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CardioLog Software as a Service (SaaS) now allows you to gain all the benefits of CardioLog Analytics usage reports for your SharePoint website without having to own and maintain servers or extra equipment. With all of your usage report data in the cloud, you can also now use Microsoft Power BI to visualize and understand information about your website and your users.

Power BI allows users to visualize and analyze their data using customizable templates in either a browser or desktop application. In order to integrate your CardioLog usage report data with Power BI, first you will need to make sure you have either the desktop application installed or the web app configured. Additionally, your company or organization will have to pre-configure integration with CardioLog. For more information, see MS Power BI support. If your company already uses Power BI for other uses, CardioLog data can easily integrate into your workflow.

While CardioLog SaaS collects all the same data as our standard on-premise edition, Power BI gives you a different set of tools to visualize that data. Some important differences include live filters directly accessible from within reports that allow you to quickly compare multiple time periods and Microsoft's intelligent question based filters. You can also combine datasets from different sources. For example, you can view site usage data collected by CardioLog alongside usage data from a mobile app, or company sales reports.

Contents

Configuring CardioLog SaaS

CardioLog has a simple configuration wizard for CardioLog SaaS that allows you to choose which of your sites you would like to track, which attributes to report on, the tracking code you'll need to add to your sites, and how to integrate Power BI Content Packs.

Once configured, there are three main components within Power BI: Datasets, Reports and Dashboards.

  • Datasets - Imported or connected data from an external source. For our purposes, this is your CardioLog usage report data.
  • Reports - A collection of different data visualizations all sourced from the same Dataset. Reports can be created manually or or automatically simply by selecting the data you would like to have presented. A single report may appear in multiple Dashboards.
  • Dashboards - A manually created presentation of data that may be sourced from multiple Datasets.

Create and Edit Reports

CardioLog includes many helpful report data templates that will be included in your imported organizational data. There are several different ways to create a new report in Power BI.

  1. The simplest way to begin is selecting the Dataset you would like to work with from the navigation menu on the left side of the page. This will present you with a blank report canvas.
  2. From the Visualizations menu on the right side of the page, you may begin by clicking the type of graph visualization you would like to add. You can change the type of graph at any time to best suit the data would like to present.
  3. From the Fields menu on the right side of the page, you can begin typing to quickly find the data and filters you would like to report. Use multiple filters to fine tune your presentation. For example you may select Average Page Views per Session, Month, and User Category to find out which departments have been using your portal in depth recently.
  4. From the File menu above your report canvas, click Save to save any changes or updates to your report. Attempting to move to another section of Power BI before saving will also prompt you with an option to save your changes.

You can find more information here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-create-a-new-report/

You can learn more about reports in general here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-reports/

Create and Edit Dashboards

Once you've opened an organizational content pack in Power BI, you will be interacting with your report in Reading View. This mode provides a simple and powerful way to view all aspects of the data in your report. In most cases simply hovering or clicking on a graph or data point will isolate the information and automatically visually cross-highlight the rest of your report page. To learn more about Reading View, click here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-interact-with-a-report-in-reading-view/ 

CardioLog Saas comes with a wide array of Dashboard templates out of the box. If you'd like to customize these or create your own, follow these instructions to edit your dashboards and reports, without affecting your team's data: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-organizational-content-packs-use-and-work-with/

To better understand how to use Power BI dashboards in general, you can learn more here:   https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-dashboards/

Learn how to share your dashboards with anyone here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-share-unshare-dashboard/

Filter and Highlight Reports

All reports can be easily filtered, and Power BI contains several levels of filtering options.

  • Page Filters - Apply to all visual graphs and meters on the current page
  • Visual Filters - Apply to an individual visual data widget
  • Report Filters - Apply to all pages of a single report

Similarly, there are three types of filters that can be applied to different aspects of your data.

  • Text Fields - Apply to pre-defined fields such as campaigns, departments, usernames, etc.
  • Numeric Fields - Apply to data values such as number of visitors, page views, posts, etc.
  • Date and Time - Apply time based filters to your data from as specific as fractions of a second, to as broad as years, depending on the report and data available.
  • Portal Tree Hierarchy - Apply page hierarchy filters to your data based on a page level within your portal, and its related child pages.

In addition to filters, you may also highlight information. This will not remove unrelated information but will focus on a specific set of data, and dim other data. While in Reading View, you may use multiple filters and highlights across your data sets. Selecting more than one filter will apply both filters to your data. For example, if you would like to filter a Portal Growth report by department and time range, and filter using fields labeled "Marketing" and " D2016," then you will see all Portal Growth and activity from the Marketing team during the year 2016.

Ask Your Data Questions

Power BI integrates robust search features that allow you to ask natural language questions that it will interpret and use to actively filter and sort your data. Upon entering any text in the Question field at the top of your report, Power BI will immediately begin offering common suggestions. You may either select a sample question, or continue typing to complete your question phrase. If a dedicated widget does not already exist for the metric you are searching for, Power BI will automatically create a new report widget based on your question terms. 

For more information about how Power BI interprets commonly used words, see: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-q-and-a-tips/

In order to help your team use the feature thoroughly, you can also add keywords to labels, headings and titles. For tips on optimizing your reports see: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-make-your-data-work-well-with-q-and-a/

How to Share Your Data

You can easily share your data reports and dashboards with colleagues and site owners.

Embedding a report into SharePoint

Using this option allows you to embed the fully interactive reports into any page in SharePoint.

Site owners will go the SharePoint page and use the report to get information about the site (or sites) they are interested in.

Advantages:  This option is best if you would like to allow users to stay in the context of SharePoint and not have to leave to a different application.

Steps:

1. From the CardioLog report, click on File and choose Publish to Web  or Embed in SharePoint Online

2. When choosing publish to web, copy to html code and embed it into a SharePoint page.

3. When choosing Embed in SharePoint Online, to go a modern SharePoint page, add a Power BI web part and choose your report.

Note: Only the user who owns the content pack can embed the report (you should use your Power BI pro account who is content pack owner).

Sharing a dashboard

Using this option allows you to share the fully interactive reports with specific users or groups. Enter the users or groups you would like to share the report with, and they will receive an email with a link to the dashboard. To access the dashboard they will need to login to Power BI (can be done with a free account). They will be able to see the dashboard within their list of dashboards to come back to it later on. If they click on the title of the dashboard they will get to the full report.

Advantages: This option is best if you would like to have full control over who can access the report (users who you didn't specify can access the report will not be able to see it).

Steps:

1. Go into the report. From the top menu select Pin Live Page and create a new dashboard

2. Go into the new dashboard. From the top menu click Share.

3. A dialog window will appear with options to send a link via email, or update who can read or edit your dashboard. Enter the email addresses of the users who you would like to get access to the report.

Note: this option can only be used when the report is not part of a content pack. For more information about Sharing, click here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-share-unshare-dashboard/

 

To make it easier for site owners to find information about their sites, you can use a report such as this one:

 

 

The report can utilize a site collection and/or subsite filters. Users can also search within the dropdown list to find their site:

 

Note: The option to share a dashboard is blocked when using a content pack. The content pack is used to allow co-administration of the report, but an alternative method is to use workspaces. To use this option we will need to publish your report under a dedicated workspace instead of the content pack.

Import Organizational Data

Connecting to your organization's CardioLog dataset requires previous configuration by an Administrator. Once your organization has configured CardioLog SaaS for use with Power BI, data will actively update across dashboards and reports.

Open Power BI and follow these instructions in order to open an organizational content pack: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-organizational-content-pack-find-and-open/

You can find more information about how organizational content packs work, and how to collaborate with your coworkers here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-organizational-content-packs-introduction/

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