MicroStrategy 2021 | Top Picks & World 2021 Recap

An overview of MicroStrategy 2021 written by Rajavel Selvaraj Ganesan, MicroStrategy Master and Senior Business Intelligence Developer at EXPRESS Technology.

Today I’ll be sharing the top features that I love about MicroStrategy’s 2021 Platform Release and what I learned about them from the MicroStrategy World sessions. Hope it helps the community understand them!

MicroStrategy 2021 ~ One of the most anticipated version releases from MicroStrategy with lots of features added for the customers to take advantage of.

Get to know the roadmap so you will know what is coming up in the future of the product

Pick # 01: Long Form Dashboard/Dossiers

One of the most anticipated features within Dossier is to have a “Long Form” Dossier/Dashboard. (i.e.) It is now expandable with scroll bar to have a long-form dossier to tell the story within a single page (if there is a business need) or go with the storytelling approach of having chapters with pages.

Check out the collaboration Viz with Reema Mohanty for Vitara Contest using the “Long Form” approach for our landing page.

Reema also posted an guest post about how to achieve them within Dossier — check it out for more details :

URL : Long Form Dossier within MicroStrategy

My take-away from this feature >>

Pros:

• Another way of storytelling the business data for end-users
• Website like feel with focused users on one screen than navigating across chapters/pages
• Feature that matches to Tableau long form design of dashboards (I love it to match with it)

Cons:

• Export requires improvement
• Resizing is a pain when you have to adjust during the middle of development (This is a pain in any BI tool from my experience such as Tableau)
• Responsive needs improvement (especially for development itself )— varied laptop resolutions causes images and objects(Viz, shapes, texts) to appear disoriented

Pick # 02: Shapes within Dossier

You can now introduce shapes such as below into dossier/dashboard (i.e.) similar to RSDs

1. Line
2. Rectangle
3. Eclipse
4. Triangle
5. Polygon

Do you know, earlier in RSDs — we have got only line & rectangle. With this new update, we have got more shapes within Dossier. It shows the product is more focused on Dossier focusing on self-service analytics or agile development matching to other golden BI products (such as Tableau, Power BI — were easy to learn and build dashboard quicker)

Additional Tip: Round Rectangle is possible within shapes

See the Round Rectangle on ‘Asia’ label shape.

Pick #03: Improved interface for choosing a visualization

Earlier, we used to have a “Visualization” pane on the right side of the dossier interface. Now, it has been categorized and provided at the top pane to pick any viz for analysis & categorized as well.

I love this categorization of viz nicely and placed on the top pane.

Pros

• Improved User Interfac

Cons

• Earlier changing from one viz to another was easy & now, we have to either right-click the viz header to change from one to another type or go to the top right corner of viz to select “…” -> Change visualization

Pick # 04: Ring Pie Chart

Now, you can easily pick “Ring Pie” chart instead of going to design mode in prior versions. So, one click to choose “Ring Pie” now.

Pick # 05: Text Box Auto Size feature

We used to have a scroll bar on the text box in prior versions of MicroStrategy.

Now, with one click of enabling “Auto Size” from the design editor — we can make it auto responsive and avoid scroll bars

Without Autosize, you will get scroll bar on text at times

With Autosize, it can be avoided

Pick # 06: Duplicate “Text Box” or “Shapes”

Finally, MicroStrategy introduced the option of duplicating “Text Box” in Dossier 🙂 You can also duplicate shapes if needed.

Pick # 07: Hyper Cards Apply Thresholds + Derived Metrics

We can apply thresholds on Hyper Cards “Headers”

Example :

• Sales > 1M = Green
• Sales > 50K to <1M = Yellow
• Sales < 50K = Red

So, by using the above examples — we can see hyper cards with respective color codes — which is cool and helps customers to take actionable insights immediately from hyper cards.

https://www.microstrategy.com/en/hyperintelligence/hyper-now/applying-thresholds-to-card-headers

We can also include “Derived Metrics” into hyper cards now. Earlier only Attribute & Metrics were allowed. Now, with this version of the release, on the fly created metrics (i.e.) Derived Metrics can be included.

Pick # 08: Workstation Updates

MicroStrategy is focusing on Dossiers + Workstation as their next-gen product. I feel, Workstation in 10 years from now, would be a beast and more futuristic than Tableau/PowerBI/Qlik. It will basically be a one-stop shop for delivering an enterprise solution to customers.

Coming back to latest updates involved are below :

1. Users & User Group Management (Along with Security Roles)

2. Monitors (easy to monitor the servers within Workstation itself now)

Credit: World Keynote Presentations

Easy access to view the total number of objects now within Workstation (Image Credit: MicroStrategy)

3. Subscriptions, Certificates, Licenses & Scripts as well can be handled/reviewed/monitored within Workstation

Credit: MicroStrategy World Keynote Presentation

As I said, Workstation is going to be the next-gen analytics product within MicroStrategy for Developers, Administrators, Data Analysts or Architects to manage and handle everything in one place.

MicroStrategy is working on “Multi-user edit of Schema Objects & Versioning controls” 🙂 — more to come in the upcoming year!!

Pick # 09: Updating Labels with Multi-Selection in Pie, Bar & Circle Charts

We can update the legends or labels color now easily

Pick # 10: Compound Grid Improvements

Enhanced version of having “Attribute” + “Metric” within a set in Compound Grid — Isn’t it cool?

Pros

• Enhanced flexibility for Data Representation (Similar to RSD stitching we do with multiple grids)

Cons

• Export has to be cautious & designed or validated extensively (especially with more columns in grids)

Pick #11 : Library ~ Categorizing the objects into groups & Favorites

Now, you can easily select an object as favorite or group them into sections or business area focused objects

Credit: MicroStrategy World Keynote

Pick #12: Python API Enhancements

More focus towards python and their modules to automate lot of activities that can be built or configured within MicroStrategy

1. Server Module (List Applications/Projects, List Nodes, Start, Stop Services, Fetch/Update Settings, etc.,)
2. Application Module (Alter, Idle, Load/Unload projects, Update settings, etc.,)
3. User Management (add, create, alter, delete, alter security roles, list members, remove users, etc.,)
4. Security Role & Privilege Module (Assign new privilege, revoke, etc.,)
5. Subscriptions Management (create, alter, delete, etc.,)

Credit: MicroStrategy World Presentation

mstrio-py

Pick #13 : MicroStrategy on Cloud + Containerization

With everyone being shifted to work from home in 2020 due to global pandemic — we all know how organizations are shifting their gear towards CLOUD drastically than ever before.

Customers who moved to the cloud prior to that know the real importance of the success/growth due to it. In situations like these, it is highly important to move towards the cloud to manage by either vendor/managed by the customer on the cloud to easily grow vertically and horizontally when in need. MicroStrategy primarily provides professionally managed services on below cloud systems

1. AWS
2. Azure

MicroStrategy has been pushing all customers to move towards the cloud. Surprising that, they are yet to certify for Google Cloud professionally managed by MicroStrategy. I know, there are customers who are using MicroStrategy on Google Cloud or use Google BigQuery as their data/EDW platform to analyze with MicroStrategy BI Tool. So no doubt, they will very soon announce their managed service for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) as well.

You can also take advantage of containerization

• Use Single machine split into multiple MicroStrategy Servers using Containers concepts
• Scalability & Efficiency (scale your applications easily based on load/business needs — example increasing IServers RAM or Adding more library servers or etc.,)
• Ease of upgrade using containers (Just a swap)
• Migration from On-Premise setup to Cloud setup is done easily using Container

Why Container? Below slide shared by MicroStrategy explains all the benefits you get out of this

MicroStrategy and Containerization

Pick # 14 Incremental Refresh Replace Option

Intelligent Cube to replace data is improved now. Earlier, customers used to perform two step process (Delete data & then Insert data for current day or refreshed data on EDW)

Now, Intelligent Cubes can be refreshed with the one-step process “Replace” — Go from old cube cache to new cube cache available for business users now.

Pick #15: Disable highlight on hover in Presentation Mode

I will be very honest, initially when I worked on the 2021 Dossier interface — i was very much frustrated with the behavior of highlight each section in the dossier upon mouse hover.

You can disable it by going to “Format -> Dossier Formatting -> check the option of Disable highlight on hover for containers in presentation mode” option

Post that, the dossier is super cool from business user appearance on “Presentation Mode” — VERY COOL!!

Pick #16: Hide Canvas or Hide Mobile option on Dossier

Pick # 17: Subscription APIs

With workstation evolving, lot of cool automation can be done via Subscription API (& other APIs as well such as REST API, Python API, etc.,)

Pick # 18: Upgrade with MstrBak file

Upgrading Environments with MSTRBak

Pick #19 : MicroStrategy for Excel users

Pick # 20: Advanced Functions in MicroStrategy

Example below :

Here , they have to update metadata — generally MicroStrategy doesn’t recommend. But, it looks like currently that’s the only option to customize these advanced functions.

MicroStrategy Dossier Road Maps

What can you expect that is coming up very soon in 2021 or in the coming months in 2021 are below :

1. Gantt Chart
2. Micro Chart
3. Sankey Chart
4. Global Legend
5. Enhanced Text
6. Gauge Chart
7. Panel Stacks (most anticipated functionality to me)
8. Dossier Templates (can be re-used for self-service analysis or quicker dashboard development)

Watch out for the above key features coming up within the product.

MicroStrategy Workstation Road Maps

1. Create Schedules in Workstation
2. Create schema objects within Workstation
3. Model Schematic or semantic layer within Workstation
4. Include Visualization, HTML Text and Dynamic Values in the email body (most expected to me 🙂 )

5. Provide the option for users to “Unsubscribe” (another expected feature 🙂 to me )

6. Create and Manage Subscriptions in Library

7. Deliver subscriptions to Cloud repositories

8. Send MSTR Content via Slack & Teams (Microsoft)

9. Provide interface for function editor within Workstation with advanced function added in 2021

MicroStrategy World Sessions

I would encourage folks to view the key note presentations — they are awesome to know where the product is headed from analytics and product road map stand point. They have always been innovative every year with new features and products being launched.

https://www.microstrategy.com/en/resources/events/world-2021/on-demand/WorldNow-Keynote-Day-1 https://www.microstrategy.com/en/resources/events/world-2021/on-demand/worldnow-keynote-day-2 https://www.microstrategy.com/en/resources/events/world-2021/on-demand/modern-design-for-dashboards https://www.microstrategy.com/en/resources/events/world-2021/on-demand/using-distribution-services https://www.microstrategy.com/en/resources/events/world-2021/on-demand/microstrategy-advanced-customizable-functions https://www.microstrategy.com/en/resources/events/world-2021/on-demand/incorporating-microstrategy-into-your-ci-cd-pipeline https://www.microstrategy.com/en/resources/events/world-2021/on-demand/microstrategy-for-excel-users

I know, there are a lot of new features beyond the ones that are listed here. Do check out the on-demand videos shared by MicroStrategy in the World 2021. You’ll learn a lot from this definitely at the end!

Enjoy your day & stay safe everyone! Take Care…

Originally published at https://crackerzin.com.