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Re: Time for something new for Excel?

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dawn wrote:
>I will be evaluating what to do for showing users tables online in a
>web page along with options for users to turn the same data into an
>html report, a pdf or download to a spreadsheet. We have only one
>production implementation of an html report, using Cache' Zen reports.
>In theory we can turn this into a pdf as well (just a tad bit of setup
>and also some recoding there). We also have one live spreadsheet
>download. We are using three different approaches for these and might
>need to continue to do that, but we are currently generating the data
>for each separately and with separate specifications, which is not
>cool for keeping them in synch. At the very least we should use the
>same query and at best we would not need to regenerate it.

General response directed to everyone:

I think we're getting closer to the question I was trying to ask
originally.  Can you give an example of the kind of "tables" that you
need to render?  What are people asking for where Zen, PDF, HTML, and
spreadsheets seem to be solutions?  Is the request simply for pretty
reports?  Dynamic reports that can be sorted or grouped?  Intelligent
reports that allow drilling into detail?  Do they really want
spreadsheets because they're Excel power users, or might they be
asking for "Excel" because that's a familiar word.

I'm trying to work out exactly what reporting needs aren't being
satisfied in this market.  In some cases people ask for Excel and they
get CSV, which is just one example of where this market falls short.
The real question is - what do end-users need to do their jobs better,
and how can we provide it?

Excel, static HTML, and PDF might be solutions, but what are the
problems that people are describing?  Is "attractive" reporting high
on the list for the people you talk to?  Are your users more
interested in different kinds of content?  Are they interested in
doing other things with the data that you provide?  If so, what
happens to the data that you provide?  Maybe we can save people some
time.

T

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Re: Time for something new for Excel? Tony Gravagno <tony_gravagno@nospam.invalid> - 2011-01-31 12:11 -0800
  Re: Time for something new for Excel? Mike Preece <michael@preece.net> - 2011-02-02 02:26 -0800
  Re: Time for something new for Excel? Tony Gravagno <tony_gravagno@nospam.invalid> - 2011-02-01 10:29 -0800
  Re: Time for something new for Excel? Ross Ferris <rossf@stamina.com.au> - 2011-01-31 15:54 -0800

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