This is a product demonstration of MicroStrategy Desktop which is a brand
new interface that we've launched with MicroStrategy 10 as part of the release.
And it allows business users to connect to data regardless of the type of source and
to conduct visual data discovery on their own.
And to self serve without any support from IT.
I'm gonna start with this demonstration by launching a sales dashboard,
an MSDR file that we have saved on this Mac.
You can download and install the desktop tool on your Mac or
PC in a matter of minutes, and get started with visual data discovery.
By launching this tool you can see how it invokes the client that has been
downloaded and installed.
As you can see with MicroStrategy 10, we've moved away from Flash, and
this is a brand new HTML5 interface.
You can see how we've positioned the data on the left,
you can select all the visualizations from your right.
What you're seeing here is a dashboard that has revenue information
that has been plotted on a geospatial map.
We've integrated with Esri, which gives you out of the box mapping capability,
complete interactivity as you can see.
Free licensing is available with the product.
And it can readily drag and drop data onto a map
to visualize information like revenue rather easily and quickly as well.
If you'd like to interact with data on visualizations that are not out of
the box, in this case there are several D3 options.
In addition to D3, you can add any third party or
open source visualization into your analysis, and drag and
drop data in exactly the same manner, and drill down in values.
So, if you have revenue data and
you want to visualize some revenue over time, you can do that as well.
And really, interact with the data to make it a much more enriched experience
to make some insights on top of the data that you have.
In addition to being able to add visualizations, you can add multiple
visualizations and interact with them between each other as well.
In this case you can see how I can highlight certain data points on a map,
and use that as a filter with others.
So there's extreme interactivity between visualizations that give you that rich
analytical experience through the desktop interface as well.
To add some additional analysis on top of that,
you can even bring in new visualizations.
So let's say this in out of the box visualization for
me to be able to visualize revenue over time.
I can do that and just drag and drop the relevant information from that panel
onto the next one, and instantly I can plot all my information and
revenue information of a date attribute that I have within my data set and you can
see how quickly I have that information and then I can quickly observe any trend.
If I want to make the trends a little bit more evident and let's say I want to do
this over a month and I don't have the month attribute, I can select the month
option from this editor over here and really start enriching the dimensions
within my analysis even though it does not exist within my date source.
So I can build these attributes on the fly,
which really gives the analyst a lot more power to be self-serving.
So I can just select and
add month and instantly get that trend that I'm looking for.
It makes it a lot more easier to identify some patterns within my data.
Microstrategy 10 has really added a lot of the analytical workflow and
has exposed this with easy to use menu options.
So for instance, if I want to add let's say a trend line,
I can just go ahead an enable that with a single click.
So this is a brand new feature with MicroStrategy 10 and
really gives the analyst some savvy options to do some complicated analysis
in a very easy manner, and not only do we expose these features but
you also have the ability to format it.
So some rich formatting capabilities have been added into the ten release as well.
In addition to be able to create trend lines and
forecasting lines, you can also enable that rather easily.
You can see that within a single click I can start predicting values
by simply enabling forecasting and forwarding that.
In a matter of seconds I can start seeing, let's say for instance,
I don't have values beyond April 2015.
But now I can enable that.
So that makes me as an analyst who does not have any training on building some
complex metrics, but I have the ability to do some advanced analytics on my own now.
And again, this is a testament to how the desktop tool allows analysts
to do some enriched analytics on their own in a very self-sufficient manner.
So that was done really quickly.
To get started with showing you what the process is in terms of creating
a dashboard from scratch.
Let's start with showing you essentially what the desktop tool is, for
those of you who are going to get started with it on your own.
The process is fairly simple.
You connect to a data source.
You bring the data in, and you can start building your visualizations.
In cases where you need to start doing some data preparation,
you can do that as well with a brand new data wrangling capability that has been
injected into the desktop functionality as well.
So you can see this is the starting interface as soon as you launch
the MicroStrategy desktop.
This is the interface that you will see.
Here I already have some data, but if you want to bring in data
you can quickly start by clicking on this option and you'll notice how there
are several options available within the desktop interface.
You can choose from any of these native connectors and
options connectors we have over here.
Or you could choose the database option and
connect to multiple ODBC options to multiple database,
whether it's SQL server or [INAUDIBLE] or [INAUDIBLE] and really bring in data.
The key point that I want to make here is that you have the ability to bring
in data from multiple different sources and the experience is exactly the same.
So whether you choose an Excel spreadsheet, or
whether you choose a Hadoop option, the experience is exactly the same.
And there's no new learning curve.
You can do that fairly quickly.
In this example I'm going to start by choosing a cloud option.
I'll choose my Salesforce.com account.
It's native connector.
Again, notice how I'm not leaving the interface.
I'm bringing in information from my Salesforce account.
It's one seamless workflow.
So I log into the account.
And now I can browse into my Salesforce reports and drag and
drop data and bring that into my analysis.
So by bringing that in, readily it converts the information within
Salesforce and brings in those tables and columns and
converts them into micro-strategy translated attributes and metrics.
There's no data modeling involved at the desktop and
it is a complete business user friendly tool.
And notice how everything has been done without any requirement for
data architecting or modeling, and enables business users to start
doing analytics on their own in a very self serving manner.
So once you bring in data, the next stage is to start visualizing the data, but
often times it's a required for you to wrangle the information, or
prepare or cleanse the information.
Data wrangling has been added as a seamless workflow,
so let's say there's web channel in this table and I want to remove that.
I select the wrangling option and I come to this graphical user interface, and
I have multiple options over here to tweak and
cleanse the way my data looks for improved analyses on top of it.
For instance, in the city column over here, notice how there's some blank cells,
and if I want to fill those cells in, I don't have to take it into Excel.
I just click on it and then select from the recommended options, and
it automatically fills down those values.
Let's say there's some discrepancies within the value.
Let's say there's Washington D.C.,
Washington DC No one wants two of those within one single table.
No one wants two cities called Washington D-dot, C-dot.
It just creates wrong analysis.
So let's say if I want to consolidate that,
I have the ability to do that from within this interface.
So I just remove that, I change it to the way I want it to be, and
I apply it to the entire table.
And then instantly I can start recording all those values, and
you notice how when I select something it automatically makes some
recommendations intelligently on its own.
So everything is graphical in nature, and I can start editing it and
making those changes instantly.
Anything that I do is being recorded as a history script on the top right corner.
So this isn't really a one time process.
So if I bring in data from sales force for the first time, and
I constantly need to keep bringing it in on a daily basis.
Let's say when my information has been refreshed, I have the ability to reapply
this history script so I don't have to do this over again.
So there's a repeated automation that's built into this process, and instantly I
can apply that from using this history script that's on my top right hand column.
You can do several other things as well with data wrangling and data preparation.
So let's say I want to look at profile and profile my data and
find any spelling errors.
I can profile my text based columns instantly and
if I want to merge and cluster some of them
to create consolidated values I have the ability to do that.
Again completely graphical in nature for me to be able to make these changes
on the fly without breaking that process and taking it out into Excel.
These are just some minor examples and
you can do a lot more with this tool there are dozens of functions within it.
And we're constantly going to improve the way data wrangling has been seamlessly