Saturday, May 7, 2011

Omniture Insight - How to use Worksheet feature

Worksheet (A Very Useful Feature in Omniture Insight):

The objective of this post is to show how we can start using Worksheet feature of Omniture Insight. My main focus is to show how to use formulae which I assume is more important. I haven’t covered features like “Check indicators” and “Callout to Worksheet” etc. which I’ll cover in my future posts.

Please note that I have tried to cover few formulae to get some desired results. You can use this tool accordingly as per your requirement. The numbers being used in this post are dummy numbers.

Worksheet:
A worksheet is a visualization that provides functionality similar to other spreadsheet applications you may already be familiar with.
The benefits of using Worksheet feature of Insight is that you can create and re-use ad-hoc metrics and filters and you can define thresholds that trigger the generation of reports using Report. Also, you can create “input fields” for evaluating basic “what-if ” scenarios.

Formulas in Worksheet can use:
• Metrics and Filter Syntax
• Cell Reference
• Both

In the below screenshot, I tried to capture how exactly we can use expressions in worksheet to get the desired results:


I have taken Revenue and Visits for explanation. You can add more metrics. You just need to change the metric name from above expression.

I have labeled the above image with numbers for explanation:

Label 1: This shows how you can write formula within cells for the required dimension across different metrics. (Add additional metrics in columns as per your requirement)

The syntax is :
=Revenue[Referrer_domain="www.google.com"]

This worksheet shows metric across “Referring Domain” dimension and using metric expression.

Label 2 : This worksheet shows the cell reference. To get this I just typed one referring domain as an example. I have taken www.google.com as dimension element and use cell reference to get my desired result.

The syntax is :
=Revenue[Referrer_domain=$B2]

There can be instances where you want few reports on daily/weekly basis. Instead, of going directly into dimension, you can use worksheet feature to export your data. We can use different dimension in the same cell. I will explain that in label 4.

Label 3 : You can use either existing dimensions/report of your dataset or can create custom reports.

How can we report data according to newly created segment across different metrics? Label 3 is exactly pointing to this answer.
To show this, I have created one custom segment with name “testsegment” and used the below mentioned formula to get data for some metric (say "Visits").

The syntax is :
=Visits[testsegment<>"Other"]
OR
=Revenue[testsegment<>"Other"]
Please note that I have excluded the other element which will come once you create any segment.


Label 4 : This worksheet shows that how can we use Metric filter syntax and cell reference in worksheet.

Syntax:

=Visits[Referrer_domain="www.google.com" And GMT_Month=$B2]

This above syntax shows that we can use more than one dimension in worksheet. For example: "Referring Domain" Visits(1st dimension)for some particular "Month" (2nd Dimension) and we can separate them using “And” operator. Similarly, if you want to add further dimension say country you can add this using one more additional “And” operator and then your exact dimension name.

Worksheets like many other reports can be exported to excel. You can play around with formulas to get results as per your requirement. I find this feature quite useful as this make reporting/analysis tasks so simple and save time. This can be used to save your time in the sense that instead of using different visualizations for different reporting purpose you can use them directly into your worksheet.

Please share your thoughts!

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Omniture Insgiht Certified Professional Analyst Training and Certification

I went through Omniture Insight Analyst Training.

Some of the topics covered in Omniture Insight Analyst training were:

• Omniture Insight Overview
• Introduction to Insight
• Client User Interface
• Dataset Schema
• Interpreting Selections
• Segment Creation in Insight
• Publishing Reports and Templates
• Metrics Creation
• Application Structure Customization
• Latency Tables
• The Filter Editor
• Detail Tables
• Path Browser
• Process Maps

After completion of the training and lab we have to appear for Insight certification which was 3Hrs long classroom test. It reminded me of my engineering 3Hrs long examinations. Exam was really tricky and was not as simple as I thought of. Since, it was classroom test so it’ll take 2-3 weeks for the results. My fingers are crossed for the results.

I found this training useful and interesting. The instructor was good and explained each topic in detail.

I was specifically interested in Regular expressions and Filter editor topics. I’ll try to post my learning’s and application of the tool in subsequent posts. This tool will really helpful to do in-depth analysis of your online/offline data. At present I don’t know any other web analytics tool having the same capabilities as Omniture Insight. We have do Unlimited segmentation, can get granular level of detail.

Path Browser is really cool feature you might be interested in using Insight. You can define metrics by your own. You can customize the tool. You can play around with it and can get amazing learning.

In my next posts I’ll try to explain about the features/capabilities of insight.

Keep smiling and happy Learning!
Suchet Vatish

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Omniture Certified Professional

Recently, I took my two Omniture certifications and planning to take third (Omniture Insight Analyst) in a week or two.

1. Omniture SiteCatalyst User Training cum Certification – One Day Course (Scored 95%)

2. Omniture SiteCatalyst Advanced Training cum Certification – Three Days extensive Course with Practical exposure (Scored 100%)

Few months back when I passed "Google Analytics individual Certification"; I was thinking to took Omniture as well. Big Thanks to my company who sponsor me for all these trainings and Certifications.

Omniture Sitecatalyst User Certification was very easy; though I scored more in advanced but still user training was much easy. The trainings were followed by certification programs by Omniture University. I found these certifications much easier as I am using Omniture from quite a long time.

Omniture University has created and published this exam guide to help prepare partners, customers and consultants who are actively seeking accreditation in the Omniture Certified Professional program. SiteCatalyst certification exam is intended to verify that the candidate has the skills and knowledge necessary to receive business questions and understand where to find the answer in the SiteCatalyst interface, including how to choose the right settings to customize the report.

Some of the topics covered in Sitecatalyst User training were:

• SiteCatalyst basics – Overview and Objective, What is Sitecatalyst, Login to Omniture Suite, Overview of Knowledge center, Help section etc.
• SiteCatalyst Reports and Metrics - The Process of running reports, Type of Metrics, Custom events, To Run a Traffic Metrics report etc.
• Introduction to Dashboards, Campaign Reports
• Visitor Identification and Segmentation
• Visitor Acquisition
• Path Analysis and Reporting
• Custom Reports
• Visitor Retention
• Calculated Metrics
• Data Extract and Excel Client
• Managing Dashboard etc.

Some of the topics covered in Advanced Sitecatalyst training were:

• Omniture Advanced Tools
• Customizing, Saving and Distributing your SiteCatalyst Reports
• Understanding SiteCatalyst Graphs
• Adding Context to Your Reports Using Targets, Calendar Events and Alerts - SiteCatalyst Targets, Calendar Events and SiteCatalyst Alerts
• Saving Reports, Bookmarking and Distributing Reports
• Expanding SiteCatalyst with Custom Segmentation – Segmentation and its purpose
• Classifications and SAINT
• Campaign Management
• Custom Variables and Reports - Custom Traffic Variables and Reports, Custom Conversion (Success) Events, Custom Conversion Variables (eVars)
• VISTA – Purpose of Vista, Vista Example, Vista Benefits
• Deep Analysis: Going Beyond SiteCatalyst
• Excel Client – Advanced Use of Excel Client
• Data Warehouse
• Advanced Segment Insight (ASI)
• Omniture Insight Introduction
• Taking Action to Improve Your Site

Starting next week, I am going to attend Omniture Insight training cum
certification. I am very excited to attend Omniture Insight course. This is going to be preferred tool for most of the Big Organizations in coming years. With Omniture Visual Science acquisition, Omniture launched this tool sometimes back and named it Omniture Insight or Insight. One tool using which you can slice and dice your data at a very granular level. I love segmentation and this tool helps me to do the level of segmentation I always wanted.

Omniture Insight is an interactive visual analysis and reporting application that provides real-time multi-dimensional metrics analysis, dynamic segmentation, advanced data visualization, and other adhoc analysis capabilities for business professionals, data analysts, and system architects and administrators.

This is going to be a 3 Days detail oriented course. I’ll update some of my learning of this tool in my next post. One of the key tutors from Omniture University was telling us that this certification is tough. Let’s see what will happen but I am quite confident to pass the examination.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Web Analytics Training and Certifications

There are a few training/educational institutes or vendor that is providing web analytics tools training and certification across the web analytics ecosystem. So I am trying to provide you the information I collated. I’ll also try to update this post whenever I’ll find some more information. Till now I am providing you the information I already have. If someone has additional information other than these, please share with others by posting comments. Web analytics are more than clickstream analysis; it is more than conversion rate and numbers as well. There is a deep demand for the web analytics as much as other fields have. Web is now a revenue channel for most companies and many aspirants wants to learn and apply their knowledge in this channel. With the entry of big organizations like Google, Microsoft and Industry leaders of this industry like Omniture, coremetrics, Webtrend and many more the market is exploded with opportunities. So if someone wants to make his/her career in this emerging field then he/she can take some training in web analytics. So here you can find some relevant information.

One of the educational offering by WAA offers web analytics education in partnership with UBC (University of British Columbia) which is online part time course in Web Analytics
http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/cms/?375
http://www.tech.ubc.ca/webanalytics/

Industry Leader in Web Analytics also provides similar kind of course for their tools only. For more information about training in web trends you can visit to Web Trends website and direct link to training program is
http://www.webtrends.com/Services/TrainingCourses.aspx

Adaera also provides this kind of training in web analytics. You can visit their website http://www.adaera.com/analytics/training.asp

Omniture offers certification in web analytics for professional in this field. For more information of how to be certified for sitecatalyst you can visit Omniture http://www.omniture.com/education/certification

E-consultancy offers various seminar and sessions for analytics/online marketing . You can visit their website http://www.e-consultancy.com/knowledge/training/category-11-1/web-measurement-and-analytics.html
There are some certification provided by the world leading organizations in the e-marketing and web analytics area. Some of these certification provided by Omniture, Visual science and Indextools and web analytics association.Check these links
http://www.indextools.com/services/certification.html http://www.omniture.com/education/certification http://www.websidestorycom.com/certification/ http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/cms/?375
In addition to this one more course in Information retrieval system is being conducted by Michigan school of Information. For more information you can visit http://www.si.umich.edu/msi/iar.htm?gclid=CNar55fTrJECFQkITAodOCh1Xg
These courses are more into analytics. But these certifications has advance step in online marketing. Most of the courses are online and for special seminar and training sessions are rarely conducted in India. Aspirants from India have less chance to opt for these courses. Because the presence of the training courses are more in US/UK but not in India. I haven’t heard a single training course here in India although some industry leader or leading analyst conducted some sessions in India. If you want to opt for Omniture training for web analytics. They (Omniture) have certification test center in Delhi (probably NIIT conduct) along with four more cities in India but they haven’t any training center. You hardly find any course in India though you can find these training courses online, these are very costly.
There are some others vendors in marketplace as well. If I find more information I’ll updated this as well.

Note: I am neither referring nor affiliates any of these certifications.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Web Analytics Reports Automation with ODBC Driver

WebTrends ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) Driver can be used to retrieve WebTrends Report database. ODBC is a universal database access API. One of the advantages of the WebTrends ODBC Driver is that it can be used directly from the several supported applications:

• Xcelsius from Business Objects
• Microsoft Access
• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft Query
• DataLinks
• ADO programming interface

You can install WebTrends ODBC driver from WebTrends Ondemand login. You can find this driver from Administration>>Install Components.
In this post we’ll talk about retrieving data directly into Excel Sheet without using any paid tool. Although in market some tools are available to directly refresh the data from WebTrends profiles to excel sheet. One of the tools is Datalinks but it is somewhat costly so for mid size companies or for anyone who try to pull data directly from WebTrends profiles can use the interface of ODBC driver with Excel sheet.

Creating a Data Source Name Connection

The DSN connection allows you to use the ODBC driver to connect to a WebTrends Analytics Report database. Connections to a Report database are profile- and template-specific. Before you create the connection, make sure you have already created a profile for the report data you want to access.

1. To create a DSN Connection to a Report database: 1. Select Start > Settings >Control Panel > Administrative Tools.
2. Double-click Data Sources (ODBC).
3. Click the System DSN tab.
4. Click Add.
5. Select WebTrends ODBC Driver from the list and click Finish. The DSN Configuration dialog box opens.
6. In the Data Source Name text box, type a name for your data source.
7. In the Host Server Name text box, specify the host name for the computer where the WebTrends UI server resides. If you are connecting to WebTrends On Demand, the host name is always ondemandui.webtrends.com.
8. In the Port text box, specify the WebTrends UI server port. By default, the WebTrends UI server uses port 7099 in software installations. If you use WebTrends On Demand set the port to 80. If you use WebTrends On Demand with SSL enabled, set the port to 443.
9. If you are connecting to WebTrends On Demand, type the Account Name for a WebTrends On Demand User Account in the Account Name text box. If you are connecting to a WebTrends software installation, do not change the default name provided.
10. If you use a Windows domain login to connect to WebTrends, click With Windows NT authentication using the network login ID (software only).
11. If you want to connect to the database using a WebTrends user name and password that you specify, click With WebTrends authentication using a user name and password entered by the user and type the user name and password in the text boxes provided. This user name and password pair must be defined in the Users settings of the WebTrends Administration Console (software only).
12. Click Connect to populate the Profile list.
13. Select a profile from the Profile list. This connection only allows you to query data associated with the selected profile.
14. Select a template from the Template list. This connection only allows you to query reports in the selected template.
15. Click OK.
16. Click OK again to save your settings.

You now have the ability to select which profile and template that you want this particular data source to connect to by using the pull down lists in the following screen. Click OK once you have made your selection.

• In Excel go to Data –> External Data –> New Database Query. It will open up a data connection box. Choose new connection and OK. Then find the WebTrends ODBC driver on the list and select it. (For Microsoft Excel 97 – 2003)
• If you are using Excel 2007 then go to Data –> From Other Sources –> From Data Connection Wizard–> Choose ODBC DSN. It will open up a data connection box. Choose new connection and OK. Then find the WebTrends ODBC driver on the list and select it. (For Microsoft Excel 2007)
• Next you’ll have to fill out your connection details. If you’re using On Demand they should be filled in, if select the Profile. You’re using your own software then you can fill in the default login URL and your username and password to connect. Click “refresh” and choose your profile and template from the drop-downs. Click OK to save.
• Now Excel will present you with a list of the available reports. The names will approximate the names you are familiar with from the normal interface, but they’ll be a bit different. Choose the report you want and click next. You can only pick ONE report. The ODBC connection doesn’t do Joins.
• Continue through the wizard. You can filter and sort on pretty much whatever you want.
• When you finish the wizard Excel will crunch for a while and then it will ask you
where you want to place the data in your spreadsheet. Choose a cell and the data will automatically appear.
• If you click in the data area and then click on the exclamation point in the
External Data toolbar or click on Data and then Refresh Data Excel will reach back out to WebTrends and pull down fresh data.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Social Networking Websites Boom

Popularity of Social Networking websites are increasing. Even these films production companies are not away for using social networking websites. Check the official website of new Bollywood movie "Sarkar Raj" www.sarkarrajthefilm.com they are building their official community on "Orkut" and Facebook". Here is the link of their community on Orkut Click here...

Most of companies today using Linkedin, Facebook and other social networking websites to attract top talent. The huge presence and mass membership for these websites is heavily used as a recruitment arena primarily.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The Youngest CEO:Mark Elliot Zuckerberg

When Mark ElliotZuckerberg showed up in Palo Alto three years ago, he had no car, no house, and no job. Today, he's at the helm of a hot social-networking site, Facebook, and turning down billion-dollar offers. Born on 14 March 1984, Founder, Facebook.com "an amazing achievement — one of the most significant milestones in the technology industry in this decade".

In an inclusive interview he said the idea for the website was motivated by a social need at Harvard to be able to identify people in other residential houses—Harvard is a fairly unfriendly place. While each residential house listed directories of their residents, I wanted one online directory where all students could be listed. And I’ve always enjoyed building things and puttering around with computer code, so I sat down and in about a week I had produced the basic workings of the site.

Currently 200,000 people sign up to Facebook every day and it now has 42 million users, according to the site. Newspaper reports say it aims to have 60 million members by the end of the year.

His latest project is "Wirehog" which is a social application for transferring files between friends. You can connect to a friend’s computer and browse the files, like photos, videos and music that they have, and transfer the files to your own computer.



Saturday, July 14, 2007

This is Spartan King Leonidas speed painting and animation



Awesome speed painting and animation of Spartan King Leonidas yelling ‘This is Sparta!!’ from the movie 300. This was painted in Adobe Photoshop step by step and then later the animation was done in Adobe After Effects. This artist sure does have some mad Photoshop skills and took a lot of time in creating this masterpiece. 1 videoclip after the jump.

The Incredible Hulk Dog


Wendy the Whippet has a genetic disorder resulting her being the Incredible Hulk of dogs. She is one rare breed and people refer her to as Arnold Schwarzenegger says owner Ingrid Hansen. Twice the weight of an average whippet at 27 kilograms, she probably won’t live as long as normal whippets.

7 Wonders of the World



The New7Wonders organization is happy to announce the following 7 candidates have been elected to represent global heritage throughout history. The listing is in random order, as announced at the Declaration Ceremony on 07.07.07. All the New 7 Wonders are equal and are presented as a group without any ranking.