The Business Analytics Explorer (BA) feature in SI allows you to view data across multiple "entities" in SI: projects, project items, clients, change orders, purchase orders, purchase order items, tasks, service orders, and service plans.
You can access the BA interface via Start > Reports > Manage Business Analytics.
You can also access BA via the Business Analytics buttons throughout SI on the Explorer ribbons.
When you click one of these buttons, a list of BAs will be displayed. These BA will be filtered to the entity from whose ribbon you clicked the button.
Running any BA will open the Business Analytics Explorer.
On the left side, there is a list of the stock BA in SI, organized by entity.
There are two types of BA:
Chart: This type of BA displays the data as a Bar, Column, or Pie chart, as shown in the image below.
List: This type of BA displays data like a spreadsheet with columns and rows, as shown in the image below.
There are a few things to explain here regarding terminology:
Leads are clients that do not have a project, service order, or service plan associated with them.
A lead becomes a prospect when a project, service order, or service plan is created.
A prospect becomes a client when a project or service plan is approved or when a service order's status changes from "Not Started."
An opportunity is a project that has not been moved to a Status with a state of "Won."
Chart BA
Chart-type BA has a list of available groupings (one will be set as the default grouping), and the list varies by entity.
You can double-click a chart-type BA name or grouping to generate the chart (if you double-click the name of the BA, the default grouping will be used).
You can also click the Run button on the ribbon.
When you run a BA, you change how the data is displayed using the controls at the top of the interface.
Changing these settings on a default BA will not save them for future use, i.e., you can't permanently edit our default BA.
If you wish to make your changes to a default BA permanent, first clone the BA to create a new one and then set your preferences.
Click here to learn how to create your own Business Analytics.
All of the default Chart-type BA in SI is set to Column by default. Most have one data set, but you can have up to two data sets for Column or Bar charts.
List BA
List-type BA does not have groupings listed beneath them as there are no groupings for these.
Like Chart-type BA, you can then change how data is displayed via the controls along the top of the interface using the Filter button.
Changing these settings on a default BA will not save them for future use, i.e., you can't permanently edit our default BA.
If you wish to make your changes to a default BA permanent, first clone the BA to create a new one and then set your preferences.
Click here to learn how to create your own Business Analytics.
Home Page BA
The default home page in SI displays a graphic similar to the one shown below.
When you first install and launch SI (and until you either set it up or check the box, not be reminded), you will be prompted to set up which BA you want to display on your home page when SI launches.
When you click Yes on the prompt, the following interface will open. In it, you can select up to six BAs to display and arrange them in the order you prefer using the Up and Down arrows.
Project Item BA is not available for display on the home page due to load time.
Your choices will be displayed on the home page, two side-by-side.
After initial setup, if you wish to change the BA displayed on the home page, click your user name in the upper-right corner of the SI interface and select My Account Information.
Then click the Home Page Analytics tab.
You can also change your Home Page Analytics directly in the Business Analytics Explorer.
Permissions for BA
There are specific User Group permissions for Business Analytics that will grant or deny users permission to manage each entity.
In addition, your other User Group permissions could limit what BA you can view. For example, if you don't have permission to view the Cost and Price for a project, you will not be able to view any BA that uses those fields.