A little over a month on my Google Reader, I got an RSS Feed from the Business Object SAP Developer Network about an Xcelsius Challenge. The blog was put out by Jason Cao of SAP BusinessObjects and the challenge was to use community poll results in Xcelsius 2008 to showcase a developer’s skills. Not really interested, I marked it as read and moved along with my morning ritual of checking the happenings of the world. Later on in the day we had a company meeting to discuss upcoming projects and ideas for a new marketing campaign. One of the topics led us to chatting about creating some new demo dashboards for our website. This is when a light bulb went off in my head and I brought the challenge to the table. Long story short, the boss man thought it was a great idea and an easy way to get a demo dashboard done and put our name out on the SAP Community Network.
Challenge
The challenge was to create an Xcelsius 2008 dashboard using data from a SCN Community Poll of what were peoples’ favorite Olympic Sport to watch. The rules were pretty simple:
- One Entry per member
- Include Poll Results
- Use Xcelsius
- Submit by 4/30/2010
Optionally, developers could also use other Olympic data in the dashboard as well as create a blog post about your submission.
Check out the original blog post here!
Design
One of the things that we pride ourselves on is the ability to create dashboards that are different from the norm. This challenge was no exception to that. We wanted to make it look and feel almost like a website and have people question whether it was really created in Xcelsius. One of the driving factors toward the design actually was the Vancouver 2010 website. The color palette worked well and the flow from page to page was pretty cool so we hooked some of that into what we had envisioned to arrive at the finished product.
Data
All the data is self contained in the dashboard and was pulled from the following websites:
Finished Dashboard
Over the past month, I have taken time here and there to work on the dashboard. As with any dashboard/report/universe, there is always something else that can be added to enhance the user experience. If I added everything I wanted to this dashboard, I would be developing this on and off for the next 2 months so I had to put a limit on what I was going to do and be “happy” with what was developed.
Click here for the working dashboard. Please check it out and let me know of any suggestions/comments!
Related Posts:
- Xcelsius 2008 SP 3 Fix Pack 5 Now Available!
- Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius 2008): Tips and Tricks ep5: Parent and Child Dashboards from InfoView using Doc Download!
- Xcelsius 2008 SP 3 Fix Pack 4 Now Available!
- Xcelsius 2008 SP 3 Fix Pack 3 Now Available!
- Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius 2008): Tips and Tricks ep4: Navigation using Label Based Menus and Push Buttons
Friday, April 16, 2010
Xcelsius (Crystal Dashboard Design)