Did You Know: Be a Data Pro – No Experience Required

Here are a few tips to help you create custom dashboards using data from Nintex Analytics. Even without any prior data modelling experience, you can follow these easy steps and come out looking like a pro!

This post assumes that you’ve already taken the basic steps in your process intelligence journey: You have added beacons to your workflows, created the standard Process Intelligence Lens in Nintex Analytics, and collected your OData feed from Analytics to plug into Power BI. Now you’re ready to create a custom dashboard.

Step 1:

Using the OData feed, open the Analytics dashboard template in Power BI Desktop.

Step 2:

Once loaded, select “edit queries”. The data query (simply your data tables) will open in a new screen.

Step 3:

From the data sets on the left-hand side, select “ProcessBeacon.” If the data has not come through yet, just click refresh and it will update.

Step 4:

Remove the following columns using “Remove Columns” button in top menu ribbon:

•  ProcessBeaconID
• RecordUniquieID
• WorkflowID
• ActivityID
• RemoteWorkflowInstanceID

*Be sure not to remove the “WorkflowInstanceID” column – this is your constant for the beacon columns. There will be a WorkflowInstanceID row for each time this workflow has run.

Step 5:

Go to “Transform” in the top menu bar and select the first column of beacon names (“PropertyName”). These represent the names you provided those beacons in the workflow. Then select “pivot column.”

Step 6:

Pivot by name and select “PropertyValue” from the drop-down menu. Also, be sure to select “Don’t aggregate” from the advanced options. Hit OK.

You will see we now have new columns broken out by the beacon name.

Step 7:

You will notice a number of fields with “null” value. this is because data wasn’t entered during the process, or the workflow might have been stopped/ canceled. For this example, I want to clean these up, so I simply filter the column.  (This step is really at your discretion).

Step 8:

To save your changes, go back to the “Home” menu item in the ribbon and select “Close & Apply.”

You will now see your Beacon data clearly listed on the right hand side, along with the other data sets relevant to the workflow.  You are now able to simply select the Power BI Visualizations (graphs), drag and drop those data sets into the relevant graph (e.g. “Building” over the maps visualization).

These steps only take a few minutes and put you in a great place to start creating custom dashboards that answer your business questions. If you can do this much in a few minutes, imagine what you can start doing in an hour, or day. Check out something we created in a few hours:

 

Visit the Nintex Community today to learn more and engage in conversations with fellow Nintex users!