Version 1.4 of Klipfolio Dashboard is live and the newest feature to be added, annotations, is now available for use in your Klips. If you've seen the annotations' video, then you probably agree this feature is about as user-friendly as you can get. Just click on the annotation menu, type your note, and save it. The annotation is visible to any colleague who was access to the Klip. Whenever a new annotation is attached to a Klip, you will be notified by a yellow indicator icon.

Annotations keep you socially connected so you can converse with the right people in your organization to get the most out of your KPIs. Anyone with access to a Klip can make an annotation, and you will be amazed at what your colleagues contribute. To give you an idea of what you can accomplish with annotations, I've put together 3 scenarios showing how you can use this feature to get the job done.

1. Add context to your KPIs

Annotations make it easy to share your business expertise and add context to any KPI. Let's say you are a call center manager and you notice a sudden drop in current service level. Your insight from working on the floor can quickly clarify why that drop occurred (high absenteeism, higher than normal call volume, etc). By attaching an annotation to that KPI, anyone can view the note on their dashboard, including your boss who might hire the additional staff you've been asking for.

2. Get the answers you need

Annotations can simplify how you investigate what's going on with your KPIs. Let's say you are monitoring a web performance KPI and you notice that conversions for one of your main pages is down, way down. Your instincts take over and you go to Google Analytics and create a custom report to get the whole picture. While you can create a Klip to show this information, it is only really applicable to this problem. Instead, you can add an annotation with a link to your report so that your colleagues can see what's going on, too. Just remember, they will need to be signed in to Google Analytics to view the report.

3. Coordinate actions, deliver results

Annotations can take your KPI monitoring to the next level, and help you act on what you are seeing. Let's say you are monitoring the performance of multiple restaurants using several categories that provide an overall score or rating for each establishment. The ranking of one restaurant is sending off warning flags, and it's not enough to interrogate the data -- you need to act on what the data is telling you. By adding an annotation, you can coordinate actions with colleagues and deliver results when you need them most.

Have any ideas on how you'd like to use an annotation? How do you share insights with your colleagues? Comment below or join the conversation on Twitter - we're @Klipfolio.

The hyperlinks feature allows you to do some pretty cool things on your dashboard. I use hyperlinks in two different ways to save time and allow me to dig deeper into my data. The first method is to hyperlink to individual dashboard tabs in an "organization overview" style of Klip. The second method is to link to web resources like Google Analytics to view the in-depth report when I need more information about a KPI.

Save time - Link to dashboard tabs

If you're like me, you organize similar KPIs on dashboard tabs to create reports about a department, project, or customer. As you create new tabs for a department, it is stored in Klipfolio Dashboard's library and will have a permalink created for it. Using the tab's permalink you can point users to any tab in your Library. Even tabs not actively displayed on your dashboard are accessible this way.

My example Klip takes this concept one step further. The purpose of this Klip is to provide a rating that analyzes the performance of each department in my organization. When a department needs my attention, I can click on the link and view the complete KPI report for that department.

Tip! Use this article to get started.

Dig deeper - Link to external resources

When a metric needs your attention, it helps to be able to quickly access the data or report backing your Klip. The KPI in my example monitors the performance of my website using Google Analytics data. For each page I am monitoring in my Klip, I have included a link to the corresponding page in Analytics. Using this Klip, I can dig deeper into my data when I need to see exactly what is going wrong.

Tip! Use this article to get started.

Remember to check all of your links before you share your Klip!

Visually, I don't think anything keeps your targets in perspective quite like a bullet chart. Originally developed by visual business intelligence guru Stephen Few, these charts are packed full of useful information and are a perfect match for any dashboard. Creating a bullet chart is straightforward: the tick-line is your target, the solid bar is your current value, and the shaded bar is your comparative value. Virtually anything can be measured this way, whether you are monitoring your sales numbers or call center service level. Whatever you measure, you always know if you are on target.

Before you start creating a bullet chart, take into consideration what the right targets are for your organization. This can be a bit like Goldilocks' conundrum as you want to strike the right balance. A target that is too easily attained breeds complacency, while an unrealistic target discourages your employees. Meeting a well thought out target should be a challenge that brings the best out of your team. Once you have a target in your crosshairs, it's time to build a bullet chart.

You have two choices for building a bullet chart in Klipfolio Dashboard: either you can use the bullet chart format in a Table Klip, or you can create a Gauge Klip (a modified bullet chart). Let's take a closer look at each of these methods.

Personally, I like using bullet charts in my tables because it adds an easy to understand visual representation of my performance. At a glance, I know if I am meeting my target and can compare my current performance to my past performance. The bullet chart only uses one column, so I am free to include more data and insights about the metric. In this example, I built a web analytics KPI that measures my conversions and page visits. The bullet chart tells me if I am meeting my monthly quote for each page, and provides a comparison on my previous month's performance.

Tip! Use the bullet chart how to article and the Table Klip how to article to get started now.

The other choice you have is to use a Gauge Klip to display your current performance and a target. The Gauge Klip is modified from the bullet chart to monitor a single target, such as a revenue KPI. While there isn't a comparative value included in the Gauge Klip, it makes up for it with the ability to use indicators and text in the chart. If you want to include a comparative value in your Klip, you can always include it in your target value. To do that and keep the currency formatting, just type it in the suffix field.

Tip! Use the Gauge Klip how to article to get started now.

Time is running out for the Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study! Help Klipfolio get recognized in the business intelligence and share your experience using our products. This study is important to the community and to us, so fill out your copy of the survey before April 2nd 2012.

Here's some important information about the survey from Dresner Advisory Services:

Make your voice heard!

Participate in the 2012 Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study and get a complimentary copy of the study findings.

Dresner Advisory Services is inviting all BI users to participate in its annual examination of the state of the BI marketplace focusing on BI usage, deployment trends, and products.

The 2012 report will build on previous year's research and will expand to include questions on the latest and emerging trends such as collaborative BI and BI in the cloud. It will also rank vendors and products, providing an important tool for organizations seeking to invest in BI solutions.

BI users in all roles and throughout all industries are invited to contribute their insight, which should take approximately 15 minutes. The final report is scheduled to be out in late Spring.

Click here to start the survey today!

The addition of the indicators feature helps you build Klips that make your KPIs effortlessly visible on your mobile dashboards. I am so excited about this feature that I have already shot a video and wrote a how to article for you. In this post, I am going to give you an overview of this new feature so that the next time you sign into app.klipfolio.com you can get started using indicators to boost KPI visibility.

The idea behind this feature is that by adding an "indicator" such as a colour or display icon to a Klip, you can improve the visibility of KPIs and metrics on your dashboard. Our brains are hard-wired to recognize symbols and to instantly interpret their meaning. Think about it: you stop at a stop sign, go on a green light, and proceed with caution when you see a yield sign. This applies to KPIs just as easily: a red X says stop, a green checkmark says go, and a yellow warning triangle yells pay attention! So when I say KPI visibility, what I am talking about is your ability to instantly know what action to take just by glancing at a KPI. As in the Klip below, it takes only a quick glance to know your sales numbers over the past 30 days need immediate attention.

This feature really delivers on the promise of self-serve KPIs by adding an intuitive interface that lets you assign indicators in seconds. To use indicators, you will work in the indicators tab to build what is called a "condition." The condition specifies the threshold or the column to compare, what operator to use (greater than, less than), and what indicator to display when the condition is met. You can use multiple conditions to capture all possible thresholds and return a range of indicators for different states. For instance, I can display a green arrow when my value is above 150000, display a red warning circle when it is below 150000, and replace the value with a red warning triangle when it drops below 100000.

I think this feature will win most of you over the next time you sign in to app.klipfolio.com. To get the hang of it, why not start applying indicators to existing Klips? If you want extra help check out the indicators how to article.

Have a great day!

Screen space is a precious commodity. As a KPI dashboard vendor, we understand that.  We are always thinking about how to design for density without compromising usability, experience, and value. So what happens when you are working with very large numbers in tight spaces? All those zeros are just not adding real value. You use an "undocumented feature" called abbreviation (abbr) in your Klip CSS. Here is an example of how you apply it a column of numbers in the style block of your Klip:

<style> revenue {
type: number;
format: "abbr"; }
</style>

This will display values as sortable numbers while automatically displaying "magnitude" as a suffix.

200.5 / 200.5
1500 / 1.5k
2500000 / 2.5M
3500000000 / 3.5G
4500000000000 / 4.5T
5500000000000000 / 5.5P
6500000000000000000 / 6.5E
7500000000000000000000 / 7.5Z
8500000000000000000000000 / 8.5Y

Just a quick caution: This feature is being shared with no additional documentation and ahead of conclusive testing.

School was a long time ago, and as with most things that history puts in the spin cycle, I have remembered only the brightest and darkest memories. The word play “I know what I like: I like what I know” was one of these memories that continues to help me understand how people approach new ideas, products, and constructs.

I was sitting in on a new customer kick-off meeting last week. In the back-and-forth dialog, it became apparent that they were focused on a particular type of visualization – one their users had become familiar with. There is value in familiarity; tremendous value, in fact. The energy needed to change user behaviour can be quite a hurdle.

However, the use cases that they were sharing with us did not support their chosen visualization. Here is a brief synopsis of their situation:

• Sizeable and geographically distributed sales organization
• Three levels of hierarchy, from VP to sales reps
• Requirement 1: Visualize “performance to plan” and “month over month trend”
• Requirement 2: Group regions and offer visibility into underlying data
• Requirement 3: Easily compare regions and reps by performance and trend

They were familiar with line charts, and as such had managed to plot monthly bookings compared to quota on a monthly basis. This does satisfy requirement 1, and to some extent, number 2 as well. However, this visualization choice does not easily allow users to explore the underlying data, or compare regions and reps.

We showed them an alternative solution; a drill-down Klip, where the data was aggregated first by region, then by rep. The individual regions or reps can be visually compared and sorted against one another with calculated sums and averages. We had opened their eyes to a new way of presenting their sales metrics.

The original question, however, has more to do with influencing behaviour. Our customer could proceed and offer their users only the new Klip. But why not also include the old visualization, as a separate Klip? Each would provide different value and complement one another, after all. And this way the dashboard would be less likely to be perceived as a threat to the familiar, the status quo. Give users something familiar, as well as something new.

As for me, both visualizations have their place on my KPI dashboard.

It's been a busy week of meeting with clients and prospects here. These meetings are always interesting, and often we end up talking about the same sorts of things - getting data using ODBC being one of the most common.

If you are connecting to a Microsoft SQL Server database through ODBC, you are likely familiar with the unusual "z:row" attribute based formatting of the response. (Or even worse if your column names have spaces or other symbols in them.)

It can be challenging to pick that response apart and get your data into a useful form.

Here is a little known trick that will simplify your Klip building process significantly. By using the Transact-SQL "FOR XML PATH" command, you can have your database return very cleanly formatted XML. This makes it a breeze to write effective CSS.

More details can be found in the MSDN article: What's New in FOR XML in Microsoft SQL Server 2005

Here is an example: Using the AdventureWorks DB sample, add "FOR XML PATH" to the end of the Sales.vSalesPerson view's query and you'll get back XML like this:

<row>
  <SalesPersonID>268</SalesPersonID>
  <FirstName>Stephen</FirstName>
  <MiddleName>Y</MiddleName>
  <LastName>Jiang</LastName>
  <JobTitle>North American Sales Manager</JobTitle>
  <Phone>238-555-0197</Phone>
  <EmailAddress>stephen0@adventure-works.com</EmailAddress>
  <EmailPromotion>0</EmailPromotion>
  <AddressLine1>2427 Notre Dame Ave.</AddressLine1>
  <City>Redmond</City>
  <StateProvinceName>Washington</StateProvinceName>
  <PostalCode>98052</PostalCode>
  <CountryRegionName>United States</CountryRegionName>
  <SalesYTD>677558.4653</SalesYTD>
  <SalesLastYear>0.0000</SalesLastYear>
</row>

<row>
  <SalesPersonID>275</SalesPersonID>
  <FirstName>Michael</FirstName>
  <MiddleName>G</MiddleName>
  <LastName>Blythe</LastName>
  <JobTitle>Sales Representative</JobTitle>
  <Phone>257-555-0154</Phone>
  <EmailAddress>michael9@adventure-works.com</EmailAddress>
  <EmailPromotion>1</EmailPromotion>
  <AddressLine1>8154 Via Mexico</AddressLine1>
  <City>Detroit</City>
  <StateProvinceName>Michigan</StateProvinceName>
  <PostalCode>48226</PostalCode>
  <CountryRegionName>United States</CountryRegionName>
  <TerritoryName>Northeast</TerritoryName>
  <TerritoryGroup>North America</TerritoryGroup>
  <SalesQuota>300000.0000</SalesQuota>
  <SalesYTD>4557045.0459</SalesYTD>
  <SalesLastYear>1750406.4785</SalesLastYear>
</row>

Which is trivial to take apart with Klipfolio Dashboard's CSS processing:

<style>
  SalesPersonID { type: text; itemcol: 1; }
  FirstName { type: text; itemcol: 2; }
  LastName { type: text; itemcol: 4; }
  SalesLastYear { type: number; format: "currency"; itemcol: 5; }
  SalesYTD { type: number; format: "currency"; itemcol: 6; }
  SalesQuota { type: number; format: "currency"; itemcol: 7; }
  row { type: item; definition: all; }
</style>

For reference, here is the new query:

USE AdventureWorks
SELECT  s.SalesPersonID, c.Title, c.FirstName, c.MiddleName, c.LastName, c.Suffix,
        e.Title AS JobTitle, c.Phone, c.EmailAddress, c.EmailPromotion,
        a.AddressLine1, a.AddressLine2, a.City, sp.Name AS StateProvinceName, a.PostalCode, cr.Name AS CountryRegionName, st.Name AS TerritoryName,
        st.[Group] AS TerritoryGroup, s.SalesQuota, s.SalesYTD, s.SalesLastYear
FROM    Sales.SalesPerson AS s INNER JOIN
        HumanResources.Employee AS e ON e.EmployeeID = s.SalesPersonID LEFT OUTER JOIN
        Sales.SalesTerritory AS st ON st.TerritoryID = s.TerritoryID INNER JOIN
        Person.Contact AS c ON c.ContactID = e.ContactID INNER JOIN
        HumanResources.EmployeeAddress AS ea ON e.EmployeeID = ea.EmployeeID INNER JOIN
        Person.Address AS a ON ea.AddressID = a.AddressID INNER JOIN
        Person.StateProvince AS sp ON sp.StateProvinceID = a.StateProvinceID INNER JOIN
        Person.CountryRegion AS cr ON cr.CountryRegionCode = sp.CountryRegionCode
FOR XML PATH

What are your thoughts? Do you have a better way to get at your data? Share it with us, and we'll share it with the community.

First of all let me share with you two recent musings about KlipFolio. NoHeat.com sticks it to the big boys in an article entitled Klipfolio takes on Microsoft and Google with a solid sidebar, and Simon Dickson at BT Broadband Office calls us the "dark horse" among sidebars (a title we take as quite the compliment) in this article called Enhance your Productivity with a Bit on the Side.

Also, in an effort to continually improve the KlipFolio.com experience, and to add features that will drive Klip downloads for authors, here are two recent additions to KlipFolio.com:

1. Klip Localization. Klip authors can set the language, country and now even your Klip's specific location. Doing this will make sure your Klips are being seen by the right people.

2. Klip Screenshots. Check out the Tagesschau.de and the KlipFolio Forum Klips to see this in action. Authors can now upload up to 3 screenshots of their Klip. Klips with screenshots get more downloads, so don't delay.

If you are a Klip author, you likely got an e-mail from us yesterday. And if you'd like, you'll get an email next month also, and every month thereafter. It contains summarized statistics of all your live Klips for the previous month. Why are we doing this? Well, we hope that the information will be of use to Klip authors who may not have the time to keep a close eye on their Klip’s performance. We also wanted to bring attention to the some of the stats that authors have access to that they might not know about.

One of the lesser known features that we rolled out with the new version of KlipFolio.com last year is the enhanced usage statistics that are now available to all users (previously you had to pay to get access to them). These stats show you:

• how many times your Klip was installed (added to a user’s KlipFolio)
• the number of daily users who were using your Klip
• how many clicks your Klip received
  

By default your Klips won’t be reporting these statistics. To enable them, all you need to do is add
report true /report to your setup block in your .klip file and re-upload it to KlipFolio.com. It's that easy to turn on advanced stats.

Now, if you'd rather not receive monthly stats via e-mail, you can change your subscription settings by logging in to your KlipFolio.com account and clicking on "Modify Account". There you'll find options to unsubscribe from all of KlipFolio.com's newsletters.

• uploaded Klips should now appear properly on KlipFolio.com
• users can enter tags using any characters they like
• site comments, user profiles, and other form-driven data appear properly

You can use the link below to easily add KlipFolio to the list of RSS readers in Firefox 2. We got the idea from a blog post at NetVibes.

To get started: 

Click here to add KlipFolio as the default RSS Reader for FireFox 2

When you click the above, you'll get a dialog box:

Click 'Yes' and now KlipFolio appears in the list of applications to read a feed.

When you subscribe to a feed in KlipFolio, KlipFolio automatically loads the URL into the Feed Viewer.

Just press the "Add Feed" button and you're all set to monitor the feed on your desktop using a Klip. Firefox 2 rocks!

Time for another sneak peek at KlipFolio 4.0! This week we've got system monitors for you. With 4.0 you'll be able to monitor your CPU and memory usage as well as the strength of the WiFi signal of the access point you're connected to.

One of the key things here is that Klips will no longer have to refresh to do stuff. It's a new timer event. It opens up the door to lots of new Klip presentation capabilities.

There's lots more 4.0 on the way. Stay tuned!

 PS. Check out the new Flickr Klip on KlipFolio.com

Then, to make it easier to track the performance of all of your Klips, we've also just launched the Klip Tracker for Klip Providers Klip. Even though it's quite the workhorse, this Klip is super fast. Also, there is an extra gift included in the Klip - a popularity chart which is not available anywhere else right now.

Enjoy

Allan

We're working on a new suite of Klips for KlipFolio.com, including:

- New & Updated Klips on KlipFolio.com (now with language and adult content filtering)
- Klip Tracker (to monitor downloads, comments, ratings, etc. for specific Klips and sets)
- KlipBlog (updated to the new system and already released)
- Klip Statistics (to monitor detailed stats for a specific Klip--you'll have to log in with this one)

Time permitting, we're also looking at Klips for most popular tags and/or most popular sets.

For Klip developers who want to play around with their own KlipFolio.com Klips, we've built RSS feeds for every Klip. They can be accessed through:

http://www.klipfolio.com/phplib/scripts/rss/klip_rss.php?kid=####
(Where #### is the Klip's ID number)

Also, you can retrieve information about multiple Klips by comma-seperating IDs, like so:
http://www.klipfolio.com/phplib/scripts/rss/klip_rss.php?kid=####,####,####,#### ...

We'll be using this feed sepcifically in the Klip Tracker, due soon.

Just in time for the World Cup 2006, we've uploaded 3 very cool Klips to keep you on top of the action - World Cup News, Groups & Standings and Photos. What's really nice about these three Klips is that they are very configurable; choose your teams, choose your language for news etc ... You've likely already seen them if you visit KlipFolio.com regularily as they have shot up to the most popular spots.

Keep in mind there are many other Klips that will also have World Cup news - just do a search for worldcup , weltmeisterschaft , fifa or fussball and you'll get a good list.