The new release builds on Yellowfin’s renowned ease-of-use reporting
and analytics solution, offering organizations the ability to achieve superior
Return on Investment (ROI). The release achieves this through new analytical
visualizations that make data analysis easier and more insightful; an upgraded
User Interface (UI) for improved navigation and independent reporting building;
and improved scalability to allow organizations to easily grow the Yellowfin
platform to meet their changing reporting needs.
“This release has been developed with one goal in mind – making Business
Intelligence easier,” said Yellowfin CEO, Glen Rabie. “Making BI easy enables
widespread user adoption – the key to BI ROI.
“This latest release strengthens Yellowfin’s position as the world’s
easiest-to-use, integrate and manage BI solution.”
Ease-of-use now the number one priority for Business Intelligence
According to the Gartner Research Note, BI Platforms User Survey, 2011:
Customers Rate their BI Platform Functionality, ‘ease-of-use’ has surpassed
‘functionality’ as the number one selection criteria when purchasing a BI
platform: “Strong functionality is clearly no longer enough... Vocal, demanding
and influential business users are increasingly driving BI purchasing
decisions, most often choosing easier to use data discovery tools over
traditional BI platforms — with or without IT's consent.”
Yellowfin a leader in BI usability: Dresner Wisdom of Crowds
Yellowfin is responding to this demand and the consumerization of BI. Dresner
Advisory Services latest Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study
identified Yellowfin as a global BI vendor on the rise and a leader in BI
usability. The study compared and ranked 16 of the world’s leading BI vendors
on a five-point scale, across 32 criteria, and awarded Yellowfin an overall
score of 4.23 out of five. Overall, Yellowfin outperformed Open Source and
traditional big name vendors, and was one of only three vendors recommended by
100 percent of survey participants, scoring particularly highly on product
usability related criteria, including ease of administration, overall
usability, ease of installation and third party integration.
Making data analysis easier: Delivering better insights to everyone with new
intuitive analytical visualizations
Yellowfin 5.2 incorporates new chart types, including Histograms, Trellis as
well as Box and Whisker charts, to make the implications of data analysis
easier for everyone to understand and act on. New HTML 5 integration also
provides interactive rollovers for Yellowfin’s range of data visualizations and
includes enhanced chart tool tips.
“The integration of HTML 5 into Yellowfin’s various charting options, where
applicable, provides a more interactive user experience,” said Yellowfin Data
Visualization Engineer, James Bardsley. “Allowing areas of a chart or graph to
be easily highlighted enables users to quickly, accurately and effortlessly
interpret particular trends or aspects of a data set, to transform analysis
into action.”
Enhanced usability
Yellowfin 5.2 also includes a number of enhancements directly linked to
usability. New filter options allow commonly used filters to be saved for
specific reports, and filter sets to be saved in a named list within a report.
Filter sets applied to analytic dashboards can be saved for the length of a
users’ session.
“Filter changes will also make it easier and more intuitive to set-up analytic
dashboards,” said Yellowfin Product Architect, Peter Damen. “Period filters and
the ability to alter filter width are both included as options for power users
[administrators].”
Changes to the view have made report building faster and more instinctive. The
source connection of the view can be changed, and a new display allows users to
see the table from which a view field originates.
“Yellowfin 5.2 also includes view level converters that allow users to convert
values at the view level instead of the report level,” said Yellowfin Senior
Software Engineer, Steve Joynt. “This means that those values can then be
applied to all subsequent reports, whereas before, the values had to be
converted separately for each report. Filters can also be converted based on
time zones to suit user locality.”
The introduction of precautionary view features allows users to clearly see all
fields that are set to secure. Users are also prevented from being able to
accidentally delete fields that are in use.
The usability of the release is further enhanced with the inclusion of new
out-of-the-box usage reports. These reports enable organizations and
administrators to track the frequency with which individual reports are
accessed, to determine both popular, and redundant report types.
At the report level, improvements to the report builder and sub query UI make
it easier to create queries and sub-queries.
“Reports are also easier to manage and build, with the ability to tag
individual reports and search for them by their tag,” said Damen. “A new search
box allows report fields to be easily searched for in the report builder page.”
The UI has also been restyled, for a modern, sleek appearance that improves
navigability, and reflects Yellowfin’s maturity as a world-class BI solution.
Improved scalability: Easily adapt to your changing reporting needs
The enhanced scalability of Yellowfin 5.2 makes it easier to adapt to the
shifting and expanding needs of enterprise reporting.
“The scalability of a BI solution is critical because if there’s one certainty,
it’s that a company’s reporting needs will constantly change as they grow, and
the strategic direction or data collected changes,” said Joynt. “Yellowfin 5.2
addresses the need for product robustness and easy scalability by making
clustering easier, introducing the ability to share session tokens across
instances, and by optimizing Yellowfin’s start-up process to minimize dashboard
loading time.
“Security is also paramount to scalability and widespread BI deployments, so
we’ve improved Yellowfin’s external user authentication process. New features
automatically log users out from mobile devices after 20 minutes of inactivity.
Additionally, authorized users can also now apply security settings to specific
user groups.”
Yellowfin 5.2 also includes a significant OLAP overhaul, with the introduction
of OLAP4j and support for PALO, BW as well as enhanced connectivity for SQL
Server 2005+.
Yellowfin 5.2 is available from Friday 10 June. Simply visit the Yellowfin
website – www.yellowfinbi.com - and ask for Yellowfin’s proven roadmap to
assist you to successfully implement Yellowfin 5.2 into your organization.
What is Business Intelligence software?
Business Intelligence refers to a broad range of computer software applications
and tools used to report, analyze and present data in a range of formats, to
help businesses identify trends and opportunities, and support fundamental
decision-making.
About Yellowfin
Yellowfin is a global Business Intelligence software vendor headquartered and
developed in Melbourne, Australia. Yellowfin is a highly intuitive 100 percent
Web-based reporting and analytics solution.
Contact:
Lachlan James
Yellowfin
Level 46, 360 Elizabeth Street
Melbourne, Victoria
+6103-9090-0454 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting +6103-9090-0454 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
