User Interfaces for MicroStrategy?

[amexgts]

Was hoping someone could provide me insight on options for providing my users a rich interface that they can use via an Internet connection (something other than the standard Web Interface).

I understand that there is a Microstrategy Desktop interface, but it seems to only be good for users that sit on our intranet.

The user base that I'm targeting are actually non-intranet users that would only have access to our system only via the web.

Are there 3rd party User Interfaces available?

Thanks for your thoughts!

 

[jonhoward]

MSTR Desktop is the full fat client server interface and as such is not browser based.

Basically, the interface to MSTR through a browser can look like anything you want. It's completely customisable, if that's what you want to do. Personally I try and avoid doing too much unless absolutely necessary, because (a) I quite like the out of the box interface; (b) you can do a lot of standard 'simple' stuff to produce a slick reporting environment; and (c) it seems (to me) that MSTR make a lot of changes to code in dot releases that might affect any customisations that were made. I don't like repeating my dev work just in case something has changed.

The MSTR SDK allows you to integrate a Microstrategy reporting environment into any existing applications, so if you so wish, MSTR can be completely transparent to the user.

I'm not aware of any off-the-shelf user interfaces available, but they might be. In my experience, customers want something specific to themselves, that's why they customise. What kinds of 'rich interface' are you thinking of? (eg Scorecards; GIS; KPI reports; portal integration; and so on)

 

[amexgts]

Thanks for your response!

I didn't quite understand if the MSTR Desktop client could be used by a user that only has access to our server via the web.

If the MSTR Desktop client can be setup to talk to our server over a web connection (maybe over HTTPS?), then I think that would be our best solution. I'm also not a fan of going down the route of creating a custom client, which is why I was thinking a 3rd party might have already gone to the trouble.

Our power user customers want to do everything under the sun with the data, and I'm just looking for a way to allow this specific group to go beyond the boundaries of our more basic and sluggish web client.

 

[reisw]

You should really look into the Web version since it supports a lot of the features of desktop already. I know it's not on par yet but I believe there goal is to make it that way eventually. I just don't know how long that will take. Are you seeing the web client behaving slowly? I haven't had that experience.

 

[jonhoward]

You need to tell us what kinds of things the users *actually* want to do, and then we can help assess how much can be done through Web. Of course "power user customers want to do everything under the sun with the data", that's what users always want - to do anything and everything, with anything and everything you've got, at lightning speed.

As far as "basic and sluggish web client" goes, what are the problems there? Plenty of tuning options available to you.

 

[immanuelsamuel]

You can use MicroStratgy Web SDK and build your own style of interface to access the reports.

see this example

http://www.microstrategy.com/Software/graphics/screens/new/screen_portal_full.gif

Regards
Immanuel