Archive for Crystal Xcelsius
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Excel, Crystal Xcelsius, dashboards and domain names
Funny story… I was playing with domain names today, trying to register names for future projects like “exceldashboards.com”. Unfortunately, this is already taken. And who owns it? Business Objects, the makers of Crystal Xcelsius (remember my Xcelsius dashboard series?). Type exceldashboards.com (I refuse to add a link) and you’ll be redirected to the xcelsius home [...]
No Crystal Xcelsius dashboard, sorry
This is the last post in a series where I examined the possibility of creating a Crystal Xcelsius dashboard using my Demographic Dashboard as a benchmark. I’ll discuss here my overall conclusions.
I must say from the start that I am very disappointed.
Let’s start by the data set and Xcelsius integration with Excel. I struggle everyday [...]
A line chart in Crystal Xcelsius: how difficult can it be?
Can Crystal Xcelsius replace Excel as a charting tool? As the regular readers know, I am creating an Xcelsius version of my Excel Demographic Dashboard to answer this simple question.
I am afraid the results until now are less than stellar. Although I could easily add four gauges with the four main demographic KPI, I am [...]
Is Crystal Xcelsius a toy piano?
Pascal Comelade, a french musician, plays toy pianos for a living. How many of us could do the same? How many of us could (professionally) use toys instead of our standard, grown-up tools?
Now imagine that a toy maker starts marketing their toys as serious musical instruments. How would Beethoven’s 5th Symphony sound like? At first, [...]
XCelsius Dashboard: the population pyramid
Can my Excel Demographic Dashboard be recreated in Crystal XCelsius? This is the main theme for this series of posts. In the first post I set the stage, define the rules and show how the basic “demographic KPI’s” can be displayed using gauges. The second post discusses one of the major drawbacks I find [...]
Sparklines, Excel, Crystal Xcelsius and stealth-mode charts
You struggle every single day to design the best, the most eye-catching chart for the next presentation. If your goal is to impress your boss, you can stop reading, I have nothing new to offer, I can’t even impress mine. But if you really want to understand your data, there is some (hopefully) interesting [...]
Demographic Dashboard: The Crystal Xcelsius Edition?
Part 1: The Beginning
I just downloaded the trial (full-featured) version of Crystal Xcelsius Professional 4.5. This is a typical dashboard solution from a leading vendor and, although Stephen Few doesn’t like it I decided to buy it.
Well, on one simple condition: by the end of the trial period I must have a working Crystal Xcelsius [...]
