FAQs

Click on questions below to read answers.

Indicee Preview is our first software release to the public. It’s still a little rough around the edges, so it won’t be perfect. We have big plans for Indicee, and we release new features every few weeks. But instead of delaying the release, we wanted people to try it out now and let us know how we can make it better. If you have any feedback for improving Indicee, we’d love to hear it.

Q: How much does Indicee cost?

Indicee is free during the preview. After the preview stage, we plan to charge a low monthly subscription fee based on your choice of features and data usage.

Q: What if I already have a reporting or business intelligence application?

Indicee helps you get more value from your existing business intelligence application. Indicee lets you upload and consolidate the data from your business intelligence, ERP and CRM reports, and dramatically improves how you visualize, analyze and collaborate around that business data.

Q: How do I get data from my enterprise system into Indicee?

Most enterprise applications include a bunch of pre-built or canned reports. In most cases you’ll simply run a report and save or export it as an Excel, CSV or Crystal Reports file that you can upload into Indicee. The ideal reports are listing reports that contain data at the most granular level. For sales analysis the ideal report would list every transaction by date.

Q: How do you ensure the security of my company’s data?

From day one, Indicee has been designed with security in mind. Once you have signed in to Indicee, all communications go through a 128-bit encrypted https connection. Indicee is hosted by an industry-leading data center with the highest standards of data security, reliability and integrity. Secure networking standards, including SSL and AES, are used to protect data during transmission and display.

Indicee creates a separate database for every user account, ensuring your data will never be seen by another user without your permission.

Q: Can I control which data different users see?

Yes. To share data in Indicee, you can either create a group or join an existing group. If you share you data mart with the group, everyone in that group will be able to ask questions of your data mart. If you share a question to the group, the group members will only be able to see the question and interact (i.e. sort, drill down) with the grid. If you share a snapshot to the group, people will only be able to see the static result.

Q: What is a “Question” in Indicee?

Questions are how you query a data mart in Indicee. Questions are synonymous with a report. They provide a simple way to get answers about your data. The answers show up as graphs, charts and reports which can be saved and shared with other Indicee users.

Q: How do I start asking Indicee questions?

You will first need access to a data mart. There are two ways to get access to a data mart: the first is to have another Indicee user share their data mart with you; and the second is to upload some data and create your own data mart.

Q: What is a snapshot?

Once you have created a question, you have the option of saving it as a snapshot by clicking on the Snapshot button. A snapshot is a static view of the question at the time the snapshot was taken. You can share a snapshot, but other users will only be able to see a static view of the data and won’t be able to make any changes or interact with the data.

Q: What is a data mart?

In Indicee, a data mart is the location within Indicee that you upload your data into and then ask questions of . It’s helpful to focus a data mart on a specific business function, such as sales analysis. When you create a question, you need to specify which data mart to use.

Q: How do I create a data mart?

Indicee has a “Create Data Mart” wizard that steps you through the process of creating a data mart. You can launch the wizard from My Stuff > My Data Marts, and then click the Create Data Mart button.

To get started you will need a report or data set to upload to Indicee. The wizard will then guide you though the process of teaching Indicee how to manage your data and how you want to analyze it. Once you have created your data mart, you can upload newer versions of your report or data set, and Indicee will automatically add the new data to your data mart.

Q: What kind of data works best with Indicee?

Indicee works best with cumulative business data that adds up over time. For example, sales data that adds up daily works well, because at the end of the month you will have an accurate total for the entire month. For instance, 10 sales per day will equal 300 sales at the end of 30 days. Data such as inventory or headcount statistics are more difficult for Indicee because daily totals can expand or contract and will not necessarily add to an accurate total at the end of the month.

Q: What data file types can I upload to Indicee?

Indicee can upload Crystal Reports, Excel and comma separated variable (CSV) files.

For Excel, Indicee currently accepts Excel 97 – 2003 workbooks. If you have an Excel file saved in a different version, open it in Excel and use the Save As command to save it as an Excel 97 – 2003 Workbook. Indicee only looks at the first worksheet in an Excel workbook, so make sure your data is in the first tab.

Q: How do my CSV and Excel data files need to be formatted?

For Excel and CSV files, it’s important that the data be in a columnar format with the following characteristics:

Data of similar types arranged in columns
Titles at the top of each column
Each row represents one complete record

Indicee won’t be able to understand files that have:

Groupings or sub-totals
Values for multiple time periods across multiple columns (e.g. financial statements are often in this format)

Q: How often can I update my data?

You can upload data as often as you like. The frequency will depend on your data and what you want to learn from it. The most common frequencies are daily, weekly and monthly.

Q: How long is my data stored?

There is no limit to storage time.

Q: Can I add additional data sets from other areas of my business?

Indicee can consolidate and connect data from multiple reports, applications and business areas. If the data is unrelated we recommend creating a separate data mart. If the data is linked, you will want to combine them in the same data mart.

Right now Indicee users can only create data marts based on a single data set. We are adding the capability to create data marts from multiple data sets. If you need to do this today, please contact us and we will be happy to set up the data mart for you.

Q: Can I create a data mart from multiple data sources?

One of the most powerful features of Indicee is the ability to consolidate data from multiple sources. This could be data captured in different business applications, data from one business application combined with data in a spreadsheet or even data from two different reports from the same business application.

However, the Create Data Mart wizard in Indicee Preview only supports creating a data mart from a single report or data set. We are adding capability to the wizard that will let you add and link additional report types to the data mart. In the meantime, if you need to consolidate data from multiple reports, please contact us and we will be happy to set up the data mart for you.