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UX

Market Share Dashboard Redesign

Market Share Icon.png

Definitions
MicroStrategy - BI/Reporting tool.
MicroStrategy Dossiers - An interactive display that you can create to showcase and explore business data.
MicroStrategy Library - Is an interactive application of the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence platform that lets business users harness the analytical power of MicroStrategy in a simple, clean, and modern user interface.
MicroStrategy Document (Document/Dashboard) - Contains objects representing data coming from one or more MicroStrategy reports, as well as images and shapes. Documents can appear in almost as many ways and are generally formatted to suit your business needs, in a single display of presentation quality.
Visualization Filters - A visualization such as a bar chart, grid etc. can be utilized to filter other visualization by being targeted to a particular visualization
Targeting - A way in MicroStrategy to set up and apply filters or visualization filters to filter on visualizations.

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Outcome
Redesigned the Market Share Dashboard with a new visual design that incorporates company branding and a flexible dataset for a total of 3 salesforces (2 dossiers in total),   Dossiers were provided with the ability to view via web and mobile (iPad).  The new dynamic dataset design allows for responsive updates (adding or removing products) to the dashboard.  Improved the overall performance of the dashboard by 56%, which has reduced the number of issues reported (via tickets) by users.

Business Value

  • Created a more visually appealing dashboard that is in line with company branding.

  • Gave users the ability to view via web and mobile.

  • Improved dashboard performance and overall functionality which has resulted in a decrease of production issues (tickets) being reported by users.

  • Improvements to the design has resulted a more flexible way to incorporate or remove products.

  • Responsive design (targeting filters) allows for a more intuitive way to drill down to granular level data.

  • Developed functional documentation for the business to utilize in training sessions with users.

Role in Project
As a MicroStrategy Developer I performed/assisted in the following tasks:

Tasks Performed: Designed the front end of the dashboard and navigation (stitched dashboard).  Created metrics as needed. Provided solutions to UX/UI challenges.  Created functionality documentation, data dictionaries and development documentation.
 
Worked with my Team to: Provide feedback on data design challenges (metric/attribute/dataset design).  Unit Testing and to assist users in UAT sessions.

Business Impact - Previous Dashboard

The previous Market Share dashboard created for the field was developed over 10 years ago. A short term solution was implemented, removing flash and utilizing html which degraded dashboard performance further. 

 

Adobe was no longer supporting Flash Player which is was the plug in needed to run the previous dashboard. Due to flash being discontinued exporting functionality was no longer available. 

 

From an end user perspective the data within the dashboard was not easy to digest.  The performance impacted users in being able to utilize the dashboard effectively. Existing product design was static, any new metrics that needed to be created required new objects to be created and existing products to be updated (total of over 500 metrics). Existing intelligent cubes that needed to be refreshed took over an hour to cache.

 

Users were unable to filter to their assigned alignments (no ability to drill down).No iPad version of this dashboard was available (salesforce is being streamlined to utilize iPads going forward).

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Business Needs

  • Redesign the Market Share Dashboard design (total of 2 sets of dossiers needed to be developed for a total of 3 salesforces).

  • Improve performance.

  • Have this dossier be accessible via web and mobile.

  • Make sure the dossier is exportable (mobile and web).

  • More flexibility to update and remove products.

  • Alignment drill down functionality.

Design Background of Previous Dashboard
The previous design was a MicroStrategy Document with many layers of objects, panels and panel stacks.  The main reasons the previous dashboard had degraded performance was due to the large amount of dataset objects added along with the numerous panels/panel stacks.  A lot of times this dashboard would timeout on users, they would then have to refresh and wait for the dashboard to re-execute.  Yearly routine maintenance that needed to be performed (year end activities, updating products, removing products) took a lot of time to execute. 

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Quick solutions applied Pre-Redesign
Flash Player was no longer being supported by Adobe, modifications on the back end had to be made since this dashboard required Flash Player to run. 
The dashboard was converted to html/interactive mode however this conversion slowed down the performance of the dashboard significantly to an already slow performing dashboard.

As a result of removing Flash Player some functionalities either had to be modified or were also no longer available to users:

  • Exporting Functionality (Excel)

    • Work around was scheduled to be provided in Redesign

  • Heatmap

    • Removed and replaced with a clustered bar chart

  • Alignment Map

    • Replaced with another third party map (Visual Crossing)

  • Presentation Mode

    • Switched the default view mode to interactive mode.

 

New Salesforce​

A new salesforce was also created which required a separate version of this dashboard to be created.  All of the changes applied above needed to also be implemented and applied to this new salesforce.

Initial Assessment of the Previous Dashboard

An assessment of the dashboard was perform to document what component of the dashboard was dragging the performance and what work arounds we could utilize to replace those features.

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Alignment Map

Previous Feature

  • The Alignment Map in the previous dashboard was composed of three different maps per page created to mimic a drill down functionality for the end user, this resulted as a hindrance to dashboard performance (consisted of 21 maps in total).

Proposed Solution

  • Create a one map per page with drill down functionality which reduces the number of maps from 21 to 7.

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Datasets

Previous Feature

  • There were a total of 3 large datasets and 4 small datasets created for this dashboard which contain static product metrics. 

  • A separate dataset was even created specifically for the map visualization which there seemed to be no readily available justification for adding. 

  • One dataset alone had over 500 metrics alone which was greatly hindered dashboard performance.

Proposed Solution

  • Make the product metrics generic (i.e. CY, Doses, PY Doses etc.) and utilize a product filter applied within the dataset and dashboard visualizations. 

  • Product updates would then just involve changing filters in the dataset and dossier instead of creating new objects and adjusting each market share calculation.

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Panels and Panel Stacks

Existing Feature

  • The original dashboard was designed with a robust number of panels and panel stacks to reduce the amount of stitching required (two dashboard were stitched/linked).

  • This did reduce the number of dashboards that needed to be maintained (by centralizing where changes needed to made) at a cost of dashboard performance (many views needed to load during the initial launching of the dashboard). 

Proposed Solution

  • Keep the same market navigation but create separate Dossiers on the back end to increase performance.

Development

Once the initial assessment and business feedback was provided on the overall concept of the design development could begin.

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Key Challenges

Creating Dynamic Product Metrics

One of the major challenges of this new design was making the product and market share metrics dynamic.  By default if you create a market share metric the denominator is also filterable within the dossier.  If a user were to filter to view the market share of a particular product it would by default show 100% market share which is clearly incorrect, below is the scenario outlined visually:

Market Share Example.png

To override filtering within the denominator value a metric was created for the market total that ignored the brand level criteria within the dossier that way by default this metric would always display the total market value.  

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Displaying Filtering Criteria Selected

Since the drill down functionality for the sales force alignment would not be within a filter panel but incorporated within the dossier itself (via visualization filters) there needed to be a way to show the users their selections made. The solution to this request was to create case statement metrics  (derived metrics) that were targeted (a way in which to filter visualization to visualization within MicroStrategy) to the visualizations as well at to each other.

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Page Navigation

To improve the performance of the dossier, separate dossiers were created for each page and linked to mimic seamless navigation (stitching).  There are two ways within MicroStrategy Dossier to implement navigation:

1. Via Hyperlink

  • Pros

    • Links will open in presentation mode within MSTR Web interface by default (presentation mode is the non editable format of MSTR Web interface)

  • Cons

    • Additional maintenance, links need to be repointed to the correct environment once migrated (from development to production).

    • Hyperlinks will only open in a separate tab, there is no way to force it to open within the same window.

    • Links have to be copied and pasted.

2. Via File Path

  • Pros

    • No copy and pasting.

    • No re-pointing post migration to Production.

  • Cons

    • In MSTR Web interface this type of navigation will not open in presentation mode (users would essentially have to either click on the link twice to navigate or put the dossier in presentation mode each time after navigating to the next page).

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After assessing the options it was determined to utilize option 2 (via file path) however the con listed above was an issue for end users.  The solution to this scenario was then to have the dossier accessible via MicroStrategy Library, which would in turn resolve the issue. MicroStrategy Library is a collaboration tool, there is no editable mode available.  The dossier will always open in presentation mode by default.  Utilizing this interface also aligned with the direction the business was heading with how these links will be shared to the field in the near future.

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Mobile Functionality 

This dossier would need to be accessible via mobile (iPad) and web.  The custom alignment map would not be accessible via mobile.  Which meant separate dossiers would need to be created for mobile (total of 8 dossiers needed to be duplicated and configured for mobile).  The solution proposed was to have a clustered bar chart to replace the custom alignment map, replacing this visual would not change the drill down functionality and it would be seamless visually for end users between web and mobile.

Functionality Documentation

A functionality document was created which updated the Product and Metrics sections (PDF that was placed on server then linked).  Since this was a completely new design the business needed documentation created for users to reference if needed, the documentation provided the following information:

  • Illustrated the overall design concept (Company Products on top, comparison between Company and Competitor in the middle and Competitor Products on the bottom)

  • Displayed the targeting functionality.

  • Showed users how to drill down to granular detail (visualization filters)

  • The logic behind the new design and how to verify market share for company and competitors (examples were provided).

  • Metric Definitions with Market breakdowns specific to each page (metrics were generic due to being made dynamic in nature).  

  • How to export via mobile and web.

  • Displayed some of the small nuances between web and mobile versions (i.e. in mobile more than one grid can be exported at one time vs. web).

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