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Tutorial 1: Connecting into Excel Spreadsheets Start Video

Introduction


This tutorial will guide you through the quick process of connecting
and importing an Excel spreadsheet file into Sisense Prism.

Before you start...


Download US Laptop Sales.xls

Jump To:

Step 1: Select Data Source Origin
Step 2: Select & Connect to an Excel File
Step 3: Excel connection settings
Step 4: Finish Wizard
Step 5 (optional): Edit Dimensions


Step 1: Select Data Source Origin


The first step is to select your data source origin from the given
list of data providers.
Sisense offers three major types of data sources:

Databases:

MS SQL Server
Oracle
MySQL

Files based data sources:

Excel
CSV files

Internet based data sources:

Amazon S3
Google Spreadsheets

Step 2: Select & Connect to an Excel File


To create an Excel data source, we must first select an Excel file.
To do that, click on the Excel File item.

This in turn will open up a standard windows XP open dialog
in which we will select the desired Excel file.

For our tutorial, select the US Laptop Sales.xls
file which you downloaded at the beginning of the tutorial.

click here if you haven't downloaded the US Laptop Sales.xls file.

Step 3: Excel Connection Settings


In this step we will select the actual data ranges from within the
spreadsheet. We can choose between a particular sheet, a named
range
or a static range.

In our example, we will keep all default settings (particular sheet) and
continue by pressing the OK button.

The preview section at the bottom of the dialog gives you an intro tothe data you are about to import. Each column has a special icon near it that shows how Prism will treat the imported column. In our example, we have three types of columns: text, date-time,and numeric.

In order for Prism to recognize values properly, make sure you select the appropriate culture for the given Excel file. For example, if the file was generated in a non-English language, then you should switch to that language by selecting it from the Culture drop-down list.

Step 4: Finish Wizard


The last step is to assign a title to the newly generated data source.

In addition, you can modify the way Prism treats imported columns by
clicking on the Edit Dimensions button.

by default, when importing Excel spreadsheets, Prism treats textual columns as regular dimensions, numeric columns as measures, and time columns as date-time dimensions.

Later on, after the wizard is done and the data source is generated, you can still change the data source configuration (visible columns, aggregation types, default captions etc.) by right clicking on the Data Source Browser, and selecting the Data Source Settings menu item.


That's it, we're done.

Just click the Finish button.


Step 5(optional): Dimensions Properties


The Dimensions Properties dialog involves the selectionof fields
(columns) and setting them as dimensions , measures , and time
dimensions
.

Dimensions:
Fields that contain qualitative data such as Dates,
Customer Names, Gender, Products, Regions etc.

Set a field as dimension if you wish to filter it for its
members and use them inside your analysis.

Time Dimensions:
Date & Time stamp fields that are transformed into
time hierarchies.

Set a field as time dimension if you wish to analyze by
time as years, quarters, months, days etc., and perform
calculations that involve time hierarchies
(Growth, Difference, Rolling Sums etc.)

In addition, once you set a field as time dimension, you will
get additional time aggregation dimensions that allow you
to analyze data by Weekdays and Month Names, a powerful
addition that gives you the ability to combine time
dimensions on the same widget.

Measures:
Fields that contain numerical values that should be
aggregated such as sales, cost, profit, # of products sold,
ship duration, scientific measurements, statistical
measurements etc.

Set a field as measure if you wish to aggregate it over
other dimensions.

More:
Connecting to CSV files
Connecting to SQL Server



What's Next?

Jump to Tutorial 2 - Working with pivots

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