This article from the July 2005 issue of the Xcelsius newsletter outlines how to use Smart Sliders with Xcelsius XL Professional and XE Enterprise edition. Smart Sliders can dynamically adjust the limits of the sliders as you manipulate the slider components. This enables you to allot a quantity among a group of items and never over allocate the amount. Try doing this automatically on a spreadsheet!
This article from the June 2005 issue of the Xcelsius newsletter outlines how to use the Drill Down feature of the Xcelsius Version 4.
Fig. 1 This is not a screen shot; this is the actual Xcelsius file.
In my article last month, you saw that the Accordion Component packed a lot of punch. I want to show you another feature of Xcelsius that combines elegance and simplicity with powerful drill down capabilities.
Rather than thinking about a detailed setup, I want to show how easy and casual it can be to create a drill down chart.
Those of you who have not yet upgraded to Xcelsius 4 (either XL - Professional Version or XE - Enterprise Version) will need to download the trial version of Xcelsius Pro or Exterprise. You can follow the links at the bottom of the Xcelsius Flash file to obtain the Xcelsius Trial Software, as well as the spreadsheet and the .xlf file for this article.
I want you to start thinking about how data would typically be appearing in your spreadsheets. Let's get concrete and talk about something that we all can relate to -- flight delays. Just about everyone has had their fair shares (or should I say, their unfair shares) worth of sitting and needlessly waiting in airports. What do you think contributes the most to the delays? And do the delays vary seasonally?
Part 1 - Data to Munch on
The airlines have to report all sorts of information to the FAA. This information is publicly available at the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (www.bts.gov).
To illustrate a very simplified Drill Down Chart, let's look at six months of summary data for causes of flight delays (Figure 2). The numbers are easy to interpret because you only have to consider five categories or causes of delay over a six month period.
Figure 2
The basic concept of a drill down is this; you want to start with some summary information (such as total number of flight delays) and work your way back to more detailed information (such as how each kind of delay changed month to month).
Rather than concentrating on the spreadsheet application, I want you to pay attention to the process of how the components are set up to utilize the drill down feature. For this reason, the spreadsheet example I chose is essentially static. In a full scale application the data you'd be using, might allow you to select over a range of dates instead of the six months from November to April. You might see further sub-sectioning such as delay by specific airline, or delays within a specific airport. Adding these details would only make this article longer, and wouldn't change how the Drill Down Options are set up.
