creating dynamics ax dashboards using visio services

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CREATING BI DASHBOARDS USING VISIO

SERVICES

Dynamics AX | BI | Visio | Dashboarding

One of the new features in Visio 2010 is the ability to create data driven diagrams and dashboards, and post them directly to SharePoint repositories for everyone to access. This opens up a new BI tool for the users to take advantage of.

In this example we will show how you can use Visio to create these Pivot Diagrams. It’s pretty darn cool.


Create Your

PivotDiagram

To create a data driven Visio document, choose the PivotDiagram template when you create a new document. If you have not used this before, then you can find it in the Business group.


Create Your

PivotDiagram

Visio will now ask you where you want to get the data from. In this case we will attach to the pre-defined cubes within Dynamics AX 2012.


Create Your

PivotDiagram

Select the server.


Create Your

PivotDiagram

And then the cube.


Create Your

PivotDiagram

You can save the name of the connection if you like.


Create Your

PivotDiagram

Select the Data Connection – I just accepted the defaults.


Create Your

PivotDiagram

Almost done.


Create Your

PivotDiagram

Now the Visio diagram will show up, and on the left will be the connections to the OLAP cube.


Create Your

PivotDiagram

I don’t want to report off the product count, so I deselected the default measure, and chose the measure for the invoice dollars.


PivotDiagram

Created

To expand out the diagram, just select the dimension that you want, and the PivotDiagram will explode out the child values.

Now you have a data tree.


Filter Out Results

Some of the results have 0 values, so we can filter them out on the dashboard by just selecting the measure, and choosing the Configure Measure option.


Filter Out Results

In the dialog box, you can create a selection condition for the results that you want to return. Here we are just selecting the non-negative values.


All Null Values

Removed

Now the data looks a little better.


Select Data To

Display

Now we can change data that is being displayed, and add some gauges. To do this, select the Edit Data Graphic from the Data Graphic button in the ribbon bar.


Select Data To

Display

This will pull up the list of fields that we are showing in the detail panels.


Select Data To

Display

When you add a new item, you an select from the list of available fields being returned by the cube.


Select Data To

Display

And also select how you want the data to be displayed.


Select Data To

Display

For the element, we will show the data as a Speedometer.


Select Data To

Display

Now we will just tweak the parameters a little to set the high limit, and also override the default prompt because it is a little too long.


Select Data To

Display

Since this field is the same as the prior one that I had, we can delete the old entry.


Now We Have

Gauges

Very cool.


A Couple More

Measures Added

We can follow the same process and also add in some additional fields.


Add Some Bling

One of the benefits of using Visio is that you can add additional embellishments to the diagram. In this next step we will add a background image, and make the diagram look a little more elegant. To start off we will just add a world map…


Add Some Bling

And we can also change the formatting for the title.


Add Some Bling

There are two entries in the data that we are not too concerned with, but rather than delete the entries, if you select the panels, you can choose to merge the two nodes together. This is useful for manually tweaking data groups.


Add Some Bling

Now the nodes are combined.


Add Some Bling

Although the nodes are all connected with lines, they don’t have to be. We are going to create a free-flow diagram, so we just deleted them.


Add Some Bling

Now we can move the total to the header area.


Add Some Bling

And also distribute out the regional sales nodes to the appropriate places on the map.


That Looks Cool

With a little more tweaking of the formatting and coloring of the nodes we get a pretty nice dashboard.


Publish To

SharePoint

The final step is to publish the PivotDiagram up to SharePoint so that everyone else can access the report.


Publish To

SharePoint

When you publish the diagram, make sure that you choose the Web Drawing format. This will allow you to see the Visio diagram within the browser.


Dashboard

Available For

Everyone

Very cool.

About

Murray Fife

creating dynamics ax dashboards using visio services

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