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Planview Customer Success Center

Planview IdeaPlace Analytics Update

Introduction

We wanted to provide an update on the forthcoming changes to the analytics capabilities within the IdeaPlace application. In this article, we will set out the timetable for the delivery, the key points you should be aware of and some examples of the new UI and roles that you will experience once we are live. We will also touch upon the decommissioning of the current analytics function.

Background

At the end of July, 2020, the current analytics capabilities will be retired. This system which is supplied by GoodData is being replaced by a brand-new Microsoft Power BI embedded solution. This new solution will be branded as Insights once it goes live and will be available within the Dashboard tab in each community and challenge.

Power BI Embedded

The new analytics solution is something that we are tremendously excited to be bringing to our application. Power BI offers a strong set of out of the box capabilities to you, allowing for increased flexibility, deeper insights gathering and an enhanced user experience, all of which were key to us making the decision to migrate. Specifically, this change will deliver advanced analytics features such as natural language processing and sentiment analysis. 

As Power BI is a Microsoft application, there is a wealth of training and documentation available that will assist you. To find out more, you can visit https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/. This contains video based content, examples and instruction in using the Power BI application which you will have access to in IdeaPlace. This will be key in helping you to build custom reports and dashboards within the analytics capability. We will be delivering enablement material to support the standard dashboards and reports within our Customer Success Center.

Furthermore, following feedback from clients, we felt that a solution that allowed reports to be built from within the IdeaPlace application had become tremendously important. Power BI delivers the ability to view, build, and save reports in a specific folder system, all within IdeaPlace. This means that there will be new role-based options that will control the way in which Power BI interacts with users. The following changes will become live once we deliver the new analytics capabilities:

Report Analyst – The current role will remain in place and will now be available for assignment to users that only require the "viewing" of Power BI reports.

The Power BI page (within the Dashboard tab) will be visible to users holding the Report Analyst role by default. This is consistent with how we deploy the GoodData page which means that users who currently hold the role will not have to have their permissions amended in order to view reports.

The Report Analyst remains a challenge/community-specific role.

Report Creator -  A new role will be made available for assignment that, once granted, will allow a user to both access the Power BI page and create, edit and save reports within the page.

This role will be automatically assigned to any user holding the Super Administrator role, meaning that users will not experience any disruption during the cut over to Power BI. This role also allows Super Administrators to manage Power BI across all challenges and communities.

It is important to note that challenge level Administrators will not be assigned Report Creator by default. They can however be assigned the role at any point and this will allow them to create, edit and save reports using Power BI.

           

NOTE

The Report Creator will need to be added to each challenge or community within which access needs to be granted.

           

rpt2.png

Figure 1 - Report Creator view of Power BI embedded

 

The new role will be available for assignment within the user section of each challenge. It will be deemed a standard system role as is the current Report Analyst role.

At the point of upgrade, the current Insights tab will see the Power BI iframe replace the outgoing GoodData iframe. All access to GoodData inside of the Insights page in IdeaPlace will be replaced.

Standard Reports

We are delivering a vast array of standard reports with the new Power BI capability which are based upon standard reports that have been available in GoodData. Having reviewed the usage of reports and dashboards in GoodData, we are able to understand which of the reports were actually used. This will mean that you will see a much smoother experience in the standard reports and dashboards in terms of focus and details.

The reports and dashboards will also take on a new focus, one that combines the standard table and chart approaches with new insight driven visualizations. This represents a shift from our approach in GoodData and delivers a much stronger capability that cuts across the known data requirements and mingles them with insights driven from machine learning. During the roll out process, we will be delivering new content that illustrates this new approach and describes how you can work with them.

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Figure 2 - Example of a simple Challenge Dashboard

 

All of the standard dashboards and reports will of course be made available for you to edit and place within your own dashboards. In order to access them, you will need to leverage the new folder option (see Figure 1 – left side) This will be populated with all of the Planview-supplied reports automatically. If you have custom reports that are being built, they will also be stored in the system.

In addition to housing standard reports, the folders can be added to with custom folders that may be used to store your custom reports and dashboards moving forwards. Access to the folder view is limited to users holding the Report Creator role. Learn more about the new standard reports and visualizations in the articles Standard Reports in Insights/Power BI.

Data Schema and Refresh Rates

The new data schema will replace the outgoing data model that was used with GoodData. This new schema utilizes a new approach which is more flexible and easier to maintain. At the point of launch in late June, we anticipate that the vast majority of data relationships and data points will be available for report building. This will allow users holding the required Report Creator role to configure their own reports.

As we move through July, we anticipate that we will add to the data schema in order to make available any data points or relationships that need to be added based upon feedback. This will be managed through our standard two-week release cycle.

The data refresh rate of the new solution will remain, initially, at four times per day (once every six hours) We will be keeping this under review in order to manage performance and stability in the initial roll out. Should there be demand, we will of course explore options to increase the data refresh rate for the embedded Power BI solution.

Removing GoodData

At the end of June, we will remove the GoodData iframe from the application. This will see it removed from the Insights tab and any other iframe/editable widget within which it has previously been populated. It will be replaced by the Power BI user interface automatically.

At this point, all access to GoodData reports will be via the GoodData/Insights portal only. If you wish to still see GoodData inside of your IdeaPlace application, please access the GoodData portal and obtain the iframe embed code. This is available as a Cog icon on each dashboard and then through the Embed option in the drop down list. This code can be used in any IdeaPlace editable widget by pasting it into the iframe/embed movie option in the rich text editor ribbon.

In late July your access to the GoodData portal will be removed. This process is managed by GoodData themselves and not by Planview.

In order to ensure a smooth cut over, please download any reports, dashboards or screenshots prior to this date. Once access is removed, we will not be able to obtain copies.