Aperity User Guide

Getting Started in MicroStrategy Office –

Excel Front-End

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Table of ContentsIntroduction 3

Requirements to Run MSTR Office Front-End 4

MicroStrategy Office Installation 5-7

MSTR Toolbars 8

Right-Click Menu 9

MicroStrategy’s Help & User Guide 10

Accessing MSTR Options 11

Additional Setting (only for Report Builders) 12

Logging In & Retrieving 4.0 Project 13

Display Option Considerations 14

Recommended Setting Option – Default Display Type 15

Recommended Setting Option – Reusing and Sharing Prompt Answers 16-17

Recommended Setting Option – History List 18

Recommended Setting Option – Select Pages 19-20

Recommended Setting Option – Excel Size (Excel 2007 Users Only) 21

Generating Reports 22

Refresh, Re-execute Or Re-prompt 23

Clearing Saved Prompt Answers 24

Formatting from Within MSTR 25

Formatting from Within Excel 26-27

Formatting Recap 28

MSTR Office Considerations 29-30

Questions and Support 31

Appendix 32

Changing the Excel Tab Label 33-34

Adding Fixed Space, Rows or Columns to a Worksheet 35-36

Editing Web Reports 37-38

IntroductionMicroStrategy (MSTR) Office allows you to connect directly to the Aperity 4.0 project from your desktop, and is accessible through its toolbars in Excel, PowerPoint and Word. If you run QBR’s regularly, you have experience with this interface through PowerPoint.

With the QBR’s, reports within the PowerPoint presentation were prebuilt using the MSTR Office tools. With the Excel front-end, you can produce, format, sort and organize information generated in MSTR from within your local Excel session. Excel files then become live repositories of data linked to the MSTR 4.0 project. Thus, once a workbook is set up the way you like it, you then simply refresh the data – no need to re-run and export the report when you need fresh data.Notice in this diagram, there is no direct connection between Standard Reporting and MSTR Office. The metadata is scheduled to synchronize at 4am ET. That means any changes you implement in one reporting environment will not be reflected in the other until the next day.

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Requirements to Run MSTR Office Front-End

Authorization – MSTR Office license. (This authorization is granted by the office of Erica Lopez. )

MSTR Office 9 – The MSTR Office 9 Installation link is located within the MSTR 4.0 project. This software will have add-ins to Microsoft’s Excel, Word and Power Point applications.

There are two requirements to using the Excel front-end through MSTR Office.

If you have accessed QBR’s since February, 2010, there is no need to re-install MSTR Office and you can skip ahead to Slide 8.) Otherwise, to install the MSTR Office software to your desktop, click on the red star from Power Analysis home… …

…and the screen will change to display the “Install MicroStrategy Office” link.

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MicroStrategy Office Installation

Since MicroStrategy Office installs add-in components and modifies the menu and adds its own menu within the Microsoft Office applications of Excel, PowerPoint and Word, these applications should be closed before you start the installation process. (This includes Outlook, which has a Word component.)

If you already have MSTR Office 8 installed locally, installing this link will upgrade it to MSTR Office 9. Selecting “Repair” is a faster upgrade; “Remove” will uninstall/re-install. (If you do not have MSTR Office already installed, you will not see this screen.)

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MicroStrategy Office Installation (cont.)

Selecting these options will install a the MSTR Office 9 toolbar in the applications checked. Microsoft PowerPoint is mandatory to run QBR’s; Microsoft Excel is mandatory for using Excel front-end. (However, leaving all three checked is suggested.)

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MicroStrategy Office Installation (cont.)

This Web Services setting is required to access reports from within Aperity’s MicroStrategy platform. When prompted for “MicroStrategy Web Services URL,” enter the following setting. (You may copy, then paste directly into the prompt box.)

https://mstr.beam.aperity.com/microstrategyws/MSTRWS.asmx

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MSTR Toolbars

Once installed, there are three ways to access the MSTR Office menu from within Excel:1. The MSTR Main Menu displays

in the top menu toolbar for each Microsoft product in which the MSTR Office add-in is installed. This toolbar houses the most extensive options.

2. The MSTR Office Toolbar offers quick access to key options.

3. The Right Click Menu offers a blend of common functions from the other two menus. It has the most frequently used functions, and probably will be the most often used from a populated Excel report.

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Right Click MenuOn the right below is an example of a Right-Click menu from a populated worksheet. Notice how it changes from that displayed from a blank worksheet shown on the left.

Notice this icon. It is used to refresh a workbook. It appears on ALL the MSTR Office menus. Keep this in mind when you use it when accessing one of the shorter menus that don’t offer the whole list of options. All reports in the workbook will be refreshed. If the option was selected to share prompt answers (see slide 16), all reports in the workbook will be refreshed with the common prompt answer.

Functions used for incremental updates after an additional report is created within a workbook.

Functions used to access MSTR Office and the reports in the current session.

Functions used for incremental updates after a workbook is created. All reports within the workbook are affected.

Functions used in report management.

Not Used.

Used to change settings/options at the individual report level.Privilege for Report Builders.

Used to control default settings in the MSTR Office environment.

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MicroStrategy’s Help & User Guide

You are encouraged to familiarize yourself with the topics covered in these excellent information sources. As mentioned, they are only accessible through one menu, the MSTR Add-In menu.

This guide is designed to highlight key Excel front-end features within Aperity’s environment. For detailed instructions in using MSTR Office, please reference the extensive Help & User Guide offered through your MSTR add-in menu.

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Accessing MSTR Options

To access the Options menu, select it from one of the MSTR menus.

Settings are organized by subject area. You’re probably familiar with at least one of these settings – the Web Services URL that you set during installation of the MSTR Office product.

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Additional Setting (only for Report Builders)A Report Builder (power user) license is not required to run the Excel front-end. However, if you DO have this authorized privilege, you must add a setting to your Server Options in order to have Edit privileges using the Excel front-end.

https://mstr.beam.aperity.com/microstrategy/asp/main.aspx

Add the above URL to the “Web URL” found under “General>Server”, and “Apply” the change.

Your toolbars and menus will then include the familiar icon that provides you Edit capabilities.

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Logging In & Retrieving 4.0 Project1. From within Excel, open up one

of the toolbars and select “MicroStrategy Office…” (with the red star icon).

2. Log in using your Aperity Account information.

3. After the project list is returned, highlight the iSales Brand Management v4.0 project, and double-click.

4. You are then presented with all folders & reports that comprise the Aperity 4.0 project, including “My Reports.” Navigate to the folder & report of interest.

5. “Excel Reports” are those generated in your current session.

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When you are successfully logged into the MSTR project, it will appear in your system tray. To go back to your spreadsheet, simply reselect the window.

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Display Option ConsiderationsThe MSTR reports developed for Beam in the MSTR 4.0 environment are highly specialized for Beam’s business and data model. Metric design and their use within these reports are stringently structured for the web environment to ensure accuracy, especially across hierarchy levels, and to prevent double-counting, etc. For that reason, specific methods for running reports through the Excel front-end within Aperity’s environment are recommended. While other methods are available, the results must be closely evaluated because some functions, e.g. Microsoft’s “summing,” are implicitly utilized, sometimes producing results that require further manipulation.

In this example, both reports were pulled using the same criteria. The “Flattened” Display Type above incorporates any attributes from the page-by into the grid and preserves the integrity of the metrics; the “Pivot Table” Display Type to the right sums numeric values – obviously not a desired function for some metrics like percentages, unless you’re careful with pivot options and summing features.

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Recommended Setting Option – Default Display TypeChange “Default Display Type” to “Flattened,” found at the root of the “General” in the Options tree, and “Apply” the change.

With Flattened as the default view, if you "Run Report" or double-click, the report will run with this Display Type. However, it doesn’t prevent you from choosing a different Display Type when needed.

In Flattened reports, results are displayed with all attributes (including ALL those on the page-by) and metrics flattened side-by-side on one axis. Any subtotals within the report are not displayed. Totals/subtotals will have to be added with Excel’s sum function. Advantages to running a report as flattened is that it’s significantly faster than other Display Types and gives you the opportunity to see all your data in the same dimension. In some observations, a report delivered using “Grid” (the original default method) can take 20-30 minutes, whereas through Flattened it would take only 1-2 minutes. It also makes formatting within Excel very easy if you intend to use drop-down lists to filter, hide or show data.

Disadvantages to consider is that since running Flattened takes any attributes on the page-by and incorporates them into the grid, it can produce a wide report if steps aren’t performed beforehand to eliminate showing unnecessary attributes and/or deleting columns when the report is returned. Also, any metric calculations need to be manually performed through Excel functions.

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It is often convenient to reuse prompts’ answers in your reports if you intend to analyze the same sets of data in subsequent reports each time you refresh them in the current session, and by default this option is set. When you “share” prompt answers, prompt answers are automatically selected for common prompts among subsequently executed reports. (This option is found under “General > Prompt.”)

Recommended Setting Option – Reusing and Sharing Prompt Answers

For example, you add several prompted reports to an Excel workbook. After you answer each report’s prompts, the reports are displayed in the workbook. Before you refresh the reports, however, you can choose to save your prompt answers so that you do not have to answer the prompts for each report again. Any prompts that have been previously answered during the session will not require you to answer them; your previous answers are applied.

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Reusing and Sharing Prompt Answers (cont.)• Deselect this option if you do not want to

reuse or share prompt answers. If the prompt answers are not reused or shared, you are prompted for all reports.

• Select this option if you want to reuse prompt answers. If the prompt answers from the reports are reused, you are only prompted for the reports once during the session when executing or refreshing reports.

• Share prompt answers (when executing multiple reports). If prompt answers are shared, you are prompted every time the report is run or refreshed. However, if you run or refresh reports at the same time, the prompts are only displayed once for all. An example is how the QBR’s are generated – you are prompted once for your geography/distributor and regional brand criteria, but that same criteria is used for all reports throughout the presentation.

• You can also ensure that each prompted report is answered with the default prompt answers by selecting the “Always use default answer” check box.

NOTE: Prompt answers are only reused during the same session. If you close MSTR Office and later open and refresh , you WILL BE prompted.

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Recommended Setting Option – History ListChange “History List Options” to “Automatically send reports and documents to History List during execution,” found in the “History List” Options tree, and “Apply” the change.

Since the “Excel Reports” folder only captures activities in your current session, setting this option will save your reports to the History List on the server that houses the MSTR Office project.

Note: This setting should be DESELECTED before running QBR’s; otherwise reports from the QBR’s will fill up your History List.

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Recommended Setting Option – Select PagesChange “Page Display” to “Prompt to Select Pages,” found in the “Page-by” Options tree, and “Apply” the change.

Setting this option will prompt you for which attributes in the page-by to be incorporated into the report.

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Recommended Setting Option – Select Pages (cont.)Setting this option makes selecting/deselecting page-by attributes generated from a Pivot Table far easier to format in the Excel report. You can also decide which attributes NOT to apply Excel’s automatic summing features to.

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Recommended Setting Option – Excel Size (Excel 2007 Users Only)If you have Excel 2007, you can change “Excel Size Options” to accommodate the expansive Excel parameters for that version. Find it in the “Excel > Size” options tree, and “Apply” the change.

The defaulted setting in MSTR is the maximum recommended settings for Excel 1997-2003 version. If you have this version of Excel, nothing more is needed.

The Excel limitation for Excel 2007 is 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns. Changing this option will help in some reports when you receive a error, e.g., “…Maximum number of result rows retrieved from the database per report was exceeded. 300000…”

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Generating Reports

You can run reports by accessing any of the reports in the project, including My Reports. If you followed the Display Type recommendation, when you double-click or Run Report, the Display Type of Flattened will return to your spreadsheet. (The defaulted option will be in bolded font.)

To choose a different Display Type, choose “Reports” from the menu, right click on the report and choose one of the other types. (Probably the most often used alternative to Flattened are Pivot Tables.)

This report will show up in the “Excel Reports” folder for the current session. If you set the option to save it to History List, it also will be written there.

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Refresh, Re-execute Or Re-promptThe Excel reports you create using MSTR Office have a live connection to the data source. If new data is available, there is no need to manually repopulate grids or recreate your reports. You do not need to update all reports at once; you can choose to easily update one or any combination of reports.

MSTR offers three different ways to update a spreadsheet or workbook. How you update it depends on whether you want to hit the database and view new data or just select different prompt answers.• Refresh Workbook – forces MSTR to check if there is existing valid cache*. If there is

an existing cache, MSTR retrieves it and updates with the cached information. If there is NOT valid cache, it sends the request to the database. If the report contains a prompt, you are not prompted. Instead, the original prompt selection is used to generate the refreshed results.

• Re-Execute Workbook – generates a query that is sent to the database. Additionally, the result set is placed in cache for quick retrieval at a later time. If the report contains a prompt, you are not prompted. Instead, the selection is used to generate the re-executed report results. (Re-executing takes longer than refreshing.)

• Re-Prompt Workbook – enables you to select different prompt answers. After the new prompt answers are selected, it looks for valid report cache. If there is an existing cache, it retries it and updates your report with the cached information. If there is not valid cache, it sends the request to the database.

* Cache is a temporary storage area for data results. In MSTR, as well as other database retrieval systems, a query hits cache first to see if there is a result set it can re-use. Retrieving results from cache is much faster than hitting the database. That’s why when you rerun a report with the same criteria a second time, you get results considerably faster than the first time.

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If you followed the recommendation to Reuse and Save Prompt Answers as an option, you will not be prompted for the answer if you Refresh or Re-Execute a workbook. You can choose to clear these prompt answers from subsequent runs, so it will be re-prompted. (This option appears under the Workbook tab in the Project environment.)

This is particularly helpful if your report generated an error (such as too much data), and you need to reselect answers.

Clearing Saved Prompt Answers

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Formatting from Within MSTRSome formatting can be done from within MSTR by right-clicking on a report from the list in the “Excel Reports” folder. From the Report Properties dialog box on the “Properties” tab, you can then modify some settings. (The “Reports” tab is particularly helpful to know which reports are being generated in your current session, in case you’ve renamed tabs or don’t recall the report source.)

From the Report Properties dialog box on the “Reports Details” tab, you can then specify what MSTR report settings to export, as well as to bring over the Reports Details so you can insert the selection criteria into the Excel report.

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Formatting from Within ExcelOnce the report is within Excel, you can take advantage of all Microsoft’s features, filters, conditional formatting, sorting, etc. For detailed reports, Ranking is an especially useful tool.

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Formatting from Within Excel (cont.)Any changes, placeholders or formatting you apply to your Excel worksheet become part of that report until the next time you refresh it. From Excel, you can delete or hide unwanted columns, but if the source report isn’t modified to exclude those columns, they will reappear the next time it is refreshed or re-executed. (See the Appendix slides 32-38 for tips to work around this.)

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Formatting Recap

When to Format Reports

How to Format Reports

Before reports are added to a workbook.

On the MicroStrategy Office toolbar, click Options to access the MicroStrategy Office Options dialog box and specify formatting defaults. Then run the reports to apply the formatting to them.

After reports have been added to a workbook.

On the MicroStrategy Office toolbar, click Reports to access a list of executed reports. You can also access through the Excel Workbook folder. Right-click a report and select Properties to edit report properties when the report is in the Excel Reports folder. Then Refresh or Re-Execute the reports.

Apply detailed formatting through Excel’s formatting features.

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MSTR Office ConsiderationsImportant points to keep in mind when working within the MSTR Office environment:• MSTR Office is a highly customizable environment, offering numerous settings intended

to enhance ease of use. To get started using the Excel front-end, certain settings are recommended in this document. However over time, you may want to change the recommended options to accommodate your use. You can save time by giving forethought to the following questions and setting MSTR Office preferences accordingly before you design and run reports.

Should each report be placed its own worksheet or on a page in a workbook with other reports?

Should the details of each report be displayed with the report?

How will I handle reports with attributes in their page-by?

Do I want to manually control when and how reports are run?

Given my audience and the data, what’s the best method to display this report?

At what level and from which environment (MSTR vs. Microsoft) do I want to apply formatting?

• Another point to keep in mind is that the QBR’s & the Excel front-end are accessing the 4.0 project on a different server than that accessed through the portal, yet they share the same metadata. However, the synchronization of metadata doesn’t’ occur until overnight. Thus, any changes in one environment will not be reflected in the other until the next day. History Lists are NOT shared between servers. So what is saved to your History List in one environment is not accessible through the other. MSTR Office does not allow reports to be scheduled. These can only occur through the portal.

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MSTR Office Considerations (cont.)

• Regardless of the execution method, attributes on the page-by are integrated into the report. Therefore, it is highly recommended that reports be modified BEFORE they are used to eliminate as many unnecessary attributes as possible. This will improve performance, as well as reduce formatting complexity.

• While you can distribute a finished Excel document to anyone, only those that meet the following criteria will be able to refresh or re-execute it:

1) MSTR Office software installed on their desktop

2) MSTR Office authorized privileges

3) access to the directories and report(s) used to generate the worksheet

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Questions and Support

• For business related questions, please contact Zach Sutphin 847.948.8888  ext. 7605 or email him at Zachary.Sutphin@BeamGlobal.com.

• For Aperity related questions, please contact Aperity Support at 877.767.8594 or email at support@aperity.com.

Appendix

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There may be times you would like to change the name of the Excel tab that was defaulted by MSTR. You can do this, but you also need to change the name in the Report Properties so that MSTR can synchronize with the new label name; otherwise MSTR Office will generate a tab using the original name and ignore the renamed tab.

Changing the Excel Tab Label

From the Excel MSTR right-click menu, choose “Reports…”

… highlight the report, then right-click again and choose “Properties…”

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Scroll to the “9. Excel Placement Settings” section, then click inside the adjoining “Worksheet” cell to change the MSTR name to match the tab name on your sheet.

Changing the Excel Tab Label (cont.)

Repeat as necessary for other tabs in the worksheet before you refresh or re-execute the workbook.

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There are several ways to modify and format the results retrieved through MSTR Office:

Adding Fixed Space, Rows or Columns to a Worksheet

1. You can specify the cell placement to accommodate headings or other fixed formatting by selecting the MSTR Office “Reports,” selecting the report and modifying its properties (see slides 33-34). Go to the last section, “Excel Placement Settings,” and specify the first cell where the report will be anchored.

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Adding Fixed Space, Rows or Columns to a Worksheet (cont.)2. You can safely add columns, such as formulas, to the right of the last column in the

report grid. (Having the formulas out of the working area will prevent them from being overwritten when it’s refreshed.)

3. If you want to modify column placement or add columns in the middle of the report grid, the best way is to copy the report results to a new tab, then add your formulas or formatting there. Replace the data with the cell reference back to the tab with the source data. Any formulas you added will be preserved on the new tab the next time the report is refreshed. (You can then hide the tab housing the source data, if needed.)

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Editing Web ReportsFor those with edit privileges, editing reports are much the same as done on the web except you must run the report first before editing to avoid an error such as this. Once you receive this error, your session is terminated and you are re-prompted for login credentials.

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Editing Web Reports (cont.)Thus, the steps to editing a web report through the MSTR Excel front-end are:

1. Run the report, selecting criteria as you normally would.

2. When results return, select Edit mode.

3. Edit and customize as usual.

4. Save your report.

5. It is now available for extraction through Excel front-end. The next day, it will also be available through the standard web front-end.