confirmit hub

Copyright © 2013 Confirmit. All Rights Reserved. Confirmit Confidential.

Confirmit HubWhat’s New in Confirmit Felix – 2013-08-07

Ole AndresenDirector, Product Management

[email protected]

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The introduction of the Confirmit Hub in Confirmit 18 serves two main purposes:1. Act as a replacement/alternative to the proprietary

“BitStream” columnar database for analytics/reporting, offering further improvements in performance, scalability and stability of our reporting solutions (handling millions of records). It will also make life easier for SaaS Operations/On Premise clients.

2. Allow data sources of different types to be brought together for use in dashboards, analysis, action management, and other areas.

Confirmit Hub - Overview

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The Confirmit Hub should provide good support for two main “classes” of use cases:1. Reporting and analytics on independent, ad-hoc surveys,

whether it is done through Reportal, Active Dashboards or the new Ad-hoc Analytics capabilities that will be introduced in version 18.

2. Reporting and analytics on survey programs (VoC and other types of programs) where we bring multiple data sources of different types together. This is done through a new module called the Hub Designer where we define which data sources that should be brought in and the relationships between them, so that we can build dashboards and reports performing analysis across these data sources.

Main use cases

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The Confirmit Hub will support:• Surveys (Professional/Express/Polls) on Optimized DB

format• Standard Panels/Professional Panels

The Confirmit Hub will not support:• Surveys on Legacy DB format• Basic Panels

Supported Surveys/Panels

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The Confirmit Hub is built onColumnstore Indexes, which was introduced in MS SQL Server 2012. Columnstore Indexes can read and process very large datasets quickly.

This requires MS SQL Server Enterprise Edition, so On-Premise clients that want to use the Confirmit Hub, will have to have Enterprise Edition installed. Note that BitStream will still be supported in Version 18, so Enterprise Edition is not mandatory for Version 18, but without it On-Premise clients will not get access to the Hub functionality. Over time BitStream will be phased out and we will only support SQL Columnstore Indexes (exact timing TBD).

Hub Database Technology

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg492088.aspx

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The Hub will be included in version 18 for both SaaS and On-Premise clients (if on SQL Server Enterprise Edition).In version 18 there will be 3 reporting platforms available on top of the Hub: Reportal, Ad-hoc analytics (new) and Active Dashboards (from CustomerSat). In addition CustomerSat’s Action Management platform will be integrated with the Hub.Availability:

On-Premise Availability

SaaS On-PremiseReportal Hub and BitStream Hub and BitStream

Ad-hoc analytics (new)

Hub Hub

Active Dashboards (CustomerSat)

Hub Not available

Action Management (CustomerSat)

Hub Not available


1. Single survey data source – replacing BitStream

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Nothing will automatically change when Version 18 is introduced. Existing reports will continue to use BitStream just as now, and BitStream will continue to be supported.

Users will have to specifically switch to using Confirmit Hub for existing reports.

Replacing BitStream

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For single-survey reports, users can generate a Hub for reporting and analysis in similar way to generation of BitStream files:

Currently you also need to «Enable Change Tracking» in Survey Management->Overview, but this will be changed to happen automatically behind the scenes.

Using Hub for single-survey reports

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• You can create both Bitstream files and Hub on the same project, and switch between the two back-ends in Reportal. So we are able to directly compare the BitStream and Hub analytics engine.

• When reporting off an independent survey the report is set up just as today, selecting the survey as source in the create report wizard.

Use BitStream or Hub in Reportal

• For a project on optimized db format, unchecking “Use BitStream files” means Hub will be used. For a project on legacy db format, unchecking it means the old SQL tabulation engine will be used, not Hub.

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The following functionality is not yet supported in reports using Hub as back-end, but we are working on it:• Hitlists/Single View/Verbatim tables• Recoded variables• Cluster/factor/regression/correlation• Fiscal Calendar• Standard and Professional Panels• Filter expressions

Reportal functionality not yet supported

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The following functionality will not be supported in Reportal reports using Hub as back-end:• Timezone offset (may come after v18)• Basic Panels• Legacy Db format• Filter tree/TGL filter/Simple filter

In addition, data sources with multiple surveys, joins and unions will require using the Hub Designer instead of the current data source functionality in Reportal.

Reportal functionality not supported

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With the Hub we are introducing two long requested new features for reporting across loop levels in a survey. Examples:• Doctors->Patients->Drugs• Traveler->Trips• Household->Household members

These features are:1. Aggregation level2. Pre-aggregation

These features will also be supported in one-to-many relationships defined in the Hub Designer.

Loop handling (One-to-many)

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Currently level of aggregation is chosen automatically as the lowest level in an intersection among all groupings, measures and filters in an aggregated table.This means you can aggregate on the lowest level, so you can for example do a table to get the number of male and female patient’s grouped by the doctor’s location in the survey on the right.But you can not get number of doctors, grouped by location, that have patients that use a particular drug, i.e. aggregating on a higher level.

Aggregation Level

Also, you can not process intersections with variables from different branches, so combining data on household_members with data on household_cars in the example on the left hand. (“Car brands in household by age of household members.”)

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Current behavior (lowest level) will continue to be default.In addition, users can now set level of aggregation, as a property on tables, so that you could set “doctors” as the level when crossing with “drugname”.

Aggregation Level

Also, for more complex examples involving crossing variables from different branches, the system should be able to select default aggregation level as the lowest common level, i.e. the household in the left example.

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When aggregation level is not the lowest level, there will be a two-step aggregation: First aggregate on lower level, and then aggregate on the higher level. This is called pre-aggregation.

To support this, we have introduced pre-aggregation functions in addition to the existing aggregation functions: Average (default), Count, Max, Min, Sum. This way we can combine different pre-aggregation and aggregation functions, and retrieve for example average number of people per household (Average of Count).

Pre-aggragation is a new property on header variables.

Pre-aggregation


2. Multiple data sources – Hub Designer

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Key Functions of the Hub

• Bring data in from different sources into a single environment• Surveys• Customer and employee databases• Organizational Hierarchies• CRM / Financial Data• Benchmarks• Structured / Unstructured

• Monitor and manage continual data feeds• Resolve issues that arise

• Merge data across sources • Example: A global NPS score merged from all transaction surveys

• Map data sources together• Example: Map revenue data to the hierarchy

• Prepare data for use in reporting, analytics and action management

The Backbone of Confirmit VoicesThe Confirmit data hub is a centralized area for data management and optimization. It allows data sources of different types to be brought together, relationships defined, and readied for use in dashboards, analysis, action management, and other areas.

Multiple Data Sources

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With the Hub we will continuously move data from surveys and other data sources over to a separate database (with SQL column indexes) for reporting and analytics, just as for BitStream files.The Confirmit Hub will support “near real-time“ updates of data, as an alternative to updating according to a set recurrence pattern (e.g. daily) as today. The Hub Loader will continuously (every 5 minutes) check data sources for changes, and trigger a synchronization of data when necessary.Both data and meta data (survey schema) will be synchronized.

Hub Loader – Near real-time updates

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The Hub Designer is a new Confirmit module that will be introduced in version 18. In the Hub Designer users set up a Hub, select which data sources that should be made available in the Hub, and define relationships between the data sources.In addition the users should be able to go to the Hub designer to monitor data feeds into the Hub, resolve issues etc.

We expect most enterprise clients to have one Hub for their VoC program.

MR companies, VoC consultancies as well as Confirmit users will be working with multiple Hubs, at least one per company they are working with.

Hub Designer

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Hub Designer


…..to be continued….

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• Hub functionality will start appearing on author.testlab in a few week’s time.

• Until then, Hub functionality can be tested on http://osl-devb70-ht01/confirm/ (contact me for logins)

• We would like to get access to some large, real databases for testing. Please let me know if you have any candidates.

Test server

http://osl-devb70-ht01/confirm/

http://osl-devb70-ht01/confirm/


Ole Andresen | Director, Product Management

[email protected]

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