You might recall the Beijing Olympics 2008 Dashboard that we did recently using Zoho DB & Reports, which was well received. Coming to know about Zoho DB & Reports through this Dashboard, we were contacted by the Official website hosting partner of Commonwealth Youth Games 2008, which is currently being held in Pune, India between 12th-18th October 2008.

They offered us the opportunity to host the Official Reports and Statistics of the Youth Commonwealth Games 2008 in their Website using Zoho DB & Reports. We readily accepted the invitation and worked with them to bring out the Reports and Statistics of the games using Zoho DB & Reports.

Checkout the same @   http://www.cygpune2008.com/graphical-reports/cygpune2008-report.php.
Games official website: http://www.cygpune2008.com (Navigate to the “Results Statistics”" section from the home page to view the reports)

We would like to thank Dimakh Consultants, the official website hosting partner of Commonwealth Youth Games 2008 for providing this opportunity.

Hope you like it. Lets us know your feedback’s on the same. Also feel free to contact us (support at zohodb dot com), in case you require any help in solving your reporting needs of your business using Zoho DB & Reports. We would be more than happy to help you out.

Thanks,
Clarence
Zoho DB & Reports - Online Reporting & BI Service

Popularity: 13% [?]

Posted to:  Announcements, General, Uncategorized, Zoho DB  Permalink  3 Comments  Trackback  
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Integrating the powerful reporting & analytics functionality of Zoho DB & Reports into Zoho Creator has been one of the most requested feature. We have heard it and enabled the first step towards this goal.

In Zoho DB & Reports we have introduced the feature of scheduled periodic import of CSV files from any accessible Web URL. With this feature you could setup Zoho DB & Reports to periodically fetch data in CSV format from any accessible Web URL. This would be really useful in scenarios where you have new data being published or updated periodically and you would like get those updates inside Zoho DB & Reports for reporting and analysis. Till now you had to re-import this data manually into Zoho DB & Reports, every time an update is available. Now you just have to setup up the periodic import feature and Zoho DB & Reports would do the rest for you.

With this feature you could also (enable Zoho DB & Reports to) periodically fetch data from your Zoho Creator Application into Zoho DB & Reports as changes happen to the same. As the latest data is made available inside Zoho DB & Reports, you could create any type of powerful reports with it. The reports created using Zoho DB & Reports could also be embedded back inside your Zoho Creator application using the new HTML Page view feature introduced in Zoho Creator 3.0

The following presentation demonstrates how you could periodically import data from Zoho Creator into Zoho DB & Reports:

Do give the above feature a try and let us know your feedbacks. This is just the first step in making available the powerful reporting functionality of Zoho DB & Reports to Zoho Creator users. We are continuing our work on this problem to further simplify the process. A much closer GUI level integration of making report creation features of Zoho DB & Reports available within Zoho Creator is in development. We will keep you posted once we are ready with it…

Happy Reporting and Keep tab on further development…

Clarence
Zoho DB & Reports - Online Reporting & BI Service

Popularity: 21% [?]

Posted to:  Announcements, General, Zoho Creator, Zoho DB  Permalink  12 Comments  Trackback  
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Olympic fever has gripped many of us. This edition could provide a much closer finish at the top of the table with China and USA running head-head. China being the host nation, could have the home advantage to topple US leadership this Olympics. Anyway lets wait and watch….

Some of the Olympics enthusiasts here at Zoho thought about building a Live Olympics 2008 Dashboard for a quick preview of the latest trends. We used Zoho DB & Reports to upload the latest Olympics results periodically and built some insightful reports. We designed a live dashboard using Zoho Wiki collating some of the top reports created. You can access this @ http://olympics2008.wiki.zoho.com

Some of the reports available:

1. Day by Day Medal progress in Olympics 2008 of top performing countries
2. China vs USA head-head comparison
3. Top 7 countries - By Overall Medal count, By Men Event Winners, By Women Event Winners
4. Performance of a Country when being a Olympics Host vs as Non Host
5. many more…

You can also access the entire public Olympic 2008 database done in Zoho DB & Reports.

So just bookmark the Olympics Dashboard, keep track of the progress and enjoy the games…..

Clarence
Zoho DB & Reports - Online Reporting & BI service

Popularity: 23% [?]

Posted to:  General, Zoho DB, Zoho Wiki  Permalink  11 Comments  Trackback  
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Zoho DB & Reports offers a wide range of data types (column types) to store your tabular data. So far, the options offered for formatting the data stored in these column types have been limited. We have addressed this in our latest update.

Zoho DB & Reports now offers a wide variety of formatting options for each data type. With these options you can choose how you would like to have your data displayed in the various reports created.

How to format a column?

1. Select the table or tabular view in which the columns are to be formatted
2. Right click on the column that is to be formatted
3. Set the necessary formatting option in the dialog that pops up
4. Click OK to apply the formatting changes

Immediately you will see the formatting options being applied over the column. Zoho DB & Reports also ensures to carry over this formatting set for a column across all the reports (chart, pivot, summary & tabular) created including this column.

Formatting options supported include Text Alignment, No. of Decimal places (for all numeric data types), Currency Symbol (for currency type), Negative Number Display (for currency type), Date display format and Include thousand separator (for all numeric data types).

Customize Chart Coloring:

In Zoho DB & Reports the colors used in charts have been system generated so far. With the latest update you can now change the colors used in a chart to suit your taste. Follow the below given simple steps to customize the color in a chart:

1. Select the Chart whose colors are to be customized
2. Click Edit Design and go to edit mode
3. Click on any of the category colors listed in the legend (seen on the right side of the chart) to change the same.
4. A color chooser will pop up
5. Choose the color required
6. Click Apply to apply the color Or Click on Use Default if you would like to revert to system generated colors.

Auto-recognizing currency data during Import:

Now Zoho DB & Reports has included the intelligence to auto-identify a data column as currency when you import it into Zoho DB & Reports. You do not have to manually set the data type of those columns as currency, which had been the case so far. The data could be in any of the accepted currency formats (with currency symbol or abbreviation eg., $, USD etc.,) of any country. Auto-recognition would be applied when you import data into Zoho DB & Reports from any of CSV or .XLS or HTML files

Hope you find the above features useful. As always do give it a try and let us know your comments….

With regards,
Clarence
Zoho DB & Reports - Online Reporting & BI Service

Popularity: 16% [?]

Posted to:  Announcements, General, Zoho DB  Permalink  1 Comments  Trackback  
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Printing the reports created in Zoho DB & Reports has been one of the most requested features by our users. And this is now available. You can export any of your reports created (be it chart, pivots, table … ) into a printer friendly PDF file for printing. We offer a good set of options to customize your print outs too. Settings include Page Size, Headers, Footers, etc.

How to Take a Print?

1. Select the report to be printed from within Zoho DB & Reports
2. Select the “Export” -> “Export as PDF” menu
3. You will see a PDF Export settings dialog as below
4. Provide the necessary settings like file name, page size, margins, footer and header
5. Click OK to generate the PDF
6. Save the PDF file generated into your local folder or Open it from within your browser
7. You can print the PDF generated anytime

Hope you find this useful. Take a Print out and let us know how you like it.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Posted to:  Zoho DB  Permalink  1 Comments  Trackback  
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After the recent Zoho Sheet Pivot Table support which is based on Zoho DB & Reports, we have rolled in good set of useful features into Zoho DB & Reports. I have summarized the important ones here below. 

Copy Database:

With the new Copy Database feature, you easily create a copy of an existing Zoho DB & Reports database. This feature provides an option to make a copy of the database with or without existing data. If you copy without data, then only the tables and report definitions are copied. If you copy with data, then all tables, reports along with existing data in the database would be copied.

You can make a copy of a database following the steps given below:

• Go to “Existing Databases” section in the home page
• Under each database that is listed you will find a “Copy” link
• Click on the “Copy” link for the database that you wish to copy
• It will popup a dialog where you could provide the name and description for the new database that is to be created
• Check/Uncheck the “Copy with Data” option depending on whether you would like to make a copy of the database with tables, reports and existing data OR just the tables and reports definition alone

With this option you could also copy any of the demonstrative Sample Databases that is provided by Zoho DB & Reports.

HTML Import:

Zoho DB & Reports now supports importing HTML table contents into Zoho DB & Reports. This enables importing data in any HTML table into Zoho DB & Reports as you import CSV data. The HTML file should contain at least one Table inside it for importing.

You can import data from a HTML file through any of the following means:

• Copy/Paste the HTML code into the “Import Wizard”
• Load a HTML file from a local folder
• Load a HTML from any publicly accessible Web URL

More intelligence & convenience for designing Chart/Pivot/Summary views:

So far, while designing chart or pivot or summary view, you had to drag and drop fields listed on the left to the right-side design area and construct the view. Now we have provided checkboxes to just select the fields that are to be used to design the chart. This is apart from the existing drag and drop support.

Zoho DB & Reports intelligently identifies the appropriate position to place the selected field in the design area. Also as another step of intelligence, Zoho DB & Reports even selects the right function to apply on the field which is added to the design area.

Filters & Search across all tabular views:

Filters and Search (Quick Filter) was introduced into Zoho DB & Reports in one of our previous update. It was initially supported only in Tables. Now you could do Quick filtering across all table based views in Zoho DB & Reports. This includes Tabular Views, SQL Query table and tables shown for displaying View Underlying Data in Charts, Pivots and Summary Views.

Color your Zoho DB & Reports interface with Themes:

Zoho DB & Reports now supports themes. You could apply the theme you like by choosing the “Themes” menu at the right top corner of the screen. Currently we have only two packaged themes available (more to come very soon….). The theme you choose will be set to your preference and applied across logins. I guess you would have already noticed that the snapshots embedded above in this blog post were all taken with our New Blue Theme.

Keep track of the  Zoho DB & Reports Feature Trail to know about all the features that are rolled-out into our service regularly. Try out the new features and let us know what you think….

Popularity: 18% [?]

Posted to:  Announcements, General, Zoho DB  Permalink  No Comments   Trackback  
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It’s been quiet sometime since you heard from the Zoho DB & Reports team. We all have been working hard under the hoods to get Zoho DB & Reports better. Thanks to all of you for the overwhelming response to Zoho DB & Reports and for the great feedbacks you all have posted. All your feedbacks are really keeping us very busy.
We have been incrementally adding new features and at the same time fixing important and glaring issues in the service. Just thought of summarizing the important features that had been rolled into Zoho DB & Reports in the past couple of weeks for you to keep tabs on.

Filters and Search in Tables:

This has been a major limitation in the service so far. Now you can filter or search data in the table using the “Filter “  option in the tool bar. We have provided variety of options to filter the data based on the type of the column. We have also ensured that it is very easy to use and self-explanatory.

Support for data in Multiple Character set:

This feature has been one of the most sought after by users across the globe. You have it now in Zoho DB & Reports!!. Now users can import data in different character set and do any type of data manipulation and reporting.

New Chart types:

In our first release we only had 5 types of chart supported (basic Pie, Line, Scatter, Bar and Table). Now we support 14 chart types including Web Chart, Stacked Bar, 3D Pie, 3D Bar etc., Still lots more coming ….

Groups support for easy Collaboration:

Now you could create a Group for each database and associate a set of users within it. View creation, sharing etc., could now be done easily at the group level rather than at each user level. This would facilitate much easy collaboration in a team environment.

Highlights of the Group feature:

• Database owner will have the permission to create a Group and add/remove users to it
• Tables and Views can be shared to the Group (apart from individual users) by the Database Owner
• Users in the group could create their own views
• Users in the group could share their views to the group. (They cannot share it to members outside the group)
• Only Database owner will have the permission to share any view or table outside the group

More In-built Formula Functions:

We have also added good number of inbuilt functions that you could use in your Custom Formulas when you add new Formula column in your Table or Tabular View.

Uploading more data into Zoho DB & Reports:

As the scale of usage of Zoho DB & Reports by users are expanding, we have been receiving requests to enable uploading more data and also to increase the maximum size limit. In case you have such a requirement, please contact us to support at zohodb dot com so that we could assist you.

Give the features a try and let us know your feedbacks as always. Apart from this, we have also fixed quiet a number of issues since the first release.

Work is in progress on a number of interesting features which are coming up very soon. Stay tuned…….

Popularity: 17% [?]

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