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What's New in Xcelsius 2008
by: Kristen St. Jean, Sr. BI Consultant, CRCP
Crystal Xcelsius 2008 is a tool that could hold much value for many
organizations. It allows data to be
presented with vivid visualizations quickly and easily and distributed to
everyone necessary to ensure that informed decisions can be made with up-to-date
information. Xcelsius 4.5 was very
helpful to many organizations, but Xcelsius 2008 goes above and beyond what
Xcelsius 4.5 ever could.
Many features have been added or upgraded in the new Crystal Xcelsius 2008.
Xcelsius is now a much more powerful tool than it was before.
Not only have the visuals been updated and redesigned, but the ability to
connect to live data has been greatly improved to speed the development process
of Xcelsius documents. We will
discuss only a few of the updated features within Xcelsius 2008.
The user interface has
been modified to make it more visually attractive and user-friendly.
One of the biggest changes to the user interface in Xcelsius 2008 is that
once you have imported a spreadsheet you can modify the spreadsheet within the
designer! Now, instead of having to
make the modifications in the actual Excel file and then reimport the
spreadsheet into Xcelsius designer, this can be completed within Xcelsius 2008
itself so the spreadsheet only needs to be imported one time when you start
developing! This makes creating
Xcelsius documents a much more streamlined process by reducing the repetition of
importing spreadsheets until they are just right.
Along with the ability to modify the spreadsheet within Xcelsius 2008,
designers also have the ability to see the spreadsheet at the same time that
they are designing models instead of having to go to the properties of a
component to see the underlying spreadsheet.
Another great
improvement is that now components can be copied from one instance of Xcelsius
and pasted to another. This feature
will allow developers to spend less time on formatting and getting the visuals
to be standard in each report and more time developing meaningful displays that
will help decisions to be made in the company.
Now, if you have a component formatted just the way you want it in one
Xcelsius 2008 model and want a copy in another model, instead of having to
recreate it with the exact options chosen in the first model, you can simply
copy and paste and connect it to you new model!
And speaking of components, there are several new components that have
been added to Xcelsius 2008 which have not been available before!
These include the Tree Map Chart, History Component, Tab Set Container,
Panel Container, Trend Analyzer, Reset Button, Print Button, Connection Refresh
Button, and more Maps including Asia by Country, Africa by Country, California
by County, China by Region, Europe by Country, European Union by Country and
many, many more to help you create models that meet the needs of your users!
Here are several more
great advances that have been made in the latest version of Xcelsuis.
Xcelsius components can now be easily embedded in reports created using
Crystal Reports 2008, exporting to BusinessObjects Enterprise has been
stream-lined by the addition of the ability to export with just one click, and
Xcelsius now has an SDK available with which you can create your own components
that are specific to your companies needs and desires.
Next time, we’ll discuss some more of the new features in Xcelsius 2008
in greater detail.
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