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 KPI are then available when querying the BI data.

The displayed evaluations are based on so-called BI shows, which define which values can be displayed where.

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 shows are defined, the BI button appears at the top of the navigation view:

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

The BI view is structured as follows:

1	In the BI view, only those elements for which BI shows are available are shown in the tree.
2	At the top, as tabs, you can see the shows 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 All. Depend on the selected range, the corresponding settings can be made on the left side. Which period is generally available depends on what data were calculated. By default, it is the interval from January of the year before last up to and including the current month. 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 Kpis. Use the + button, additional Kpi can be displayed in the graph. With the sort arrow, the view can be sorted according to a specific Kpi. Clicking on a Kpi opens the list of available KPI: The first KPI contains the list of all available Kpi, as shown here. You can see that it has Kpi with different units (amount and hour). Since these cannot be shown in the same graph, the lists on the KPI further down showed only the available Kpi of the same unit: The + button adds the next KPI in the list, which can then be changed as needed as shown here. The x button removes the Kpi again. By clicking on the color point, a color palette appears, where you can change the color of this Kpi for the duration of the display: The Kpi selected for display in the graph remain the same when switching between different shows, as long as they are available on the selected display.
5	Here you see the values shown in the graph. The grouping corresponds to the grouping in the BI display definitions. 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 for in the window, a button appears on the right edge. Click on this button will show all existing bars in the window, clicking again only the first ones.
6	By clicking on the Excel Export button, the currently displayed BI data is carried over 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 basic view and from Vertec 6.4.0.9 also the following parameters:

• Date range
• Selected evaluation
• Selected key Kpis incl. sort and color

For example, a URL would look like this:

vertec://bi-view/Root data-303/Projects+aktiv-306/?interval=2020-01~2020-06&display=DimensiondisplayProjectCustomers&measure0=Feesext&color0=3&measure1=Feesint&color1=5&sort_measure=Feesint&sort_order=Desc

Saving the configuration of BI views in Favorites: Start 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 shows saved as Favorites are granted a designation according to the pattern Node (BI): Display Name, i.e. project (BI): user. In this way, the BI shows in the Favorites can be identified at a glance.

BI user rights

For querying BI data, there is the BI Data user right.

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 has BI data right on his own projects
• A Project Supervisor Has General BI Data Right
• A team leader has BI data rights on all his team members

From version 6.4.0.14 onward, the user rights per     BI Kpis shall be awarded. The following shall apply:

• The BI data right can be assigned to both classes and objects.
• Once the user right on BI data is set and the corresponding class is selected (if you want to set a user right on all classes, here UserEintrag select), you can select a Kpi 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 Kpi on the selection. For an individual object, a Kpi must be available, for a list of objects, each object must have at least one Kpi.
• If there is at least one Kpi on each object in the BI when selecting an object, but no Kpi for which an user right is set on all objects, the display “No data available” appears.
• If a selected object in the BI does not authorize for any KPI, the display “Access denied” appears.

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

What happens if you do not have user rights

• 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 the user rights on a single object. As soon as the user does not have BI read permission on an object, they receive the error message “Access to an object of type 'project’ was denied”.
• Users with BI data Right to projects, but not to users, will still see the evaluation in the case of evaluations on projects by users. Only the dimension from which it is based (selection in the BI display) is decisive for the authorization check, not the dimension according to which it is displayed (grouping in the BI display).
• For users who do not have any BI rights, the BI View button is hidden. This is only done if the user definitely does not have any BI rights; for complicated rights constellations, the BI View button may be shown even though the user cannot actually view a BI evaluation.

Deny the BI right to a user with implicit user rights

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

• Insert another row on the corresponding group (e.g. project leader)
• Selecting the BI Data Right
• 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 remove all user rights for BI data, you have to enter User Entry as class.

Who sees which folders in the BI tree

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

First, it is determined whether the BI data right exists on the class. The logic is as follows:

• An user without general BI data right on the content class and without project leader, project administrator or administrator right, does not see a container (e.g. “All Addresses”) in the BI tree.
• In particular, the address administrator right does not imply a BI data right, i.e. an user who has the address administrator right does not have BI data right to address addresses. This means: 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 to address.
• Once an user has the Project Manager right, he sees all project and phase Container.
• An user with Team Leader right sees all user, project and phase containers.
• An user with the Projectadmin right sees all user, project, phase, address and ability 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 enter an address has effects on a query on the company).

• If the right is allowed, then the BI Data is accepted. It does not Role what you have entered as a field name (Kpis) or as an expression.
• If the permission is denied, then the field name and expression must be empty (since they act at the object level, but the basic user right to display in the tree must be decided at the class level). If the permission is denied and the field name or expression is set, then this user right to display is ignored.

As usual, this determination is based on rights. This means that if in principle the right BI data is assigned to entries, but then a right denies the BI data of the projects, the user subsequently has no right 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 “user rights” 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.