box slice and dice functionality.
• No more time needed to develop Excel queries or lookup’s.
• Out-of-the-box dash boarding on an Executive level is. One can even set Revenue or Profit Goals on any given context (like a given Portfolio and Year period) and compare the Actuals against it graphically.
• Out-of-the-box reporting for billing purposes is easy. Fields include Billing Type, Fixed Price and Period selection. So reporting all Revenue that should be billed in a given period is easy and saves a lot of time and errors for the accounting department.
• Resource Utilization can be represented graphically, both on individual and on Group level. Resource Utilization can be shown on Planned and Actual effort.
• Tracing inconsistent data entry in Clarizen is made easy. Like reporting all Time sheet effort that is not approved yet.
• CLARIFIED for Clarizen can connect to numerous BI tools like Tableau, Dundas, Cubeware and TARGIT.

30-Day free Trial
You can use Clarified for Clarizen free for 30 days to make sure you like it. We don't ask you for a credit card when you sign up, so if you don't like it, there's nothing to cancel. And because Clarified is Cloud Based, there is nothing to install! Click here to try it free for 30 days.

More information
Visit our website at www.clarified.biz for more information about CLARIFIED for Clarizen.

Clarizen in top 25 most important Online PM Software

Clarizen, the online project management solution, was selected as one of the top 25 of the most important Online project Management Apps by GetApp.com. The infographic on Top Online Project Management Software can be found here.

BI Architects uses Clarizen for managing its projects and has developed a BI solution for Clarizen. More on our BI solution can be found in this blog Business Intelligence extension for Clarizen.

Clarizen posts BI Architects video to Social Media

We were very happy to see the posts of Clarizen, leading global provider of collaborative online project management software, in the Social Media referring to the video we made of our Clarizen BI Solution.

Thank you, Hilee Avrahami of Clarizen, for bringing this video to your customers and followers attention!

Here you can have another look at our video:



Our Business Intelligence solution for Clarizen adds reporting functionality that helps the project managers monitor, track and report project progress (including KPI's and earned values), the finance department enable swift and correct detailed invoicing and the management team gaining direct insight in the performance/profitability of projects.

For more information about the extension for Clarizen please contact our sales manager Erik Rongen-Kleintjens (E.Rongen-Kleintjens@bi-architects.nl).

Hermann-Otto Israël

BI Architects project manager

Addition to BIDS: BIDS Helper

The Business Intelligence Development Studio (or BIDS) is typically used for developing Microsoft BI software. Now there is room for improvement everywhere and the BIDS Helper offers this improvements.

BIDS Helper is a Visual Studio add-in which will add a number of additional features and options to Visual Studio. Most additions are in the Analysis Services and Integration Services projects and range from comfortable to extremely useful. A lot of these additions are really things that make you wonder why Microsoft didn't include it themselves...

A few examples:
- Integration Services packages can sort by name within a project
- Variables in packages for Scope another move / copy
- Within Analysis Services option to create your attribute relations graphically
- A Smart Diff option packages or differences between two cubes to detect

And there are many more.

The add-in comes from an open source project on Codeplex (from Microsoft) and is free to use. It is available for Visual Studio 2005 as well as 2008, so be sure to choose the right one.

Download BIDS Helper, install and try it yourself!

SSIS Derived Column IF(IIF)

I use this post as a short reminder for myself, because the Derived Column Transformation Editor in SSIS simply does not spell out how to accomplish this.

The following syntax is used in the Derived Column control to place an IF(IIF) statement :
(Boolean Expression ? True Part : False Part)

So, if I were checking against a Trade Type code column (trade_type_cd) to determine whether this column IS NULL or IS NOT NULL, I could simply write up something like this:
ISNULL(trade_type_cd) ? "<Unknown>" : trade_type_cd

Addition to BIDS: Table Difference component

One question arising very often in the Data Warehouse programming is "What are the differences between two tables?" You receive several million customers and should decide what changes need to be done. The standard SSIS toolkit provides SCD component for handling this process, but it is of no practical use when you have to handle more than a couple of thousand records. The Table Difference component doesn't have this limitation.

The component has two inputs: one for "old" and one for "new data". The old and new rows are compared and the result is sent to different outputs:

• Unchanged rows (same in both old and new)
• Deleted rows (appear in old but not in new)
• New rows (appear in new but not in old)
• Updated rows (appear in both old and new, but there is a change)

The diagram below illustrates the component functionality better than thousand words:

Occasionally you may have a requirement to perform different updates, for different columns. The component includes option to tag each input column with identifier. Then for each unique identifier, a separate update output is created and maintained. In this way you can tag with "10" the historical attributes and with "20" the other columns and decide what kind of operation to carry on with the different updates.

The component inputs MUST be sorted and have a collection of fields (keys) that let the component decide when two rows from the inputs represent the same row. This is easily accomplished in SQL with a simple “order by” and a convenient index. Usually slowly changing dimensions maintain an index by the business key, so the sorting requirement is easily accomplished and do not represent a problem.

Click here for more information about the Table Difference component.

Business Intelligence extension for Clarizen - Presentation

Two weeks ago i posted about the Clarizen's online project management software. In the presentation below our Business Intelligence extension for Clarizen is described.

For more information about the extension for Clarizen please contact our sales manager Fred Booms (f.booms@bi-architects.nl)


Hermann-Otto Israël
BI Architects project manager

Bug regarding datasources in BIDS

Everytime I use shared datasources in a SSIS package and configure the connectionstring with a package configuration I've noticed that my package configuration connectionstring is being overwritten by the connectionstring that is present in the shared datasource (the synchronize connection strings popup). This can be very confusing.

I've done some research on the internet and discovered that this behaviour is a bug in BIDS, and only in BIDS. When you deploy your SSIS packages to a server the package configuration connectionstring will overrule the connectionstring in the shared datasource.

1 Shared datasources

2 Datasources within SSIS package

Projects and customer involvement

How to make a success of your project? When looking for the answer on this question and using the keywords “project management success factors” in Google’s search engine I have found a lot solutions. Most of the found blogs, articles and other descriptions were written by solution providers (IT infrastructure and software) and aimed on using a specific project management method, for instance Prince2, to ensure project success.

But does this project success also result in a happy customer?

INTRODUCTION

A few weeks ago I have read a story on managing projects from the customer side. It was a real eye-opener. Why do we do projects for our customers? Just to make a lot of money by serving our customers solutions without considering if it is value for the business or is it because we do want to implement a solution that delivers added value to business. Is it quantity (lots of worked hours) or quality (a happy customer).

PUT THE CUSTOMER FIRST

It is clear that we have to deliver a solution to fulfill the customer’s need, but we have to ensure and keep ensuring that we have customer involvement in our projects. Research by the Standish group has shown that the customer is most influential on project success. The customer (executive, sponsor and user) is for 34,5% the success factor for successful projects, while the project team of project management are less influential. 

HOW TO DO THAT?

The greatest challenge in making projects successful is answering the question how to put the customer first and involved in the realization of the product or solution.

HOW DO WE DO THAT?

To enable/ensure customer involvement our specialists work a few days on the Floor. While working among the end users or business representatives during design, development or testing/acceptance communication lines are kept short.

Our BI projects cannot be successful if we do not have an involved customer. BI projects are something you have to do with your customers, because this something you do for them. For us this is the key success factor in our projects and that is something we would like to share.

In the near future we will subject more of these Project Management and Customer Quality topics in this blog.

Hermann-Otto Israël

BI Architects specialist