Insights & Information Design

In any application, there are always central functions which control a generic process. These functions request reporting-specific functions from the central area. If, for example, a report only requests data when needed, but is supposed to be directly updated when a favorite is activated, the update must be triggered by the central document.

Here, the problem arises that there may also be reports which are always up to date. In this case, the central function must not activate the button for manual update because this would not exist in this report. Thus, there would be an error report.

Whe working with Tableau, sooer or later you stumble across the concept of Tablea sets. Explained next is what sets are and how they differ from groups. We'll also show you how create sets i Tableau in order to increase iteractivity.

Database queries are defined by multiple objects in arcplan. Apart from the object with the query itself, other objects define the columns, rows and filter settings. In so doing, they are able to influence themselves, as well (performance arrows, selection-based filters…)
Linking the objects for a database query is defined by the connection of the objects in the connection mode. Arrows are drawn. Even though the objects are frequently set up together, the place or the order of the objects is irrelevant for the function. These objects may even be located on various reporting levels.

arcplan is a tool which poses few limits for the developer. Due to its structure, the developer is very flexible in designing his reports. This is a major advantage, as the reports can thus be very flexibly adjusted to the users' needs. However, it may quickly turn into a disadvantage, as well, as reports may contain many hundreds of objects with correspondingly many links. Without guidelines for the development, an application quickly becomes confusing and hard to maintain. In particular, this holds true for third parties or new team members, who often find it difficult to initially adapt to an application. Even the developer himself may lose the overview.

Time after time, one comes across types or variants of graphics which at first glance apparently cannot be implemented with arcplan. With simple tricks, however, almost all graphics can ultimately be realized with little effort. Anyone who is currently looking into SUCCESS by Hichert and Partners will encounter e.g. clear notations for value types in bar charts.

In presentations and in reporting, the primary purpose of graphics is to convey information quickly and efficiently. That means that graphics are supposed to illustrate important messages, such as e.g. trends, deviations, patterns and conspicuous behavior such as peaks, outliers etc. at a glance. This applies in particular if the objective is to use the Hichert©SUCCESS Rules in presentations and in reporting.

A small but interesting function is available in arcplan Administrator as from Version 7.

In the previous versions, all files from the local directory were always transferred to the server when an application was updated by the administrator. This may take quite a long time, in particular in case of large applications and the use of xml file format: because in this case, both the transfer to the server and the conversion into the binary file format is done for all files. And this applies even if only one single file was modified in the development.

arcplan is the first software tool for business intelligence (BI) which received the renowned quality seal  HICHERT®IBCS by BARC and HICHERT+FAISST. The high degree of flexibility of the tool 'arcplan Enterprise' made it possible to fully meet all requirements regarding graphics, tables, structures and comments. Since then, arcplan has invested further development efforts in order to simplify the creation of "IBCS compliant" -reports for the user (report developer) and thus save a lot of time and resources in the course of report development.

arcplan 8.5 offers a portfolio of completed and 100% IBCS compliant graphics which can be integrated into the application by a few clicks. Of course, 'Quick Steps' also offers the full arcplan flexibility and can be modified, extended and tailored to the specific requirements.

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The arcplan library is a very useful tool for coordinating the layout of reports. All objects which are extracted from a library behave equally on the reports with regard to the selection of the subsequently described properties.