This chapter provides orientation on the Intelligence solution, an integrated solution provided on demand that that allows system data to be consolidated, explored, analyzed, and interacted with.
Business intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term used to describe the process of collecting, ordering, analyzing, sharing, and monitoring organizational data. By using BI technology, an organization can decrease costs, identify new business opportunities, detect inefficient processes, and see marked improvements to their decision-making abilities.
While the majority of business intelligence tools are complex and require technical users to manage them, the Intelligence solution, once configured with the necessary data sources, allows end users to create reports through a simple interface. These reports can be configured to turn large amounts of data into useful information for important decisions that otherwise would be based on intuition.
Modulo provides a number of out-of-the-box intelligence reports with the installation of this solution. Whenever a default report is created or updated, it is uploaded to the system by the Support team. In addition to these, you can create your own custom reports. For details on managing reports, see Chapter 16: Intelligence -> Intelligence Solution Reports.
To limit the scope of a report, you can use perspectives created in SQL Server Data Tools, a set of tools from Microsoft Visual Studio. These perspectives define which tables and fields from the data model for this solution will be accessible in the report. For details on creating perspectives for reports, see Chapter 16: Intelligence -> Perspectives.
Below are listed the software pre-requisites for intelligence reports, followed by the necessary configurations in the system. For further details, contact the Support team.
•Microsoft Analysis Services, where the data to be used in reports will be stored once extracted: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/solutions-technologies/business-intelligence/analysis.aspx.
•Microsoft Visual Studio 2012, where the data model and perspectives will be edited. For details, see https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/e2h7fzkw(v=vs.110).aspx.
•Microsoft SharePoint 2013, where the reports to be used will be stored: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/.
•Microsoft Power View, where reports are created and edited: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/power-view-explore-visualize-and-present-your-data-HA102835634.aspx.
•Microsoft Silverlight, which allows users to access intelligence reports: http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/Get-Started/Install/Default.aspx.
The Intelligence solution uses an analytical database that is managed through Microsoft Analysis Services. This information must be extracted through an integration task before reports can be created and viewed, as explained in Chapter 17: Administration -> Integrations -> Integration Tasks -> Creating a Task to Extract and Process Intelligence Data. In addition, access to Microsoft Analysis Services and a Microsoft SharePoint server must be configured in the Administration module. This version of the system was tested with both SharePoint Foundation 2013 and SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise Edition.
Reports can be created once the database has been extracted by the integration task and access to SharePoint and Microsoft Analysis Services is configured. Once registered, reports can be opened for editing in Microsoft Power View. For details, see Chapter 16: Intelligence -> Intelligence Solution Reports -> Creating Reports in Power View. Keep in mind that users must have Microsoft Silverlight installed on their machines to access intelligence reports.
The Intelligence solution is provided on demand, which can be purchased and used with other modules and solutions of Modulo Risk Manager. The browser recommended for this solution is Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 10 and 11. The recommended resolution is 1920x1080 PX, while the minimum resolution required is 1440x900 PX. For the Intelligence solution, the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox are also supported.