Connecting to Microsoft CRM 2011 Online from Java?

Are you interested in connecting to the Microsoft Dynamics from Java?

Here is the Java code example that shows the invocation of the RetrievePolicy, RetrieveCrmTicket, RetrieveMultiple and other MS CRM 4.0 web services over SOAP:

* SOAP message templates

* Java Stub

* Simple SOAP Executor

* Few utility classes

Rotavirus hits our House

Puke, diarrhea, high fevers.




Doc says, cold water, showers, clean up the mess and wait. No fun at all. :(

GoodData Filters: WITHOUT PARENT FILTER Clause

I have recently noticed some confusion regarding how the advanced filters work in the GoodData platform. Some of our users don't realize that all report filters automatically propagate to all report metrics and filters. Let me demonstrate this on a simple example.

I created a simple report that shows the Q1/2010 planned sales by current opportunity stages. The report contains the Closed Date Quarter attribute on top and the Stage attribute on left. There is one simple metric Amount [Sum] that aggregates the expected revenue.



The report above shows expected revenue for all regions. Lets say that we want to see only the revenue for the West region. We will get the numbers for the West by adding a simple line filter on the Region attribute.



Please note that some of the stages have disappeared. This is fine as there are no opportunities in the West region that are in the Cultivate and Qualify stages and are expected to close in the Q1/2010.

Now, we want to compute the percentage of the expected revenue in the West to the total expected revenue in all regions. We need to divide the West expected revenue by the total expected revenue in all regions. We already have the West revenue. How can we compute the total revenue for all regions in the same report? The answer is the WITHOUT PARENT FILTER clause that we can put into the metric that computes the total revenue for all regions. The clause simply ignores all report filters in the all regions metric. So the definition of the all regions total is:

Amount [All Regions] : SELECT Amount [Sum] WITHOUT PARENT FILTER



Compare the report with the WITHOUT PARENT FILTER clause with the report without the region filter (the first one in this article). You're right, these are the same. The report filter is ignored and the Cultivate and Qualify stages are back.



Now lets compute the percentage:

SELECT Amount [Sum] / Amount [All Regions]



And here is the final percentage report:



Let me quickly summarize. The GoodData platform automatically propagates all report filters are to all underlying metrics. If you need to override this behavior, you need to use the WITHOUT PARENT FILTER clause.

Easy or difficult? Do you need more? Let me know!

You Calc. We Analyze ;-)

The LucidEra demise brought me to this article. Rasmus compares Good Data with YouCalc. He claims that the key benefit of YouCalc is that it is directly accessing SalesForce, HighRise or Google data instead uploading them to a syndicated storage. The YouCalc approach is called REPORTING. It is not good or bad, it is just different from what we do. Rasmus should rather compare his company to BIRT, JasperSoft or others. The comparison with LucidEra, PivotLink or Good Data just doesn't stick.

Let me explain why on a simple example. We found that trending is one of the most interesting analyses (not only in the CRM area). Pipeline keeps changing. Average sales rep tends to be optimistic the first month of each quarter. The optimism is going down as the end of quarter approaches. To analyze the attitude of individual salesman or a sales team, analytical vendor needs to collect data snapshots on regular basis and analyze the pipeline changes in between these snapshots. Reporting applications like YouCalc can't do trending analysis (unless very few cases when the original data provider has decided to snapshot their data and give YouCalc access to the snapshots) as well as many others.

Rasmus is right, the direct access to data is something what differentiates Good Data from YouCalc. This is what puts Good Data to analysis and YouCalc to reporting categories. I'm sure that the primary reason why LucidEra is gone is very different.

The MLB 2008 Strikeout Leaders

Is baseball your passion? If yes, you'll love our MLB project. See the embedded report below as a preview what you can discover there. Note that the report is interactive! You can right click on values, sort etc.



Click on the link below the report and enter your e-mail address if you want to slice & dice the long-term MLB stats and create your own reports!

Play it again Sam!

Our marketing has scored few home-runs in April.



Success or failure come way faster in our world. I would never dream about that we are going to have more unique visitors at our site than Microstrategy or QlikView who have spent millions of dollars on marketing. This is proof that few dollars can beat millions if we spent them right.

Play it again in May, Sam! :-)

CloudExpo Slides

Here are the slides that I presented together with Jakub on the CloudExpo Europe.