This is the second post of a series dedicated to Viney@rd features. Find the first here.

Viney@rd is not a mere reporting tool. While the ability to feed each single cell in a worksheet is very important, all the model building process made through MasterBook.xls has a very high value added. The key point is that no database knowledge is required and data can be saved within models directly by Excel....

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This is the first post of a series focused on a single Viney@rd feature, to let you know about those features which are not immediately visible but, all together, build up Viney@rd strength.

 

Let’s start with query synchronization.

 

In a workbook you can often have two similar queries, which differ only from few particulars, mainly conditions. A typical case is the current year vs previous year or budget comparison.
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Some software entrepreneurs, when asked, say that their market is whoever buys the box. Some have a clue about who their customers are, but they really do not know well. Some others have a razor sharp knowledge of their market and carefully drive their application development: they know their market positioning. Market positioning is not something that happens, it is a choice that should drive your development efforts. So, it is worth knowing something about. In this post I will even resist the urge to explain where Viney@rd is positioned within the market, so keep reading safely. ...

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I've been asked about how Viney@rd relates with the environment that Microsoft is designing with PowerPivot, Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010 upgrades (Gregory and Rob, thank you for considering!). I didn't have had the occasion to dig deep in all those applications yet, so I want to lay only few points that appear quite acquired so far.

I must confess that there has been a moment when I feared that Viney@rd was doomed to become a poor copy. Luckily, some of the ideas which Viney@rd is based upon are such that the others are too snob to implement them ;o)...

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When I'm working on Viney@rd I spend quite a large amount of time surfing the web, checking blogs on Twitter and Facebook. I try to connect with people who could be interested to Viney@rd, of course. Seen from the outside this activity appear to be a waste of time....

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Building version 1.1 has been a tough work, that's why I disappeared for a while. New features have been added but, most of all, a lot of testing has been done, making this release a lot more stable than the previous.
The leit-motiv of this release is "Listen to the users".

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It is often said and widely acknowledged that a datawarehouse for business data analysis is something for the big guys. I do not agree at all! Having little data does not mean that the environment is not complex. I had small customers which required very advanced analytics to keep up with what is going on.
So, I try to explain as simply as I can why you need a database for business data analysis (i.e. a datawarehouse) EVEN IF you are a small or medium company, have few data and your server can handle all the workload etc....

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In a previous post, I already talked about a BI vendor I came across in my "other" job as a BI consultant. Maybe one day I'll disclose the name but now I can't, thus I'm using the fake name "Sally".

Their product has strength and weaknesses, but overall is a good choice, in my opinion, for managerial accounting. Actually, the decision to support Sally has been taken at a level higher than mine so I have to comply.
To consolidate this new partnership, I spent a couple of days with Sally people, got a bit of training and invested few other days experimenting, in the view of a project we'll start in the coming days.

I focused on the technical side but, en passant, I was sitting in the same room of a briefing with the sales and marketing people.

Then I saw The Slide....

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Since when I started working on StraySoft, my life has changed. Should I stop this adventure now because alien abducted me to Mars, I'd bring in space with me a lot of new experiences.

First, I do not watch TV any more. TV is an incredible time waster, I realized I used to turn it on only because it relieved me from thinking. We believe that, sometimes, we need to stop thinking and let our brain rest. I think this is a fake. As long as you think to something you're passionate about, you do not need any mental rest. TV is a poor surrogate for using your brain in a pleasant and productive way.
Actually I pick carefully what I want to see (mainly journalism and sports) and I skip the so called "entertainment" flowing out of the screen. Far from being tired, my brain has never been in a better shape.

I learnt to use my time much more efficiently. StraySoft requires from one to four extra work hours a day, and 10/12 hours on weekends, hence I have to reserve time for my wife and other "routine" tasks. Since when I begun with StraySoft, the quality of the time I spend with my wife has increased substantially. We no longer sleep together on the couch in front of the TV set but we actually talk, or we do something, or we go somewhere together. She is not completely comfortable with the situation but yet very supportive, and she does not dislike the "fast track".

I learnt a lot on entrepreneurship. I've always been a salaried worker but, being a consultant I have rather deep knowledge of the process that make a company work. Nonetheless I realized that entrepreneurship is different. The glasses you wear are of a different color, and the angles you discover are otherwise hidden. It's much more catching. Much more fun.
Along the way I met a lot of people who enriched me in a way I thought it could never be possible. They are so different from the people I was used to hang around, their common background is "it can be done!" instead of "is there a way to f*** the others?".

I keep my consulting job totally separate from this effort, but my performance dramatically improved; I'm more focused, fast learning and assertive. I hope I won't get promoted because I have no time to steal from StraySoft!

It appears that someone is starting to think that I'm a rockstar or sort of :o)

Ajay Ohri from DecisionStats interviewed me about the company and BI in general.
Thank you Ajay for giving me voice!

Please find the interview here

I've been interviewed on BI and Viney@rd by Michael Johnson, who run a really interesting blog.
Thank you Mike for giving me voice!
Please find the interview here

Visit Mike's site at http://www.bigattichouse.com/

I just came across a BI app vendor that shall remain nameless. In the last weeks I had the occasion to evaluate in depth their product. Like many others it has strengths and weaknesses and a few outstanding points.
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Welcome! From today (09/14/2009) Viney@rd version 1.0.1 is available!

What’s new in version 1.0.1?...

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In this third and final part of the road to making the 1.0 I’ll shortly describe all the other tasks I had to accomplish before releasing the application....

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In this second part of my journey through putting online a software business, I'll focus on the new application name, the damage I did changing it, and all the myriads of tasks that must be accomplished to go online with a decent website.

After receiving a few site and overall marketing reviews I'm not proud of, I decided to dump the old site and the old overall look to get something new. I sat on the couch on the back of my desk with a notes and a pen and run a one-man brainstorming session. ...

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I was asked about my daily work, especially how I do things.
Apparently this kind of information is terribly interesting for those who are willing to make the leap and going micro-ISV by themselves.
I do not think to be a "best practice" model; but I can say that some procedures work for me.

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Viney@rd will fit, at least by now, inside the broader "workgroup intelligence" category. This is often criticized because of the lack of focus on delivering a single version of truth. In my opinion, backed by a respectable number of disappointing projects, there's nothing like a single version of truth. In fact, enforcing it may do more evil than good....

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Those who know me personally will be surprised that, in the back of my brain, sometimes a thought passes by :o).

 

Now that the release 1.0 is approaching I'm frantically working on the new website, as the old one is really inadequate. Working on the site, I reviewed all the scripts from beginning and I realized one thing: communicating business intelligence is extremely hard. ...

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You did not hear from me for quite a long time. I did not give up, I'll never do! The point is that I had some personal issues which prevented me from working on Vineyard on a regular basis. My 9-6 job expanded as we feel the crisis as many other business do, so an extra effort is required to stay on the edge.

Anyway, I never stopped developing Vineyard, and now I make available a new version which features a lot of improvements. you can download it from here. It was clear I had to improve the user experience when I used Vineyard to replicate a small project I did with other tools. It was an enlightening experience. If the lacking of enterprise features is given for granted, loading data and replicating reports was not easy at all. This also confirmed a few beta testers comments, that, for sake of cleanliness, at first, I did not agree with.

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Hello everybody.
Life has been hectic in the last days as I had few personal issues, but, most of all, I was sorting out a number of bugs from Vineyard and made the query actually usable.
I thank all those who had the patience to install Vineyard because the ModelDoc bug was really annoying.

The new query panel now features field sorting, hiding and sorting.
The filter panel has been improved and the long running queries now actually notify the user.

These features are now much more "industrial strength". Albeit Excel gives the user an unparalleled flexibility, a certain degree of good query formatting saves loads of work!

Feel free to download Vineyard from here. Simply install over the existing, the database is left untouched.

Enjoy

I've been a BI consultant since the beginning of my career. My experience ranges from small projects with a handful of users to large corporation level systems. I've been working in luxury offices with moquette and boiserie and in country settlements with the smell of the cattle coming in through the windows.

Despite this wide range of different environments, there is one element that accomunates them all: the ansiety to demonstrate that the project delivers actual value....

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OK pals, here we are for our new beta release.
I'd label this a minor release too but these are all steps toward a better overall usability.

- I filled a wide hole in test data that made the same query return different results on pivot and Vineyard query....

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I just released a new Beta version.

In the groove of a better user experience, it adds sorting to the list of values in the filters form. I also corrected a bunch of awful minor bugs.

To install, it, as usual, uninstalla the existing version and install the new. Nothing must be done to the database.

You can download it from here or from the usual download page.

Have fun!

This release comprises many of the suggestions I received from the early Beta testers.

The general point that emerged from the comments was quite clear. I devoted a lot of effort to the modeling tool and overlooked the Query Add-in. With this release I’m closing the gap.  The new version can be downloaded here. ...

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