By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
SmartData Collective
  • Analytics
    AnalyticsShow More
    predictive analytics in dropshipping
    Predictive Analytics Helps New Dropshipping Businesses Thrive
    12 Min Read
    data-driven approach in healthcare
    The Importance of Data-Driven Approaches to Improving Healthcare in Rural Areas
    6 Min Read
    analytics for tax compliance
    Analytics Changes the Calculus of Business Tax Compliance
    8 Min Read
    big data analytics in gaming
    The Role of Big Data Analytics in Gaming
    10 Min Read
    analyst,women,looking,at,kpi,data,on,computer,screen
    Promising Benefits of Predictive Analytics in Asset Management
    11 Min Read
  • Big Data
  • BI
  • Exclusive
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Software
Search
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: SAS BI Dashboard Rocks My Google Analytics Data Analysis
Share
Notification Show More
Latest News
ai digital marketing tools
Top Five AI-Driven Digital Marketing Tools in 2023
Artificial Intelligence
ai-generated content
Is AI-Generated Content a Net Positive for Businesses?
Artificial Intelligence
predictive analytics in dropshipping
Predictive Analytics Helps New Dropshipping Businesses Thrive
Predictive Analytics
cloud data security in 2023
Top Tools for Your Cloud Data Security Stack in 2023
Cloud Computing
become a data scientist
Boosting Your Chances for Landing a Job as a Data Scientist
Jobs
Aa
SmartData Collective
Aa
Search
  • About
  • Help
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
SmartData Collective > Analytics > SAS BI Dashboard Rocks My Google Analytics Data Analysis
AnalyticsBusiness Intelligence

SAS BI Dashboard Rocks My Google Analytics Data Analysis

Tricia Aanderud
Last updated: 2012/02/01 at 12:32 PM
Tricia Aanderud
10 Min Read
SHARE

I have to say I’m in love with the new SAS BI Dashboard and it’s many features. It really brings the Google Analytics to life and helps me understand how the Website traffic changed over time along with the key influences. The following figure gives you an idea of how you can integrate dashboard indicators for an interactive user experience. The best part is how easy it is.  Once I understood the how the feature worked, this indicators below took less than an hour to setup and most of that was deciding what data I wanted to see.

Contents
Quick Dashboard TourCreating an Interactive DashboardPreparing the Dashboard DataAdding a One-Size-Fits-All RangeCreating the Dashboard IndicatorsCreating the Traffic by Weekly Visits IndicatorCreating Segments Over Time IndicatorCreating the Dashboard Adding Indicator Interactions – the Fun!Have You Signed Up Yet?

I have to say I’m in love with the new SAS BI Dashboard and it’s many features. It really brings the Google Analytics to life and helps me understand how the Website traffic changed over time along with the key influences. The following figure gives you an idea of how you can integrate dashboard indicators for an interactive user experience. The best part is how easy it is.  Once I understood the how the feature worked, this indicators below took less than an hour to setup and most of that was deciding what data I wanted to see.   [More articles about Google Analytics here.]

Quick Dashboard Tour

This dashboard has two indicators, a line graph that shows the traffic over time and a spark table that contains specific data about site visitors. As the user drags the slider and clicks, the data in spark table updates.  I left the Week variable in the Spark Chart to help you understand what was happening. Also in the Last Wk Delta,  New Visitors (%) and New Visitor Delta columns, you can see the various gauges available. {Click the image to see the animation}

sas bi dashboard making indicators interactive

More Read

Building a SAS Stored Process Log

SAS Visual Analytics: Tips for Unriddling Encoding in SAS Visual Analytics 6.3
SAS Visual Analytics: How Catwoman Influenced My Data
SAS BI Dashboard: Don’t Forget the Timestamp
Tips for Starting Your Dashboard Layout

 

 

Creating an Interactive Dashboard

For several weeks I’ve been discussing using Google Analytics with the SAS Business Intelligence tool set to get more value out of the data. When you can understand how the trend has changed over time, it helps you determine your next steps.  In a previous post I showed you the basics for creating a SAS BI Dashboard and in this post I’m just going to show you the highlights for how I created the above dashboard.

Preparing the Dashboard Data

For the SAS BI Dashboard, you can use several data sources, such as a SAS dataset or SAS information map. [Read more: Here’s how I extracted the Google Analytics data.]  The dashboard uses two indicators: Chart with slider prompt and a Spark Table.  With some planning, I was able to use the same data for both indicators.

It was important that I had the week over week differences to determine the growth rate.  If you notice, the traffic is divided into Segments based on the source field from Google.  You may have read Dominick Frasso’s article last week  about the importance of using advanced segments based on the ideas of Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0.  Instead of using the Segments from Google Analytics, I wrote some code to parse the source variable and create the segment variable.  Here’s a snippet to give you an idea what was done and the inset shows the results.

create data in sas bi enterprise guide

 

The week over week difference was important, so this code determines the growth rate by Segment for weekly and new visitor traffic. So after creating the data (1)  I used the SQL query (2)  to create the data for the Spark Table.  Notice that all of this data is summarized, which is a requirement for using the SAS BI Dashboard.

 

sas bi dashboard data source in sas enterprise guide

Data created in SAS Enterprise Guide

 

Adding a One-Size-Fits-All Range

If you notice, the three new columns are all based on percentage growth. Basically meaning, growth over N percentage is good and under N is bad.  This means I can create one range that I am able to use multiple times instead of trying to create 3 separate ranges. You can see how the range was setup in the following figure.  All values from 0% to 100% are covered by this range.

In the figure inset, you can see the Range in use.  For this range, anything over 60% is green or exceptional is how I like to think about it.  Truthfully, probably any increase over 20% is exceptional for the small amount of traffic on my blog.   

Tip! It might be worth it to create several ranges like this one that can be reused in multiple dashboards, you would just need to copy the range to the new folder. [Angela discussed dashboard naming conventions here.]

sas bi dashboard range one size fits all

Creating the Dashboard Indicators

After you have your data and range available, create two indicators for your dashboard.

Creating the Traffic by Weekly Visits Indicator

The first indicator created was the Chart with slide prompt indicator. In this figure you can see the end result along with what settings I used to create it.  Using the  data table above, I created a SQL query to sum the visits variable by week.  This way the line graph shows the total traffic for each week along the X-axis. Again – reusing to keep things lean.

When I added the indicator to the Dashboard, I was able to change it’s displayed name to Traffic by Weekly Visits.  [See Angela Hall’s blog post Removing the Object Name from the BI Dashboard  for more details about indicator names.]  

sas bi dashboard slider indicator

Creating Segments Over Time Indicator

What I like about Spark Tables is that I can add as many columns as I please.  One thing to note about this Spark Table, I did not group anything.  All of the variables were grouped by segment and week during the data creation step.

  1. For this dashboard indicator, a new column for each variable (NewPCT, PCT_DIFF, PCT_NEW) was added.
  2. After adding the columns, select your data source variable. (Notice it uses the label not the variable name – so New Visitor Delta is PCT_NEW.)  
  3. Add the range you created above.  You can also have a separate range for each column is you prefer.
  4. Select the desired gauge.  In the drop-down you can see a partial listing. 
    I showed several different ones in this example so you could get some ideas.  For a real dashboard, I would not be so glamorous or you might say busy. This example is just for your edification.

sas bi dashboard spark table indicator new columns and ranges

Creating the Dashboard 

Once you have created the two indicators, add them to a new or existing dashboard.

Don’t be alarmed: Note that when the Spark Table is added to the dashboard, it shows the data for all weeks and the line chart does not have the slider.This is normal – nothing is wrong.  When you view the dashboard, the indicators will come to life.

Adding Indicator Interactions – the Fun!

To add the interaction, do this:

  1. Position the two indicators as desired on your dashboard.
  2. Select the Interaction icon from the tool bar. 
  3. In the Set Up Indicator Interactions window, select the indicator and columns to influence. In this case, the Week variable is what you want to use as a filter.
    Refer to the SAS Support site for complete documentation on creating a dashboard.

 sas bi dashboard indicator interactions

Creating SAS BI Dashboard Indicator Interactions

 

Have You Signed Up Yet?

This article is part of mySAS Global Forum 2012 series that covers the paper Angela Hall and I will be presenting about our Building Business Intelligence with SAS book, which answers many questions about using SAS BI.  Sign up so we can see you there and hear about your awesome dashboards!  

If you have a dashboard you would like to share with everyone, just send me an message through LinkedIn. 

TAGGED: dashboard, sas
Tricia Aanderud February 1, 2012
Share this Article
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn
Share

Follow us on Facebook

Latest News

ai digital marketing tools
Top Five AI-Driven Digital Marketing Tools in 2023
Artificial Intelligence
ai-generated content
Is AI-Generated Content a Net Positive for Businesses?
Artificial Intelligence
predictive analytics in dropshipping
Predictive Analytics Helps New Dropshipping Businesses Thrive
Predictive Analytics
cloud data security in 2023
Top Tools for Your Cloud Data Security Stack in 2023
Cloud Computing

Stay Connected

1.2k Followers Like
33.7k Followers Follow
222 Followers Pin

Sign Up for Our Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!

[mc4wp_form id=”1616″]

You Might also Like

Building a SAS Stored Process Log

10 Min Read

SAS Visual Analytics: Tips for Unriddling Encoding in SAS Visual Analytics 6.3

3 Min Read
What is Data Pipeline A detailed explaination
AnalyticsBig Data

SAS Visual Analytics: How Catwoman Influenced My Data

7 Min Read

SAS BI Dashboard: Don’t Forget the Timestamp

5 Min Read

SmartData Collective is one of the largest & trusted community covering technical content about Big Data, BI, Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, IoT & more.

AI and chatbots
Chatbots and SEO: How Can Chatbots Improve Your SEO Ranking?
Artificial Intelligence Chatbots Exclusive
AI chatbots
AI Chatbots Can Help Retailers Convert Live Broadcast Viewers into Sales!
Chatbots

Quick Link

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Follow US

© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.

Removed from reading list

Undo
Go to mobile version
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Lost your password?