Business Intelligence

All data entered in Vertec can be evaluated with the business intelligence (BI) module. The BI module enables a business evaluation of all performance data.

In order to be able to show the evaluations efficiently over longer periods of time and with large amounts of data, the data are pre-calculated. All predefined and pre-calculated measures are then available when querying the BI data.

The displayed evaluations are based on so-called BI views, which define the values to be displayed.

Open BI view

If you have licensed the business intelligence module and are in Vertec on an object or on a list of objects for which suitable BI views are defined, the BI button appears at the top of the navigation view:

By clicking on this button or using the F9 button, the BI view of the selected object or the selected list opens (here in the example the owned projects):

The BI view is structured as follows:

1	The elements for which BI views are available are shown in the tree.
2	At the top, as tabs, you can see the views that are available for the selected item.
3	As date ranges, the variants Year, Quarter, Month, From – To and All are available. The default is the last quarter. Depending on the selected range, the corresponding settings can be made on the left side. The period that is generally available depends on what data has been calculated. By default, it is the period from January of the year before last to the end of the next year. Starting with Vertec 6.7.0.5, Vertec remembers when the date setting changes in a BI view. When opening new BI views, the last date set will be used.
4	Displayed measures. With the + button, additional measures can be displayed in the graph. With the sorting arrow, the view can be sorted according to a specific measure. Clicking on a measure opens the list of available measures: The first measure contains the list of all available measures, as shown here. You can see that it has measures with different units (amount and hours). Since these cannot be shown in the same graph, the lists on the measures further back showed only the available measures of the same unit: The + button adds the next measure in the list, which can then be changed as needed as shown here. The x button removes the measure again. By clicking on the color point, a color palette appears, where you can change the color of this measure for the duration of the display: The measures selected for display in the graph remain the same when switching between different views, as long as they are available on the selected view.
5	Here you see the values shown in the graph. The grouping corresponds to the grouping in the BI views. These appear either as a bar chart: or, in the case of time series (grouped by month), as a line graph: When you hover over a bar or point, the effective values are shown as numbers: Double-clicking on a bar opens the corresponding individual object in a separate tab. If there are more bars than there is room in the window, a button will appear at the right edge. Clicking on this button will show all existing bars in the window, click again only the first ones.
6	By clicking on the Excel Export button, the current visible BI data is transferred to Excel:

URL support for BI views

The Vertec Breadcrumb URL is also available in the BI views:

It can be copied and sent with the usual buttons. The path of a BI URL starts with bi-view. It represents the object selected in the tree in the standard view and from Vertec 6.4.0.9 also the following parameters:

• Date range
• Selected view
• Selected measures incl. sorting and color

For example, a URL would look like this:

vertec://bi-view/Stammdaten-303/Projekte+aktiv-306/?interval=2020-01~2020-06&display=DimensionDisplayProjektKunden&measure0=FeesExt&color0=3&measure1=FeesInt&color1=5&sort_measure=FeesInt&sort_order=Desc

Saving the configuration of BI views in favorites: Starting with Vertec 6.4.0.9, BI views can also be saved as favorites. These are displayed with all parameters (see above) when invoked. BI views saved as favorites receive a designation according to the pattern Node (BI): Displayname, for example Projekt (BI): Bearbeiter. In this way, the BI views in the favorites can be identified at a glance.

BI user rights

For the query of BI data there is the user right BI data.

The user must have this right on the selected class in order for the evaluation to be shown.

The following default permissions are implicit:

• A project leader owns BI data right on his own projects
• A project supervisor has general BI ata right
• A team leader has BI data rights on all his team members

As of version 6.4.0.14, the rights can be assigned per BI measure . The following applies:

• The BI data right can be assigned to both classes and objects.
• Once the user has set the right on BI data and the corresponding class is selected (if you want to set a right on all classes, use UserEintrag), you can select a measure for fieldname.
• In the Expressions field you can enter corresponding expressions on a selected class (as before).
• In order for the BI button to become active (see above), the user must have enabled at least one measure on the selection. For an individual object, a measure must be available, for a list of objects, each object must have at least one measure.
• If there is at least one measure on each object in the BI when selecting an object, but no measure for which a right is set on all objects, the display “No data available” appears.
• If a selected object in the BI is not authorized for any measure, the display “Access denied” appears.

For verification, there is an OCL operator hasBiDataRight('Kennzahl'), which gives feedback for each entry whether the logged-in user has BI data rights to it.

What happens if there is no user right

• Users without BI data right to projects see a special graphic with a note (“No access to BI data for projects”) for all evaluations on projects or project lists.
• Object permission allows you to control permission on a single object. As soon as the user does not have read permission on an object, they receive the error message “Access to an object of type 'Project’ was denied”.
• Users with BI data rights to projects, but not to users, will still see the evaluation in the case of views on projects by users. For the authorization check, only the dimension from which it is based (selection in the BI view), not the dimension according to which it is displayed (grouping in the BI view).
• For users who do not have any BI rights, the BI button is hidden. This is only possible if the user does not have any BI rights; for complicated rights constellations, the BI button may be shown even though the user cannot actually view a BI evaluation.

Deny the BI data right to a user with implicit permission

If you still do not want to grant the BI data right to a user with implicit permission (e.g. project leader, see above), you can withdraw this right as follows:

• Insert another row on the corresponding group (e.g. project leader)
• Select the BI data right
• Select deny.
• Important: You must specify the class for which the BI data right is to be denied. Without this specification, the row has no effect.
• If you want to withdraw all user rights for BI data, you have to enter the class UserEintrag.

Who sees which folders in the BI tree

From Vertec 6.4.0.14 onward, the objects and folders available in the BI tree are determined as follows:

First, it is determined whether the BI data right exists on the class, with the following logic:

• A user without general BI data rights on the content class and without project leader, project supervisor or administrator rights, does not see the container (e.g. “All addresses”) in the BI tree.
• In particular, the address administrator right does not imply a BI data right, i.e. a user who has address administrator right does not have BI data right on addresses. In order to see meaningful BI data, the user should also have project supervisor rights or similar rights in addition to the BI data right.
• As soon as a user has the project leader right, they see all project and phase containers of their own projects.
• A user with team leader rights sees all users of their team, project and phase containers.
• A user with the project supervisor right sees all user, project, phase, address and activity containers.
• An administrator sees all containers for which a BI view is defined and active.

In a second step, all explicitly granted rights on the user are processed. Here, only the rights of type BI data on the matching classes are of interest (inheritance is taken into account, i.e. a right to addresses has effects on a evaluation on company).

• If the right is allowed, then the BI data right is accepted. It does not matter what you have entered as a field name (measure number) or as an expression.
• If the right is denied, then the field name and expression must be empty (because this information works at the object level, but the basic user right to display in the tree must be decided at the class level). If the right is denied and the field name or expression is set, then this user right is ignored.

As usual, this determination is based on one another’s rights. This means that if the BI data right is assigned to entries, but then a right denies the BI data of the projects, the user subsequently has no rights to projects.

Important: The description here is only about the determination of what can be shown in the tree and selected by the user, and not about the actual “right” on the data.

Commissioning

When you start Vertec for the first time after updating to version 6.4 or higher, the BI data is not yet calculated. This means that you do not see any numbers in the BI view.

The data is automatically calculated at night, so you can simply wait until the next day and view the results.

Another option is to start the computation manually once. Please be aware that the computation with large amounts of data will require a lot of resources and Vertec may be blocked for normal operation during this time.