Budgeting Made Easy: Beinex Budget Allocation Accelerator (Infographic)

The AWS Partner Awards recognise a wide range of Partners, whose business models have embraced specialisation and collaboration over the past year. The AWS Partner Awards also recognise AWS Partners whose business models continue to evolve and thrive on the AWS Cloud as they work with customers to conceive, build and migrate cloud-native solutions on AWS. Receiving the Award, Indumon Das, the Founder and Managing Director of Beinex, remarked, "We leverage the capabilities of AWS and combine that with the Analytics Consulting power of Beinex to bring unmatched success to our customers. We look forward to the launch of the AWS data centers in the UAE in the first half of 2022. The launch will have a big impact on the growth and acceleration of cloud adoption in the Middle East and we are excited to support organizations to take advantage of what it has to offer." The AWS Partner Network (APN) is the global community of businesses using AWS to build solutions and services for customers. AWS helps partners build, market, and sell their offerings by providing valuable business, marketing, and technical support on top of our proven, global, and secure infrastructure. AWS partners are uniquely positioned to help customers take full advantage of all that AWS has to offer and accelerate their journey to the cloud. AWS has millions of active customers and a dynamic community of over 100,000 partners globally. "AWS Partners add value to customers across a wide range of industries around the world and are critical to their success. We are pleased to recognise a variety of partners through the APN Partner Awards EMEA 2021. I look forward to working together to a great 2022," said Antonio Alonzo Lopez, EMEA Director Partner Success at AWS. About Beinex Beinex, Dubai, is a multinational firm exploring the endless possibilities of data for Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Automation.

Recognized as a leader in analytics and business intelligence platform for 9 consecutive years in Gartner Magic Quadrant, Tableau has a variety of options when it comes to analytics and visualizations and according to me, it keeps getting better and better with every update. The latest 2021.1 update comes packed with some impressive features and these are some of them that caught my eye:

• Einstein Discovery
• Quick LODs
• More Data Connections
• View Metrics
• Dashboard Extensions in Tableau
• Write to Excel in Tableau Prep
• Device Designer for Web Authoring
• License Improvements

Einstein Discovery After its acquisition by Salesforce, Tableau has been at the advantage of being able to leverage Salesforce capabilities. In this update, Tableau has introduced its integration with a powerful AI driven Salesforce product – the “Einstein Discovery”. With this feature, I can get smart predictive modelling capabilities for quick business decisions without any effort of creating complex codes or algorithm. Einstein Discovery has been rolled out in Tableau through three approaches, through dashboard extensions, through analytics extension, and through Tableau Prep which was released in version 2021.1.3. Although this feature requires an additional Einstein Discovery License, I find the end benefit totally worth it.

• Through Dashboard Extensions: To use “Einstein Discovery” in dashboards, I can just add an extension object on the dashboard and select Einstein Discovery. It will analyse the selected data and build predictive models. It shows me the top predictors in the view along with metrics that can be improved, and thus helping business decisions. This feature is available in Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server and Tableau Online.

• Through Analytics Extension: With this feature, I can directly embed predictions into Tableau calculated fields. All I have to do is go to Salesforce, use Model Manager to generate a Tableau table calculation script and paste the script into the calculated field in Tableau. This script then accesses predictive models in Salesforce by passing the data required for the model. This saves my time since I don’t need to create a code for the model. This feature is only available in Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server.

• Through Tableau Prep: This feature was released in 2021.1.3 and its ingenuity is worth mentioning. With “Einstein Discovery” in Tableau Prep, I can now use predictions while preparing data. I can bulk score my data and create fields to show prediction outcomes, to show top predictors and to show recommendations for improvement of the output.

Quick LODs LOD calculations are frequently used in Tableau to perform calculations on a fixed dimension. Where previously I had to mention the dimension to be fixed and the measures to be aggregated in a calculated field, now all I must do is select the dimension and measure in the data pane and right click to create an LOD calculation. Or even better, hold “Ctrl” to drag and drop the required measure field onto the dimension to be fixed. As simple as that. I can modify the calculation with more dimensions or change the type of aggregation later, if required. This feature is most beneficial as it reduces the chance of errors while creating complex LOD calculations, like misplacing a bracket, or adding any unnecessary characters by mistake. More Data Connections With the increase in popularity of Microsoft Azure services among users, Tableau has added multiple Azure connectors including Azure SQL Database and Azure Data Lake Gen 2 along with the existing Azure Synapse Analytics and Databricks. I can now connect to data that is stored in Azure’s SQL Database and Data Lake using the native Tableau connectors. Tableau has also introduced authentication to Azure services using the Azure Active Directory, making the connection more secure. In addition to this, four new data connectors have been added to Tableau Online and Tableau Server. They are Amazon Athena, Apache Drill, OData and SharePoint Lists. View Metrics A difficulty that I had faced with the metric feature was that I was not able to know the other metrics that were created in the same dashboard. With this update I can see all the metrics associated with a particular dashboard and modify these metrics if required or create new ones within the metrics pane. And previously, only if my site role were “Creator” or “Explorer”, I could see the metrics. But in this update, I can see all metrics connected to a dashboard irrespective of my site role. Dashboard Extensions in Tableau Earlier, to use an extension in a Tableau Dashboard, I had to drag and drop the extension object on the dashboard which would take me to its extension gallery web page and then I had to download it and then locate the downloaded extension on Tableau. Sounds tiring right? Not anymore! With this update, all I have to do is drag and drop the extension object onto the dashboard to select the required extension. I can now see all extensions and filter the list based on categories within the “Add an Extension” window in the Tableau screen. Write to Excel in Tableau Prep This is one feature that will prove useful to any regular Tableau Prep user. The days of exporting an output to csv and then converting it manually to an xlsx file are finally over. Using the latest version of Tableau Prep, I can directly export the output of a workflow into an xlsx file. Device Designer for Web Authoring Where before I could only generate device specific layouts in Tableau Desktop, now I can create custom phone or tablet views within the web itself. I no longer have to modify the device layout in Tableau Desktop and re-publish whenever a change in device layout is required. Licensing Improvements With this update, Tableau has introduced zero downtime licensing for the Tableau Server. Now for most of the tasks, whether it is the activation of a license or updating a feature that got added or applying some changes to user capacity, I no longer need to perform a server restart. So, these are some features that have been helpful to me and these are just a few of the lot. To view all the new features in 2021.1, you can view it at Tableau 2021.1 New Features In my view, Tableau has done a great job with its timely and inventive updates and seeing the rapid growth of AI and the increase of its application in numerous industries, I can predict for sure that Tableau will surprise the data science community with more innovative updates. Images Courtesy: Tableau

But this does not apply to a slicer visual, which only has cross-filtering and no interaction feature. This made me wonder if we can achieve cross-highlight with a slicer visual through some work-around that allows me to compare one category with other easily through cross-highlight. After some research, I may have found a way to do this. Below are the steps in detail to achieve this. Normal filtering of data with slicer: The below example shows normal slicing of data where only the selected value will be reflected in the bar chart. This does not allow me to compare other values easily or focus in on the selected value through highlighting. Dynamic highlighting with Slicer: The below example shows the dynamic highlighting where I can choose the categories in the slicer to highlight for comparison with the other categories. I can easily focus on the selected categories and compare the measure values with other categories. Solution: First, I have created a disconnected table with the categories. This can be easily done with the following dax formula.

Selected Category = VALUES(Orders[Category])

Had made sure there is no relationship in the model view between the source table and new category table. Created a measure which will be added to the conditional formatting in data colour section in the format pane.

Selected Colour bar = 
var selected_category = VALUES ('Selected Category'[Category]) 
var category_to_highlight = SELECTEDVALUE (Orders [Category])
var filtered = ISFILTERED ('Selected Category'[Category])
var result = 
    SWITCH(TRUE(),NOT(filtered),"#0055cc", category_to_highlight in selected_category && filtered,"#0055cc","#9cd0ed")
return result

Explanation: Selected Colour bar =

var selected_category = VALUES ('Selected Category'[Category]) // taking values from category table

var category_to_highlight = SELECTEDVALUE (Orders [Category]) // Using selected value function 

var filtered = ISFILTERED ('Selected Category'[Category]) // checks if the column is filtered and will return true or false

var result = 
SWITCH(TRUE(),NOT(filtered),"#0055cc", category_to_highlight in selected_category && filtered,"#0055cc","#9cd0ed") 

/* The first condition checks if the there is no filtration will return all values, Then will be checking if the selected set of values is contained in the category column. The selected value will be returning a specific dark colour while the unselected value will be giving a lighter colour. */

return result

Created a bar chart with total sales given in the value section and the category column from the source data will be given as axis. Gave the highlight effect by adding a measure in the field value section of the data colour conditional formatting. Added the measure in the field value section. Added category slicer from the Selected Category table Finally arranged them and saw the magic happen. Conclusion: This goes to show the hidden features of Power BI one can explore with a little bit of tinkering with a dash of DAX. This blog is a first in a series of many nifty blogs. Hope you like it and looking forward to your feedback.