Business Intelligence

How to Connect to a Data Source in Power BI

In this Power BI tutorial, you’ll see how to connect to basic data sources in order to start creating visualizations. The same technique applies to many kinds of data we use in the program, so the steps are pretty universal. Want to learn more about …

How to Create a Basic Visualization in Power BI

In this Power BI tutorial, you’ll see how to start creating visualizations (“visuals”, or “vizzes”) by selecting the type of display and the fields to go into it. You’ll also see a couple of the fine-tuning tricks to make a visual easier to understand. Want …

QlikView Keyboard Shortcuts

SkillForge SkillSheet QlikView Keyboard Shortcuts Click here to download the PDF version. File Menu Command Shortcuts Press… For… Ctrl+N Equivalent to New on the File menu. Ctrl+O Equivalent to Open… on the File menu. Ctrl+Shift+O Equivalent to Open in Server… on the File menu. Ctrl+S …

Creating the Speedometer Gauge in QlikView

QlikView, one of the big BI (business intelligence) programs you can get today, has a number of graphical ways to display data, which it calls charts. Among these, one of the coolest (sorry, but it is) would have to be the Gauge chart. And of …

Using Qlikview’s Date Functions

When putting together a data model for a Qlikview application you will occasionally run into a field that is not formatted properly, both from a numeric and presentational perspective. Behold the transformed junk file that Qlikview organized into meaningful data. Meaningful yes, recognizable by the …

Qlikview Chart Styling Using Expression Attributes

Qlikview makes it quick and easy to assemble your data into a professional BI application. But sometimes the information needs a little boost, that extra touch that makes the difference. One way to accomplish this is using Expression Attributes. These attributes can be found on the …

Crystal Reports Performance Information Tool

After designing a report Crystal Reports provides a built-in utility that will allow you to test performance and shine a light on areas where optimization would be beneficial. It is called the Performance Information tool and can be found by selecting Report > Performance Information …

Making “Can Grow” a Global Setting in Crystal Reports

There are a lot of different setting we talk about during our Crystal Reports classes. Much of the information we end up displaying within these reports consists of text, and in our quest to make it fit we end up making constant adjustments to width and height. That is, until we are introduced to the string format option can grow.

With one simple format setting we eliminate the need to make those height adjustments.

Here is what we are talking about. Our example will use a simple group heading to identify the country of origin.

It looks like this in print preview.

We decide to increase the group heading font size from 10 points to 12 points and discover upon previewing that some of the text has been truncated.

Code Hinting in Crystal Reports Formula Workshop

When using Crystal Reports, formulas play a large role in preforming such basic tasks as conditional formatting, selecting records, and general calculations. The code window for all of these tasks is called the Formula Workshop. It is a centralized window divided into five sections; Workshop …

QlikView Quick Suggestions: Moving a Comma for Quick Editing

Here is a simple and very straight forward suggestion when working in QlikView’s Script Editor. When you are loading data from any source and your LOAD statement has a list of fields that you may want to shorten at some point; consider this simple suggestion. …