IT Performance improvements with Embedded Analytics
Introduction
IT departments are the front line in monitoring the quality of products and services provided by a company. When IT struggles, the company struggles to run smoothly and effectively. Using embedded analytics in IT helps manage company data in any form, improve customer service, provide better oversight on projects, and more.
Bold BI helps you easily embed analytical dashboards in your web applications, making them easily accessible and ready for use. With such a tool, your IT team can extract insights that empower them to offer faster solutions, make project workflows less cumbersome, and implement more automation. In this blog, I am going to explain how your IT business or department can benefit from embedded analytics.
What is embedded analytics?
Embedded analytics is the integration of analytical solutions and data visualization capabilities into a software application’s user interface to improve data comprehension and usability. Bold BI helps you easily embed an analytics solution into your everyday work applications using a JavaScript SDK and server application. It also enables you to reduce dependency on analytics-focused IT teams and delivers all the insights you need to improve organizational and workforce outcomes.
Benefits of embedded analytics in the IT department
Embedding analytics in IT helps the department gain insight into key metrics and KPIs by making them easily accessible. Let’s discuss the essential areas in which embedded analytics can improve your IT department. They are:
- Improve project management.
- Increase customer satisfaction.
- Track workflows better.
- Manage forums efficiently.
- Encourage effective work performance.
Improve project management
In this discussion, a project is any investment that opens a pathway for new business for IT. Embedded analytics helps an IT team improve project management by delivering insights on key project metrics like billed project amount, total days to complete each project, customer satisfaction per project, and more. Monitoring these metrics helps project managers know the strengths and weaknesses involved in a project, devise ways to counteract measures for difficulties, and complete projects on time, which in turn helps attain higher profit margins.
Increase customer satisfaction
Embedded analytics can help an IT department increase customer satisfaction by tracking metrics around customer service, such as the average and total hours spent helping customers, the number of tickets on the same issue, total resolved and unresolved tickets by month, average time to resolve issues by type, and the total number of tickets resolved in each category. With these stats, managers have a clear picture of their customer service, and can identify where they are doing well and what areas they could improve.
Track workflows better
The process of tracking work is tiresome and time-consuming, but embedded analytics in IT enables you to track key metrics such as planned and completed tasks, task count by project, completed tasks, incomplete and overdue tasks by project, and estimated and actual hours by project, all in one place. Furthermore, it provides a full work summary and shows the task completion rate. Using embedded analytics helps team leaders predict project workflows, giving the entire deparment the power to work effectively.
Manage forums efficiently
Embedded analytics can help an IT team administer their company’s forums by showing total forums, posts, replies, and more. In addition, analytics can give the team a clearer picture of how the forums are used by customers by identifying posts and replies with the most votes in each forum, quantifying total thread replies and posts by users, forecasting the most popular forums by views and thread posts by month, and determining the total number of threads and replies. Tracking these metrics closely helps managers to streamline communication with customers.
Encourage effective work performance
An IT team empowered with embedded analytics can better evaluate team performance by inspecting historical team responsibilities and measuring various factors that affect doing work well. Helpful metrics for this purpose include active bugs by status, sprint analysis by assignee, sprint velocity, work item type by priority, and planned versus completed work items. This information helps scrum masters work on their weaknesses and cut costs on redundant work.
How to embed analytical tools into information technology domain apps
Let’s see how analytics can be embedded into your IT web applications. Bold BI helps you embed your dashboards in 18 web platforms, including React with ASP.NET Core, React with Go, WinForms, Node.js, Vue with Go, and Vue with ASP.NET Core. I am going to provide a walkthrough specifically on embedding dashboards in ASP.NET Core applications.
Suppose your information technology company has a website like the one shown in the following image.
You can embed dashboards easily using Bold BI and avoid building an analytics or BI solution yourself, saving development time. Follow these steps to embed your dashboard successfully.
Prerequisites
Deploy Bold BI in your local machine and create an enterprise-grade dashboard.
Step 1: Create an ASP.NET Core application.
To successfully embed a dashboard into your application, first you need to create an ASP.NET Core application. Open Microsoft Visual Studio and create a new project. Then, choose ASP.NET Core Web Application, enter the project name, and click OK.
Step 2: Configure embed properties.
After the ASP.NET Core web application is created, you need to create a model class called EmbedProperties under Models and provide the dashboard RootURL, SiteIdentifier, Environment, UserEmail, and EmbedSecret.
RootUrl : Bold BI dashboard server URL. For example: http://localhost:5000/bi. http://dashboard.syncfusion.com/bi.SiteIdentifier : For Bold BI, it should be something like “site/site1”. For the Bold BI Cloud Analytics Server, it should be an empty string.Environment : Your Bold BI application environment.If using Bold BI Cloud Analytics Server, you should use “cloud.” If using Bold BI, you should use “enterprise.”UserEmail : The Bold BI server will use an email address to
authorize the authorization server.
Step 3: Generate embed secret.
You have to set the embed secret for authentication. You can get the embed secret from the Bold BI server. Then, navigate to the Settings icon on the left navigation bar and click the Embed tab. Turn on the Enable to embed authentication option, and click the Generate Secret button. On clicking the button, a secret code will be generated. Copy the secret key and paste it into the application. To learn how to do this in detail, you can refer to this documentation link.
Note: Save the secret key, as it cannot be retrieved again. If it is not saved, you will have to regenerate it using the Reset Secret option.
Step 4: Create an authorization server.
You need to implement an authorization server in the ASP.NET Core application to get authenticated before embedding the dashboard from the Bold BI server. You can also configure a single sign-on (SSO)-based authorization server, which is an authentication endpoint that enables users to securely authenticate multiple applications using a unique embed secret. This prevents the need for the user to log in to different applications separately.
Step 5: Create Bold BI instance.
Finally, create a Bold BI instance to load the dashboard using a JavaScript file. Also, reference required script files and CSS files in HTML pages.
Step 6: Run the application for embedding the dashboard.
After successfully creating the ASP.NET Core application, you need to run the ASP.NET Core application. It will be launched with the dashboard details. Finally, you can see the dashboard from the Bold BI server is embedded in your web application.
To learn more about embedding dashboards into your applications, please refer to this blog. You can also download sample code for all the previous steps from our documentation.
Bold BI information technology dashboard examples
Customer Service Performance Dashboard
The Customer Service Performance Dashboard demonstrates a dashboard that delivers detailed information to administrators on support tickets created and resolved with important metrics such as total hours spent, average hours spent to resolve an issue, number of tickets in the same issue type, total resolved and unresolved tickets by month, average time to resolve the issue by type, and support status.
Key metrics and KPIs
Total hours: Shows how many hours have been spent resolving support tickets.
Average hours spent to resolve an issue: Shows the average hours spent to resolve an issue.
Total resolved and unresolved tickets by month: Shows the number of tickets resolved and unresolved by month.
Average time to resolve the issue by issue type: Shows the average time to resolve tickets broken down by the type of issue.
Number of tickets by issue type: Shows the total number of tickets for an issue type along with the number of tickets in resolved, unresolved, and open status.
Support status: Shows the proportion of tickets in open, resolved, and unresolved status.
Total number of tickets resolved in each category: Shows the total number of support tickets that are resolved category-wise.
To learn more about the metrics and KPIs used in this dashboard example, refer to the Customer Service Performance Dashboard demo.
Project Management Dashboard
The Project Management Dashboard gives project managers an overview of the projects being undertaken by the company. The dashboard displays essential metrics such as customer satisfaction, deadline, investment, and profit details.
Key metrics and KPIs:
Total days spent to complete each project: This shows the number of days spent on each project.
Customer satisfaction by project: Shows the customer satisfaction rate by the project. The color displayed below 60 is purple, between 60 and 80 is blue, and above 80 is red.
Monthly expenses: Shows the monthly expense of the development, infrastructure, maintenance, support, and administration departments over a year.
SLA status by the project: Shows the service level agreement (SLA) state for each project. An SLA is a contract between a service provider (either internal or external) and the end user that defines the level of service expected from the service provider.
To learn more about the metrics and KPIs used in this dashboard demo, refer to the Project Management Dashboard example.
Project Overview Dashboard
The Project Overview Dashboard helps managers to track the work status of each project with metrics such as total resources, overall task completion percentage, completed and overdue tasks by project, estimated and actual hours by project, and task summary.
Key metrics and KPIs:
Planned vs. completed tasks by project: Shows a comparison between the planned and completed tasks for each project.
Task completion rate: Shows the rate of completion for the selected projects.
5 most popular projects: Shows the top five projects based on the number of likes. This metric determines the most popular projects.
Incomplete and overdue tasks by project: Shows the numbers of incomplete and overdue tasks for each project.
Planned vs. completed tasks by date: Shows a comparison of the number of planned and completed tasks by date.
Tasks by completion status: Shows the breakdown of current task statuses: complete, incomplete, and overdue.
To learn more about the metrics and KPIs used in this dashboard example, refer to the Project Overview Dashboard demo.
Forum Management Dashboard
The Forum Management Dashboard helps key decision-makers effectively manage and maintain their forums by tracking metrics and KPIs such as average posts per forum, average views per forum, total questions and answers for posts, posts with the most votes, and more.
Key metrics and KPIs:
Total users: Shows the total number of users who have been involved in posts and replies.
Thread posts with the most votes: Shows the posts with the most votes for the selected date range.
Top 5 thread posts by views: Shows the most viewed posts for the selected date range.
Thread posts and replies by forum: Shows the number of posts and replies on each forum for the selected date range.
Forecasted thread posts by month: Shows the forecast statistics for the next three months of posts based on the previous months’ posts.
Total answers in posts: This shows the total number of answers to questions asked in posts for the selected date range.
To learn more about the metrics and KPIs used in this dashboard example, refer to the Forum Management Dashboard demo.
Axosoft Release Management Dashboard
The Axosoft Release Management Dashboard helps team leaders track the status of different product releases via metrics such as release date, user workload, cycle time, and overall completion percentage. The dashboard also tracks release status and scope changes.
Key metrics and KPIs:
Cycle time: Shows the average period items stay in any given status of a workflow step.
Items by priority: Shows a comparison of the planned and actual task completion count by priority level.
User workload: Shows the total assigned tasks for all users.
Release scope changes: This shows the day-by-day measure of the amount of work that remains in a given release.
Total items by date and status: Shows the total items in each status for a date.
To learn more about the metrics and KPIs used in this dashboard example, refer to the Axosoft Release Management Dashboard demo.
Issue Tracker Dashboard
The Issue Tracker Dashboard helps you keep track of development speed and issue accumulation over time via key metrics such as created vs. closed issues, issues by status, issue count by project and component, incomplete issues by priority, total unresolved issues, and average resolution time.
Key metrics and KPIs:
Average resolution time: Shows the average time taken to resolve an issue.
Created vs. closed issues: Shows a comparison between the number of created and closed tasks over a period of time.
Issues by status: Shows the total issue count in each status.
Issue count by project and component: This shows the total number of issues by project and component.
Incomplete issues by priority and project: Shows the number of incomplete issues by priority and project.
To learn more about the metrics and KPIs used in this dashboard example, refer to the Issue Tracker Dashboard demo.
Project Performance Dashboard
The Project Performance Dashboard helps you analyze task details in sprints and track sprint velocity, bug status and its severity, task priority, and task status.
Key metrics and KPIs:
Sprint velocity: This shows the sprint velocity on each sprint.
Planned vs. completed work items: Shows the number of planned and completed work items in a week.
Work item type by priority: Shows the work item types based on their priority level.
Sprint analysis by assignee: Shows the planned and completed story points for each assignee.
Bug Status: Shows the number of bugs in each status: resolved, active, closed, and new.
Active bugs by severity: Shows the total number of active bugs by severity: critical, high, medium, and low.
To learn more about the metrics and KPIs used in this dashboard example, refer to the Project Performance Dashboard demo.
Conclusion
Bold BI helps you integrate dashboards in your applications written in ASP.NET Core, ASP.NET MVC, Angular, ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails, React with ASP.NET Core, and more, seamlessly. It will save you time and prevent you from doing redundant work. Click this link to explore its features. To learn more about embedding dashboards into your application, refer to this blog and our help documentation.
I hope you now have a better understanding of Bold BI and how it can help the information technology industry be more successful. You can create any kind of dashboard you like with Bold BI’s 35+ widgets and 130+ data sources.
Get started with Bold BI by signing up for a free 15-day trial and create interactive business intelligence dashboards. You can contact us by submitting questions through the Bold BI website or, if you already have an account, you can log in to submit your support questions.
Originally published at https://www.boldbi.com on January 25, 2022.
