Live Excel Export (Demo Pack)

averma

Actuate Release 11 features an all-new Excel emitter which can create analysis-ready "live" Excel spreadsheets. This would enable the business user t-spreadsheet. The users can also choose to export the entire BIRT design or a single item like chart, table or crosstab to Excel. This gives them the flexibility to obtain the data that they want in an analysis-ready Excel spreadsheet.<br />
The BIRT developer has full flexibility and can control whether the exported charts/pivot tables derive their data from the same worksheet or from a separate data worksheet. The first scenario provides instant "what-if" analysis as the Excel consumer can change the data and immediately see the impact on the same worksheet. On the other hand, the separate data worksheet enables the BIRT developer to output the entire result set and hence provide the entire dataset (including the columns not shown in the BIRT output) for a more complete and holistic what-if analysis.<br />
The following are the enhanced capabilities of the Excel emitter:-

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• Export BIRT charts as live, editable charts in Excel - BIRT charts will be converted to live Excel charts with an associated data sheet containing the underlying data. Hence, the business user can alter the data in the exported data sheet and instantly see the result of their analysis in the charts.<br />
• Export BIRT crosstabs to Pivot Tables in Excel BIRT crosstabs will be exported to pivot tables along with a separate Excel data sheet containing the underlying data for further analysis. The consumer can choose to analyze the data based on different dimensions or alter the underlying data sheet to perform what-if analysis.<br />
• Maintain aggregations and calculations in Excel The aggregations in the BIRT design would be converted to the corresponding Excel functions and formulas so that users could instantly see the impact of their what-if analysis in the spreadsheet. BIRT developers can leverage a new Excel-like scripting language called EasyScript to create formulas and aggregations that would be converted to their corresponding functions in Excel.<br />
• Export single report item to Excel The business user can choose to export the entire report to Excel or select a particular report item that they want to analyze. In this way, the business user gets just the data that they want to analyze.<br />
• Export data to one or multiple Excel worksheets Actuate Release 11 provides the flexibility to display the data in one or multiple Excel worksheets as desired by the business user. The Excel content can be displayed in multiple worksheets based on the page break logic in the BIRT design.<br />
• Support for images in the Excel output The Excel output created from Actuate Release 11 will include any images present in the BIRT design.<br />
• Compatible with Microsoft Excel 2002, 2003 and 2007 The Excel output created by Actuate Release 11 BIRT can be viewed in Microsoft Excel 2002, 2003 and 2007 thus providing the BIRT developer the ability to reach most of the business users.<br />
• Layout is similar to that in HTML output format - The layout of the Excel output format has been enhanced so that the layout in the Excel output format is very similar to that seen in the HTML format. This improves the user experience as the business users see similar layouts in the Excel and Web layout and hence are able to quickly understand and interact with the data in the Excel documents.<br />

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Attached BIRT design ("Revenue Analysis.rptdesign")demostrates how a BIRT chart is converted to a native live Excel chart when the BIRT report is exported to Excel. The raw data that drives the charts is exported into a separate Excel sheet and this enables the report consumer to understand the impact of any change in the underlying data on the BIRT chart. Note that each chart has a separate data sheet containing the raw data behind the chart.<br />
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View Live Example<br />
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"Revenue by Customer.rptdesign" demonstrates how a BIRT crosstab is converted to a pivot table when the BIRT report is exported to Excel. In this BIRT Design, report consumers can continue their analysis using pivot tables to analyze the yearly revenue by country or customer or to analyze aggregated revenue totals.<br />
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View Live Example<br />
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"Sales Invoice.rptdesign" shows how you can export BIRT aggregations and formulas to their equivalents in the Excel format. Hence, the users can continue to conduct "what-if" analysis on the exported Excel output. In this BIRT design, the report consumers can immediately see the impact of varying the Quantity Sold and/or Unit Price on the Total Revenue in the Sales Invoice.<br />
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View Live Example<br />
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Ashwini Verma