ibm mashup center: a solution for spreadsheet overload · by using ibm mashup center, the manager...

IBM Mashup Center: A solution for spreadsheetoverloadCreating and manipulating feeds on IBM Mashup Center

Skill Level: Intermediate

John FellerSenior Manager, jStart Emerging TechnologiesIBM

Chris Gruber ([email protected])Product ManagerIBM

18 Sep 2008

Learn how you can use IBM® Mashup Center® to retrieve and consolidate the mostup-to-date information into a situational application. View an example of dataconsolidated from several spreadsheets along with some external data sources tosee how to create a Sales Manager’s Dashboard.

Introduction

This article describes a use case in which a sales manager consolidates data fromher staff and then tailors that data into a personalized dashboard using IBM MashupCenter. IBM Mashup Center is an easy-to-use business mashup platform,supporting line-of-business assembly of dynamic situational applications. Itcombines the user-mashup capabilities from IBM Lotus® Mashups together with theinformation access and transformation capabilities of IBM InfoSphere MashupHub,into a tightly integrated, comprehensive mashup offering.

The example described in this article shows the strength and flexibility of MashupCenter’s functionality and illustrates the advantages of Web 2.0 concepts such ascreating data feeds from spreadsheets. Currently, many business users spend too

IBM Mashup Center: A solution for spreadsheet overload© Copyright IBM Corporation 1994, 2007. All rights reserved. of 13

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

much time collecting, combining, consolidating, and distributing data when they usespreadsheets as their primary information distribution system. Turning spreadsheetdata into data feeds allows the information to be easily used by enterprise mashupsapplications.

Overview of scenario

Jane, a sales manager, wants to consolidate data from her sales representativesand combine that data with external sources; she also wants to stop having to checkher inbox for updated versions of spreadsheets sent to her. Currently, Jane askseach of her sales reps to send her a spreadsheet with current sales and pipeline(forecasted) sales from each of their customers. Jane takes those files and createsone consolidated spreadsheet file which she then sends back to her staff and to herexecutive manager.

Unfortunately, Jane is in the mist of "spreadsheet overload." For example, one salesrep tells her that new information was received from a customer, and thus a newspreadsheet was sent to her which should replace yesterday’s email with thespreadsheet attachment. Yesterday, Jane had already sent out an email to her staffand management team, so now she has to update her copy, and then send theupdated copy back to her distribution list. Eventually, people end up with multipleemails in their inboxes, wondering which attached spreadsheet is supposed to bethe "most up-to-date" and having to delete all of the older emails.

Solution

By using IBM Mashup Center, the manager is able to create an application whichexposes the most recent revenue and pipeline forecast data and allows the managerto combine it with other external data sources.

Instead of each sales rep sending out the spreadsheet via email, each sales rep cansimply create a data feed using IBM Mashup Center. InfoSphere MashupHub, thedata catalog and feed generator component of the Mashup Center product, easilyallows business users to expose Excel or other spreadsheet data as a feed. Thisstep for the sales reps to load their spreadsheet data does not require programmingor IT expertise. The rest of this article describes the one-time setup to consolidateand filter the information. Once the setup is complete, users of the data will seeupdates automatically!

In order to load revenue, forecast information, and create a MashupHub feed, thesales rep would need to follow these steps:

• Step 1 - Sales rep creates spreadsheet with sales information

developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks

IBM Mashup Center: A solution for spreadsheet overload of 13 © Copyright IBM Corporation 1994, 2007. All rights reserved.


• Step 2 - He or she goes to the MashupHub Web page and selects CreateFeed

• Step 3 - The sales rep selects Excel Workbook from the Data SourcePage

• Step 4 – Select header row number and select XLS file to upload. TheSales rep will then fill out a details page with a Feed Title (example:“Sales – John”) and feed description.

• Step 5 – An ATOM Feed is then created which reflects the sales data.

Figure 1 illustrates these steps. Notice that no programming is required of the salesrep.

Figure 1. MashupHub feed created from Spreadsheet

There is a video which illustrates these steps on the IBM Mashup Center wiki. Oncethe feed has been created within the MashupHub catalog, the sales reps wouldsimply update the feed whenever necessary (only Step 4 would be needed in orderto upload the updated spreadsheet). Anyone subscribed to the feed (such as Jane,the sales manager), would automatically see the changes within their mashupapplication.

After the sales team's feeds are available within MashupHub, Jane could consolidate

ibm.com/developerWorks developerWorks®


http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/mashupswiki.nsf/dx/creating-a-feed-from-excel-with-ibm-mashup-center


or transform the feeds to however she would like to view the data. For example, shecould use Mashup Feed Editor to create a new feed which consolidates all of herteam's sales data and then filters the data based on certain parameters within thefeed's URL.

Figure 2 shows an example feed mashup. Jane could use this feed mashup tocombine sales data from three of her team members (Josh, Chris, and ED) and thenfilter the data based on either the state of the customer, amount of revenue, and/orby the assigned sales rep.

Figure 2. A feed which combines each sales rep reports

Let’s walk through the steps Jane took to create this new feed mashup.

First, Jane selects the data source for each of her sales reps. Jane puts 3 sourceoperators onto the Mashup editor palette for each of her sales reps, John, Chris, andEd as Figure 3 shows. She selects the From Catalog radio button and proceeds topress the Browse button to search the catalog.

Figure 3. Source operator added for each sales representative




Next, Jane selects the Combine operator which merges all data feeds into one datafeed as Figure 4 illustrates. This operator amalgamates all the source inputs into asingle view including all entries for each source. Jane wires each source plug intothe combine operator.

Figure 4. Source operator added for each sales representative

Next, Jane wants to filter some data so she can view the database on sales rep,revenue, or location of the customer. IBM InfoSphere MashupHub easily allows adata feed with parameters to be created. First, a Filter operator which she names"State" is added onto the canvas for the location. Jane wires the Combine operatoroutput to the State filter. Within the Input element side, Jane selects the dataelement (or text node) that would contain the State field as Figure 5 shows.

Figure 5. State input element selected within Filter operator




Now Jane wants to make this feed dynamic, so she selects the value as an inputvariable as Figure 6 illustrates.

Figure 6. Input variable

This selection prompts Jane to create a variable called State with a default value of *as Figure 7 shows.

Figure 7. Setting default values




Jane wants to have a feed in which she can specify the parameters for State andsimply receive customers for that particular state (example: STATE=NY). However ifshe specifies STATE=*, she’d like to receive a list of all customers regardless of theirlocation. In order to set * to essentially turn off the filter, simply change the conditionfrom “All” to “Any” on the condition statement. Then add a new condition that tests if* is equal to the input variable. Figure 8 illustrates these steps.

Figure 8. Setting filter operator

Jane would create similar filters for Revenue and Sales Rep — each being wiredtogether as shown above in Figure 5. The sales rep filter operation is shown inFigure 9. The Revenue would be based on a comparison of “>” where the default for




the variable would be zero. The Sales Rep filter would be identical to that of theState Filter.

Figure 9. Sales rep filter operator

The last step is to select an ATOM feed for the Publish operator as Figure 10 shows.

Figure 10. Publish operator

The resulting combined feed would also have parameters to filter based on certain




criteria. For example the feed URL would behttp://myserver.test.com:9080/mashuphub/client/plugin/generate/entryid/71/pluginid/10?RevenueAtLeast=0&SalesRep=*&State=*

Now Jane can utilize this data feed within Lotus Mashups to create her ownsituational application. For example, a Manager’s dashboard could be created likethe one shown in Figure 11. This example application only takes a few steps to buildwithin Lotus Mashups and there is no programming required. Jane would first selectan Input Box widget (which is available on Lotus Greenhouse) and add it to theMashups palette. She then would edit the settings for the Input Box widget andspecify the Combined Sales Data feed URL. Three input fields will appear within thewidget which correspond to each of the 3 parameters within the feed URL(RevenueAtLeast, SalesRep, and State). Jane adds a Data Viewer widget to theMashups palette and this widget is wired to receive data from the Input Box widget.Lastly, Jane adds a Web Site Displayer widget to the palette and is wired to receivethe Website URL for the company that is selected within the Data Viewer widget.The mashup application is now complete and can be run anytime Jane needs status;this application will retrieve the most up-to-date sales information from her team.

Figure 11. Completed mashup application taking sales data and displayingassociated Web site for selected company

If Jane wished to only see customers who were located in New York and with atleast $35,700 in revenue, then all she has to do is specify the parameter valueswithin the Input Box widget. The URL retrieved from the Data Viewer widget wouldbehttp://myserver.test.com:9080/mashuphub/client/plugin/generate/entryid/71/pluginid/10?RevenueAtLeast=35700&SalesRep=*&State=NY




An example output is shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12. Completed mashup application with filtered data

This example showed consolidating data from three sales reps. Imagine if Jane had50 sales reps and had to manually consolidate their spreadsheet data! Initially itmight seem a little complex to set up the operators to transform the feed into acombined feed with filters. However, once the mashup feed has been created, Janewould not need to edit the feed again. She would simply use her Mashup applicationto view the data. Data on her application is always current. No more sendingspreadsheets around via email! This example shows how data can also be freed upfrom being stored on individual hard-drives and instead migrated under a commonrepository with the enterprise governance, structure, backup, and security that isneeded for mission-critical data. This shared information can now be changed to fityour format, morphed, and migrated over corporate boundaries as data feeds,effectively turning the corporate Intranet into a loosely-coupled database.

Stop isolating your desktop information

This example illustrates a means to make your desktop data not be isolated. Thedata generated on the desktop usually stems from people wanting to work within a"sandbox" before they share their work, not trusting existing systems, or not havingaccess to a formal solution or system.

Many would suggest that this system would be covered by a generic CRM solution.If you have heard the term sandbagging, then you likely will identify with the scenario




that the Sales reps report what they feel they need to in order to avoidmisinterpretation of pipeline. Where do they store their real synopsis? In manycases, the answer is that they store this information on their desktop.

It is also worth noting that in the above example, Ed, Chris, and John could havecreated their own pages from their own feeds. These feeds and pages can servetheir own purposes to quickly validate assumptions and predictions. Moreimportantly to the individual representative, within IBM Mashup Center each of thefeeds and pages can be secured such that only they (or Jane if they wish) can seethe page or feed. This enables them to maintain a sandbox for the feed and servethe request/demand that Jane has to roll-up revenue. Furthermore, you can create aFeed Mashup like someone else’s if you are working within a sales team; eachmember can quickly produce feeds specific to their needs from others' work. So,effectively, Ed could create a page like Jane for his own analysis which of courseserves Jane very well as she has strengthened the team.

This scenario caters to a sales scenario, but there are many roles in a company thatpromote this type of behavior. This scenario could have been about rolling upworkflow information where the nature of information may be different and criteriamay be different, but the sources and team dynamic can be very similar. Thisapproach to incorporating desktop information can be useful outside the scenariogiven. There are many tasks that a given role may include that fall outside standardapplications giving way to the adhoc applications the business user tend to whenthere is no formal solution. Examples could include merger and acquisitions,competitive analysis, and the like. These applications and roles would benefit fromimproved data sharing as exemplified above.

Summary

IBM Mashup Center leverages the mashup model of Web 2.0 to enableorganizations to rid themselves of email overload by easily turning data withinspreadsheets into data feeds that can then be easily consumed by others. Much ofthe information used by Line of Business is outside the control of the IT departmentas it is often sitting in spreadsheets on user desktops. By using IBM Mashup Center,vital business information can be controlled, governed, and shared via a central feedrepository.




Resources

Learn

• "Get started with InfoSphere MashupHub" (developerWorks, June 2008): Learnabout the architecture, tools, and utilities of InfoSphere MashupHub, part of theIBM Mashup Center product. Then, explore a simple use-case scenario thatshowcases the different components and illustrates the advantages of usingWeb 2.0 concepts. This article is the first in a two-part series.

• " In-depth look at Feed Mashup Editor within IBM Mashup Center's InfoSphereMashupHub" (developerWorks, July 2008): In Part 2 of this series, explore theInfoSphere MashupHub more deeply and extend the use-case scenario toshowcase the different components and illustrate the advantages of using Web2.0 concepts, such as data feeds and feed mashups in an enterprise.

• developerWorks Information Management zone: Learn more about InformationManagement. Find technical documentation, how-to articles, education,downloads, product information, and more.

• Stay current with developerWorks technical events and webcasts.

Get products and technologies

• IBM Mashup Center: Find an easy to use business mashup solution, supportingline of business assembly of dynamic situational applications — with themanagement, security, and governance capabilities IT requires.

• Try IBM Mashup Center for free by using the on-line trial version located at theLotus Greenhouse web site.

• Build your next development project with IBM trial software, available fordownload directly from developerWorks.

Discuss

• Participate in developerWorks blogs and get involved in the developerWorkscommunity.

About the authors

John FellerJohn Feller is the manager of the IBM jStart Emerging Technologies developmentteam. He manages a creative and energetic team of developers that architect,design, and develop innovative solutions focused on emerging internet softwaretechnologies. He is currently focused on Web 2.0 technologies such as mashups,mashup widgets, on-line communities, tagging, Wikis, Blogs, and other social



http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/db2/library/techarticle/dm-0806singh/index.html



http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/db2/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/offers/techbriefings/?S_TACT=105AGX11&S_CMP=art

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/info/mashup-center/

https://greenhouse.lotus.com/home/login.jsp

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/?S_TACT=105AGX11&S_CMP=art

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/


networking technologies. The IBM jStart Emerging Technologies team has themission of leveraging emerging technologies to solve real-world problems for realcustomers and clients. If you are interested in applying emerging technologies tosolve real business needs, today, visit the IBM jStart web site.

Chris GruberWith more than fifteen years of industry experience, Chris Gruber, TechnicalManager for Developer Initiatives, works with IBM Information Management onindustry-leading Data Server products. Previously, Chris has worked as a SeniorProduct Manager for Sybase iAnywhere Solutions. He has worked very closely withengineering and development partners accelerating partners time to the market. Hecurrently works at IBM Information Management as Product Manager in Web 2.0product lines.



http://www.ibm.com/software/jstart


ibm mashup center: a solution for spreadsheet overload · by using ibm mashup center, the manager...

Documents