Having left you hanging from my previous post Mass Producing MicroStrategy Projects, this post will explain the solution that our company is currently implementing for fast POC deployments.  In fact, this process could very well become our “out-of-the-box” solution that empowers customers to rapidly run analysis without building any MicroStrategy reports.  Because we are still refining this process, any feedback that can streamline this process even further would be a great addition to our product suite. Read more…

Automation, Process categorization, text analytics, unstructured data

There are a number of ways to organize user access and privileges.  For every expert you’ll get a slightly different opinion.  However, if you approach the problem from the perspective of efficient user administration and license management there are only few optimal solutions. Read more…

MicroStrategy, Process license, license manager, user groups

How often do you have to create MicroStrategy projects every week, complete from schema objects all the way to fancy Flash dashboards? If so, for what purpose? MicroStrategy is relatively easy to deploy, but no sane person would want to create one complete MicroStrategy project every week, 52 weeks a year. The purpose of this article is to present some tips to cut this project creation effort from (usually) one week to half a day, so this doesn’t become the poor guy’s full-time job. Read more…

Automation, Process categorization, text analytics, unstructured data

Self Service B.I is a model where end users create reports from scratch independently of the IT team. Several B.I vendors advertise / sell their product highlighting Self Service B.I as one of the features. Prospects are thrilled at the thought of owning a tool that will magically reduce IT costs by transferring B.I reporting directly to the business side. Read more…

Process security model, self service, testing, training

In general, practitioners of MicroStrategy follow the standard development model of maintaining separate dev, uat, and prod instances (development, user acceptance testing, and production respectively).  This is the approach recommended by MicroStrategy which IT departments apply broadly to their own detriment.  Here’s a bold claim and a number pulled out of thin air:  70% of UAT projects serves no real purpose as a standalone project.  I haven’t conducted a study or anything (not yet at least) so I don’t know if it’s really 70%, but I have worked in many such environments. Read more…

Process development methodology, standards, UAT