Focal Point
Quarter over Quarter gadget

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November 20, 2013, 09:42 AM
jsp_lbf
Quarter over Quarter gadget
I am trying to find out if there's an existing gadget (table or graph, makes no difference) that can display quarter over quarter data. I don't want to ask my IT staff to create one if one exists or one can be adjusted to get the display I'm looking for. In my searches I haven't found anything but I'm no gadget expert.

I want to display 2 years worth of data sorted into columns in this order: 2012Q1 2013Q1 2012Q2 2013Q2 2012Q3 2013Q3 2012Q4 2013Q4. This shows the prior year quarter and current year quarter side by side, as opposed to all 8 quarters going chronologically, which I have been able to create via existing gadgets and tweaking properties.

Any tips welcome and appreciated. Again, it makes no difference if this is a table or graphical. It's just the way our senior management teams look at performance of key financial measures for trending purposes.

Thanks very much in advance.

WebFOCUS 7.7.04m/PMF 5.32 HF 2 ,Tomcat,IIS,Windows/iseries,sql server 2005,Excel/ PDF/HTML
November 20, 2013, 10:03 AM
Bob Jude Ferrante
The Prior/Current gadgets chart show current year superimposed over prior year compared (by default) on a quarterly basis.
These sound like they might be what you're looking for.

Have a look at them:


Hope this helps.


Bob Jude Ferrante
Director of Business and Development
WebFOCUS Performance Management
Bob_Ferrante@ibi.com
917-339-5105

I'll take any questions about PMF - business or technical - anytime!

November 20, 2013, 10:47 AM
jsp_lbf
Thank you fpr your reply, Bob. Unfortunately the examples you cited are a bit too restrictive for what I'm after. I can get a flex gadget (Metric Actual Line over Target Pct Reached Bar) to display 8 consecutive quarters with no problem. The bars display chronologically across the X-Axis.

I would like to have them sorted to have the Q1s side by side, then the Q2s, and so on. The only way I seem to be able to get this now is to run a custom report in Analysis Designer for 8 quarters, dump it into Excel, resort the lines, and build a chart there.

Also having a flex gadget do this allows for utilization of the drill down to various dimensions that the HTML gadget doesn't allow.

Thank you.

WebFOCUS 7.7.04m/PMF 5.32 HF 2 ,Tomcat,IIS,Windows/iseries,sql server 2005,Excel/ PDF/HTML
November 20, 2013, 11:06 AM
Bob Jude Ferrante
Hi,
That's exactly what these charts do; they align quarter over quarter.

There are two performance lines. One show the performance for the metric for current year. quarter by quarter. The second shows the performance for the metric for the prior year, quarter by quarter. And the superimposing of the quarters for the two years allows comparison.

You could also do this with no build by using two gadgets side by side.

Or you can build another gadget. This won't be an easy build with Analysis Designer because there's no default sorting of quarter over year in the templates.

If you analyze the code used in the two charts, you'll see how to superimpose the data for one year over another. You'll need to do any custom work just like this, in three passes:

First pass gets data for 4 quarters prior year.
Second pass gets data for 4 quarters current year.
Third pass merges these into one view.

thanks


Bob Jude Ferrante
Director of Business and Development
WebFOCUS Performance Management
Bob_Ferrante@ibi.com
917-339-5105

I'll take any questions about PMF - business or technical - anytime!

November 20, 2013, 01:29 PM
jsp_lbf
Thank you again Bob for your prompt reply. When I try the Metric - Actual Target Prior Lines gadget, I set preferences to groupings = Time & Quarter, and picked one measure (Net Sales).

When it displays I get 2013Q1 through 2013Q4 as the time range and I get 2 lines, actual for 2013 and target for 2013.

What I want is 2 years (8 quarters) and sorted by quarter (2012 Q1 next to 2013 Q1 and so on). I don't think I'm going to get that from either of these gadgets. I'll see if IT can do some custom work for me based on something that exists in the library today.

I do think this would be a valuable enhancement for later releases.

Thanks again very much.

WebFOCUS 7.7.04m/PMF 5.32 HF 2 ,Tomcat,IIS,Windows/iseries,sql server 2005,Excel/ PDF/HTML