Dec 28, 2010

New Sorting Feature in Charts

Sorting of Charts has been one of the most requested feature in Zoho Analytics. Now you can sort the data points plotted on the chart along the axis labels. When your chart contains a Category (String) or Date column in either X or Y axis and you want to sort the chart data in either ascending or descending order by its axis, then you can do that with the sorting feature.
Zoho Analytics allows you to sort chart data alphabetically or by date. To sort, select quick access icon in your chart or select Sort option from the tool bar and then click Sort Ascending or Sort Descending option.
Sort option will be enabled when a Category or Date column is plotted along either X or Y axis but not both. In case of a chart having multiple Y-axes, sorting is allowed only if you have a category or date column in the X-axis.

User Filters Supports Numeric Columns

Zoho Analytics introduced the support for User Filters in reports recently. In the first release it did not support including numeric columns in user filters of your reports. Only Date and Categorical columns where supported so far. Now you can also include numeric column based users filters in your reports.

To include a numeric user filter in a report, open the corresponding report in Edit Design mode, drop the required numeric column to be included in the User Filter tab. By default it will add the numeric filter as a slider.

You can edit the settings of numeric filter when you mouse over the filter column and click the Edit link. You can set the Display , Function to be applied, Component type to use (Slider and Multi-select combo are supported) and click Finish to apply the settings on the filter.

Enhanced Color Picker in Chart

Zoho Analytics now provides you with an enhanced and improved color picker for customizing the colors used in Charts. The new color picker provides a larger array of colors to pick from and options for specifying color as a RGB value. The color picker appears when you customize the legend color and when you define the color of Thresholds in a chart.

Dec 16, 2010

Scheduled periodic import of data in XLS/HTML file formats

Till now CSV/TSV data accessible from Web URLs could only be scheduled for periodic import of data. Now Zoho Analytics supports scheduled periodic import of data in XLS and HTML formats accessible from Web URLs.
When you choose to import your data from a Web URL into Zoho Analytics, you will find a link Would you like to schedule this import? in the Import Data Details dialog box. This will be shown in the third step of the import wizard. Clicking on this link will open Schedule Settings dialog box, which provides options to schedule your data import periodically.
You can also modify the scheduled import settings using Import -> Re-fetch/Schedule Import toolbar menu option of the table for which you had imported the data from a Web URL. To know more, refer to the Import Data help documentation

Export as XLS limit increased

When you export data from Zoho Analytics in XLS file format, the maximum number of cells (contained in the data) allowed was 100,000. Now the limit has been increased to 1 Million cells.

Dec 03, 2010

Create Reports Over Multiple Tables with Auto-join feature

Previously, when you create reports (Charts, Pivot tables, Summary views) you can only use columns from a single table in the report designer. If you wanted to create a report with columns that spanned across tables, a Query Table was to be created first. Then over this Query Table created you can create the report required.

With the new Auto-join feature this process has been simplified and you can now create reports easily using columns from multiple tables, in much the same way as you create reports over a single table.
For the Auto-join feature to work, you need to specify that two tables are related using the Lookup column feature available in Zoho Analytics. Once tables are related with each other using Lookup columns, then as you create a new report selecting any of table with lookup relationship, columns from all related tables will also listed under the Columns List panel in the report designer. You can drag and drop columns from across tables, to create your reports. Zoho Analytics will automatically join the data from these tables and generate the report for you.

Renaming Pivot/Summary Columns

After you create a Pivot/Summary View, you can now rename columns displayed.

To rename a Column

• Open your Pivot/Summary table in Edit Design Mode.
• Right-click the column name and select Rename Column option or double click on the column header(for Summary views).
• In the text area that shows, type a new column name.

Nov 18, 2010

Delete Filtered Rows

Previously, the only way to delete filtered rows was to delete a single row at a time. Now, Delete button has been provided under Filters option to permanently delete all filtered rows from your table.
Once you have filtered unwanted rows from your table, select the Delete Rows button to delete all the filtered rows.

Date format in Change datatype dialog

So far while changing a column's data type to Date in your table, you cannot set the date format if Zoho Analytics fails to recognize the date format contained. Now using the Set Date Format option in the Change Data Type dialog box, you can not only select the Date format from the provided list, but can also type your own custom format.

Remembering Import Settings

While importing data in to your table, Zoho Analytics saves data import settings like format, column names and other settings you have selected for later use. These settings will be the default settings when you import data in to the same table again. This can speed up your routine, if you frequently upload data files in to the table with same settings.

Oct 14, 2010

Export as xls

Zoho Analytics has provided many export options (csv, html, pdf, zip) for both charts & data. From this update, you can export tables as Microsoft Excel (xls) files too. In Tables and Query Tables, when you click on Export -> Export this View, you'll see a new As XLS option.

Domain Rebranding / Whitelabeling (Beta)

Zoho Analytics has offered a way to customize your logo in the UI and in the exported reports. Now we have extended this basic rebranding feature to full-fledged whitelabeling / domain rebranding. Salient points of this new beta feature include:

• Customized Domain - You can choose a domain like https://reports.yourorgname.com. And your employees / clients can access the reports from here.
• SSL Support - The reports being served out of your custom domain are safe and secure
• Authentication Integration - You can use your own authenication mechanism to log your users at the custom URL. (Note: You'll have to write some code to provide this authentication feature)
• Affordable Pricing - Keeping in line with Zoho's theme of affordable services, this whitelabeling feature from Zoho Analytics is available at a nominal cost. For pricing and other whitelabeling related inquiries, please write to us at support@zohocorp.com .
• For a demo of how the whitelableing feature would look like, please visit https://reports.finepick.com/.

Minor Updates / Issue Fixes

• In View Underlying Data, the data is now sortable
• Charts are now rendered properly in Google Chrome 7 and Firefox 4 Beta
• Title and description of charts have now been included as options in standalone & embed modes

• Date components in User Filters are sorted properly now

September 9, 2010

User Filters

From now on, viewers consuming your reports are more empowered, thanks to the newly introduced User Filters. View Mode Filters allow report viewers to filter and see charts for specific data ranges easily.
You can set one or more View Mode filters in the Edit Design mode. You'll see a new User Filters tab next to the Graph and Filters tabs (which used to be in the left and have been moved to the top). You can drag-and-drop columns and choose the filter values that need to be shown.

Once a view mode filter is chosen and the view saved, you'll see it appear in the View Mode. Viewers of a chart can easily choose the filter values to be applied from the drop down.
User Filters also appear in charts that are embedded. A present limitation is that numerical columns aren't yet supported.

Aug 25, 2010

More Sharing Options

Say you share a report/table to another user. You now have the option to specify if that user in turn can share that report/table to other users. When a table is shared using this option, the shared user can in turn share the reports he/she created over that table (child reports) to other users.

You'll find this new sharing option in the Share dialog box, Share -> Share this View to New Users -> Permissions
-> Share Options.

Jul 17, 2010

More Column Formatting Options

Numbers can now be displayed according to the browser locale settings. Let's take a number like 128896.98. When 'Apply User Locale Settings' is chosen, it will be shown as 123,896.98 in the USA and as 123.896,98 in Germany. Users can change this default behavior and have the numbers displayed in the way they want, too.
For accessing the format settings seen in the screenshot, right click on a number or currency column. Thousand and Decimal separators can be chosen from the drop down lists.

Public Sharing - Dialog Change

When a view is shared to the public using the Share -> Make this View Public option, the dialog that comes has been made much simpler and easily understandable. Whether the database is to listed in the Zoho Analytics Public Databases page is now shown as a check box (earlier, this option was a text link hidden in a paragraph of text).
A database whose views have been made public can be accessed without logging in at the URL as displayed in the screenshot.9