SummaryOrganizations struggle to understand their data and generate new value. They want to create powerful and easy-to-use visualizations that capture the full context of their ever-expanding cat-alogues of data. Data growth is esti-mated at 10 times bi-annually with 90 percent of data created in the past two years. Addressing this challenge gets more complex when considering the variety and velocity at which that data is being created. Further, data integrity and related security considerations make this a daunting task. But even with these challenges, the potential of this data to the enterprise is signifi-cant – it enables them to gain insights and create new business opportunities through powerful visualization tools. Many companies lack the necessary resources and mature concepts to develop sophisticated applications and powerful analytical tools.

These companies still rely on in-house solutions that are based on Microsoft® Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint to

handle reporting even though this method is time consuming because it includes extraction, manipulation and transformation of data. The resulting consistency and transparency of data and dashboards is poor, limiting clear version control. Most importantly, there is no interaction with those static dash-boards as calculations must be re-done if changes are required. To overcome this challenge, MindSphere® the cloud-based, open IoT operating system from Siemens, is offering Visual Explorer built on the Tableau® Software engine. Visual Explorer is an integrated tool for visualization, dashboarding and data analytics.

Visual ExplorerVisual Explorer enables users to create and share customized visualizations thanks to a web-based editor built on Tableau, the market leader for data visualization. The entire process of con-necting MindSphere data, creating visu-alizations and distributing them, is 100 percent web-based. Visualizations can be shared internally and externally to expedite data-driven decision making that will improve the overall health of connected assets. Using Visual Explorer empowers every user in your company, regardless of their skill set, to easily access, analyze and quickly interpret large amounts of data.

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Benefits• Understand data by creating easy-

to-use dashboards that share insights

• Use advanced analytics tools to quickly receive actionable insights from data

• Use the powerful data preparation and analytics engine of Tableau to enrich MindSphere data to fit to visualization requirements

• Offers easy access to data as synchronized data from IoT storage and the Integrated Data Lake is set up through a convenient UI

• Share visualizations internally with engineers or service technicians and externally with customers

Features• Seamless access and visualization

of IoT data using Tableau functionality

• Use drag-and-drop analytics tools

• Stay current by using the subscription and alert functionality

Visual Explorer

Create highly flexible, customized dashboards and distribute them as apps to third parties

Visual Explorer

Capabilities

Customize reports and integrate dashboards for actionable insightsAre you responsible for creating content based on an organization’s data? Visual Explorer supports creating customized visualizations based on the data sources created in Visual Explorer Connector. Visual Explorer is built on Tableau – the pioneer in data visualization and visual analytics – which offers the possibility to visualize data. With Visual Explorer, share dashboards within the MindSphere tenant and to all the subtenants.

Visual Explorer brings visualization to the entire organization. These custom-ized reports and integrated dashboards are meant to communicate data insights across the organization no mat-ter the technical level of the individual. Enable decision makers to see and make use of the new actionable insights. Enable technical and non-technical users to build the visualizations that communicate the actionable insights by removing the programming barrier from the building process. Use the drag and drop premade function blocks of Tableau that have complex

MINDSPHERE

Features continued

Figure 1: Take advantage of integrated reports and customizable dashboards in Visual Explorer.

programming behind them to build descriptive and interactive visualizations of data to share. Focus on creating solu-tions rather than worrying about the technical process of building visualizations.

Users accessing dashboards can explore data interactively by zooming into spe-cific areas of the dashboards, highlight-ing certain data points and scale according to their needs. Also take advantage of functionalities such as drill down, hierarchies, sorting, grouping, creating sets, set actions, and filter to allow everyone in an organization can now see patterns and spot trends.

Use Tableau to power Visual ExplorerBy using Tableau to power Visual Explorer, everyone across an organiza-tion can see and understand data, no matter their level of technical aptitude. This ranges from the causal non-techni-cal user looking to make more data-driven solutions all the way to data enthusiasts who want to use web authoring to ask new questions from published data sources. Tableau uses visual best practices to identify types of data and set them into relation but still gives the flexibility to edit according to

• Bring data on to maps to track assets

• Choose between different roles to ensure each user has the appropriate level of access

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specific needs. The mapping functional-ity of Tableau can be used for visualiz-ing the location of assets and how they are moving. Tableau enables data experts to create and share their visual-izations and data sources with the rest of the organization through the power of Visual Explorer.

Visual Explorer ConnectorThe Visual Explorer Connector was cre-ated to effortlessly connect data sources with Tableau. Use the connector to define data sources based on the data stored in a MindSphere tenant. Data will automatically be imported to easily cre-ate dashboards.

MindSphereMindSphere is the cloud-based, open Internet of Things (IoT) operating sys-tem from Siemens that connects real things to the digital world and provides powerful industry applications and digi-tal services to drive business success. MindSphere’s open platform as a service (PaaS) enables a rich partner ecosystem to develop and deliver new applications.

Figure 2: Visual Explorer allows users to clearly visualize data from dashboards.

Figure 3: Purchasing packages for Visual Explorer.

Visual Explorer Creator Small Medium Large

Pricing USD $258/ month Contact us Contact usNumber of Creator users 5 20 100

Visual Explorer Viewer Small Medium Large

Pricing USD $344/ month Contact us Contact usNumber of Viewer users 20 100 500