have been keeping silence for a while so now we have a lot to share. Version 7.0 is packed with new and exciting things giving you a new horizons for flex.bi data cube customisations, an insight into your weather-dependancy and even some future prediction capabilities. And on top of that – conditional alerts from your KPI dashboards straight into your email mailbox. Last but not least – we are launching integration with Priority ERP to deliver flex.bi possibilities to more and more companies in the world!
Custom Cube Builder – new way of data cube design and adjustments
Some time ago, we introduced the concept of custom fields in Advanced settings that allowed you to adjust our standard data structures to your needs. For example, you could add an extra measure of property, or even create a new dimension. Since then we have worked on our custom fields functionality to provide you with even more flexibility and our Custom Cube Builder was born.
Now, you can use custom field definitions to create your own custom cubes from scratch in all of our applications – HansaWorld, Horizon, Jumis and Priority. This new and exiting functionality allows you to define data sources within your source system, chose the most relevant measures, dimensions and properties and create a data cube that is exactly tailored to your needs. You can even define drill and default measure options for the new cube. To create a unified environment, you can reuse the standard dimensions from the existing cubes and share the measures from your new cube to the existing ones. And all of that can be achieved using a configuration language that requires no advanced coding skills.
HERE you can read an article were custom field builder options are explained in more detail.
More information and examples can be found in our documentation page.
Priority ERP Integration
We are slowly but surely expanding our reach in the new ERP segment and we are proud to announce our newest integration with the Priority ERP system. As it is customary with our integrations, you can set it up and start using the default Financials cube in just a couple of clicks. The Financials cube is enough for your standard financial reporting needs and allows the creation of general profit & loss reports and other project or budget item specific report.
If the Financials cube is not enough, guess what, you can use our Custom Cube Builder functionality mentioned above, to build the cubes you need and create your own data environment tailored specifically to the needs of your business. Sales Orders, Invoices, Purchase Orders, you name it. If it is in Priority, you can get it into flex.bi.
More information can be found in our documentation page.
Weather Data Context
Weather is all around us, directly or indirectly influencing our lives and business, so it stands to reason that business critical information should be analyzed in the context of weather conditions, for some businesses especially. This theory was backed up by recent requests from our customers, for example in WASH AI project, so we decided to add option for weather data import.
As a result an option to use integration with a Visual Crossing weather service was added. Now upon your request flex.bi can provide historical weather data and weather forecasts for a particular location, and this data can be used in flex.bi data cubes to enrich the existing business data with a weather context by creating measures or even dimensions. The available weather data includes Humidity, Precipitation, Solar radiation, Cloud cover, Temperature, Windspeed, etc. You can chose the weather parameters most relevant to your business and import them into the data cube of your choice. This can help you to find weather related patterns in your customers behavior and use those patterns to try and predict the future based on the weather forecasts, but more on that in the next chapter.
See example reports in our templates library.
More information can be found in our documentation page.
Prediction Models
With this release, we have also made a step into the unknown. While working on the previously mentioned weather data integration, we realized that in particular cases the weather forecast could be used to predict the future values of measures that are weather-dependent, for instance customer flow in a self-service shop or profit of an ice-cream vendor. For this purpose we created a functionality that allows us to connect to a micro-service containing a pre-trained machine learning model that is capable of generating future prognoses based on the wether forecast and location data.
Bare in mind, that this is a business specific service, that requires a lot of historical data for machine learning model training and specific flex.bi account setup using custom fields and weather data importer, but in the end you can get meaningful predictions regarding your weather-dependent business KPIs with precision up to 95%. Precision precision depends on historical data amount and prediction variables that are identified during detailed analysis.
For any questions about this solution and Machine learning model possibilities, please contact sales@flex.bi.
Conditional Report Alerts
This release comes with a feature that will guarantee that you never miss the crucial ups and downs of your main KPIs. Now, you don’t have to check that one report every morning, to see if your stock level has dropped below critical or you have exceeded a pre-set budget. All you have to do, is set up Conditional report alerts, subscribe to them and flex.bi will send you an email in case the alert is triggered. And, of-course, the alerts can be enabled on need-to-know bases.
So, set it up and relax – we have you covered.
More information can be found in our documentation page.
Improved HansaWorld Authentication
Our HansaWorld users know the struggle of importing a large amount of data during working hours, because the SERP can become quite unresponsive during data import. Also, editing a HansaWorld application in flex.bi sometimes can be a bit annoying, because of authentication issues. If you have seen the Unauthorized error more than a couple of times, you know what we mean.
Well, that’s in the past. We have streamlined the import process for our HansaWorld application, to minimize the authentication request count and limit the load on client’s SERP. We know that some of you will be pleased by that.
Watch our new version webinar HERE.
These are just our top picks from all of the new features in flex.bi 7.0 and 7.0.1.
Please, visit our changelog, for the complete list, and of course, explore and check out those goodies yourself in your account.
Keep warm and keep on reporting!
