Monarch’s forte is in not only capturing the data that’s locked in static report, but in allowing us to easily add vital information to that data, and to easily create different views of the data and share those views.

Just as you can do in Excel, Monarch allows you to create new calculations based on the existing data. It also allows for connecting related data to the report data that is being captured by your model using facilities known as internal and external lookups.

Many Monarch users know that there are many tools at their disposal within the program to build new ways to analyze and think about their data, but the truth is that we all get a little complacent and comfortable from time to time, doing the same things and using the same tried and true approaches to solve different problems.

Let’s have a little fun and shake things up today.

When was the last time that you did something for the first time?

I’ll guess that one of the things that you’ve never done would be creating your own program using Excel’s integrated development environment, or IDE. This Excel feature lets you create your own customized solutions for performing repetitive steps very easily. You can write little programs – you may have heard referred to as “macros” – that are just a few lines, say to insert your favorite heading into a worksheet and format it just the way that you like, or longer programs that perform a large number of steps. You do this with a programming language called “Visual Basic for Applications”, or more commonly referred to as VBA.

One of the nice things that you can do with a little Excel programming is having your Monarch work done for you. You’ll click a single button in Excel and it’ll take over and start up Monarch, load a report or two, apply a model that you’ve already built and tested, and then maybe apply a filter to the table data and export that specific data to a file. Now apply a different filter and export that data to another file. Finally, you can have Monarch export a summary or two (or more) for you. And all of this will happen with you clicking a single button in Monarch.

You may know that you can also automate Monarch using batch files, but that method has a number of limitations, notably the inability to set filters dynamically or apply custom sort orders via the command line.

Datawatch kindly documented all of these programming tricks in a “Programmer’s Guide”, but personally I find it a bit too technical for the regular Monarch user. After all, wasn’t Monarch developed in the first place to basically shield the person using from all of the technical stuff?

With that I mind, I set out to make it as easy for you to program Monarch as possible. Readers who subscribe to the free FeedBurner service, which sends you ExcelWithMonarch.com content by email, receive my custom Monarch programming tool. The tool runs in Excel and you can learn more about it here.

Watch this video in full-screen mode to get an idea of what it takes to accomplish this sort of automation:

Now, that doesn’t look too terribly difficult now does it? Trust me: you CAN do this.

Beats Workin’

We all enjoy working with Monarch; it’s a terrific product. But sometimes the routine tasks get monotonous, and highly detailed and meticulous work and processes can be very stressful as there’s usually a fair bit of pressure to make sure that you get the end result right. Every time.

Do yourself a huge favor and devote some time and effort to develop what might be completely new skills. Nobody expects you to be able to create a huge reporting system for your first programming project. Start small. Pick something that you can do fairly quickly with Monarch, and try to reproduce those steps with your own custom Excel program.

There will be a bit of a learning curve, but take the time to learn the basics and build from there. Google is your friend for learning VBA. And you can’t go wrong with having a good book or two on your desk.

Then when you’re a bit more comfortable, start working on a larger project. There’s nothing better than watching your program do your work for you, say, while you’re sitting back enjoying your morning coffee.

We’re not quite to the point of having a robot do our work for us, but by automating your work in this way you can easily share your new versions of the truth with others in your group and it’s the best way to excel with Monarch.

photo credit: Steve Keys

This is very exciting. Indeed, even inspiring. For me, and hopefully for you too.

I’ve just posted my first video to my shiny and new YouTube channel. I’ve posted a few videos here before, but the authoring software is much better now than it was when I created those. My first video is even in “HD”, and as I was developing this video I came up with quite a few ideas for other videos too.

The first YouTube effort focuses on cash receipt management reporting, and employs several models and projects, all tied together conveniently with a batch file.

On a related note, today I received permission from Datawatch (thank you!) to use the sample files that are installed with Monarch in other videos, so look for those videos soon.

I’m still a little self-conscious with my currently somewhat scratchy voice, but as I’ve said about using the tools that you already have, such as Excel and Monarch, “use what you’ve got”.

Hopefully this video and the ones that follow will inspire you to find new ways to excel with Monarch.

photo credit: JVCAmerica

Have you seen some of what is soon to be available in the upcoming release of Excel 2010? Microsoft has produced some videos to demonstrate the new abilities of the software.

But before I share those with you, I thought that I’d include their “History of Business Intelligence”. While a little lengthy, it’s cute, entertaining and informative, and is a pretty good recap of what’s happened with this topic to date. Watch the video to see how the Terminator, Donkey Kong and gophers played a role in getting us to where we’re at today.

History of Business Intelligence

Sparklines

Sparklines are small charts that help convey trends. Many Excel users have been taking advantage of sparklines by using tools such as BonaVista System’s excellent Microcharts (UPDATE March 2012: BonaVista Systems has closed due to the sad and untimely passing of its owner), but Microsoft has addressed this need and deficiency in their software by incorporating this visual analysis tool into Excel 2010.

Slicers

Other products such as Tableau have been making it easy to dynamically filter the data included in tables and charts for a while, and slicers are Microsoft’s version of more interactive filtering. Up until now we’ve been able to filter content with Autofilters and pivot table page fields, but the major improvement offered by the new slicers is in how the secondary filter levels change dynamically based on the initial selection. Have a look:

The Impact of Excel 2010 on Monarch Modelers

Monarch v10′s ability to export summaries, especially when using key values to create individuals worksheets, in conjunction with sparklines will make quick work of producing really useful trend charts in small spaces, maximizing the impact of your dashboard reports.

As Monarch modelers and solution builders, depending upon the requirements of the audience, we might be able to spend less time modeling – building fewer filters up front (in the model) – and instead take advantage of the large storage capacity of Excel (and Access) and have the end users filter their data on their own. Using slicers seems to be pretty straightforward, though your Excel users, at least initially, might appreciate your setting up the worksheet so that they can just click.

Based on how Monarch works with Excel 2007, I’ll assume (I know, I know… yes, I am speculating here) that being able to export data from Monarch to Excel 2010 files will be just as straightforward as it is with Excel 2007 and that we’ll be able to export pivot tables and take full advantage of slicers and sparklines, and the other new features that await us in Excel 2010.

Monarch and Excel Continue Working Together

As long as Excel needs structured data to analyze, then Monarch will always be the tool of choice to:

• organize unstructured data,
• consolidate data from multiple sources, and
• make that data accessible to Excel, either directly or indirectly.

Have you used the Excel 2010 beta software? If so, what were your impressions? I’m interested, clearly, but decided to focus on other tasks rather than test beta software. Nonetheless, by the looks of it, Excel 2010 will open up even more ways for us to excel with Monarch.

photo credit: fotographix.ca

This past weekend, it’s possible that a number of Excel users were introduced to Monarch for the first time. As they may not have even heard of the product before, I thought that this might be an opportune time to demonstrate how one can work with both Excel and Monarch simultaneously.Today’s video shows how to add to values from Excel to report data that you’ve extracted with Monarch. We’ll use Monarch’s external lookup feature to add some values (which we’ll use in new calculations) to the model we created in a previous video post.

While the data set in the video is small, you can see how you can have Monarch effectively use Excel files for both inputs and outputs.

Without custom programming or complex formulas in Excel, you can very quickly add new data elements to the report files generated by your existing systems.

If you haven’t seen the first video, in which the process of essentially teaching Monarch how to extract data from a specific report is demonstrated, view it now.

Today’s video extends the initial model by adding the external lookups and a calculated field. (View the external lookup demo video now.)

Monarch’s engine imports data from Excel workbooks far more quickly that even Excel does with its VLOOKUP function. Even if you’re accustomed to using Excel’s lookup functions, you’ll gain considerable performance advantages by having Monarch connect your data if you’re working with any nontrivial amounts of data.

Becoming adept at developing new decision support tools which easily connect related data is a great way to excel with Monarch.

Do Monarch’s Summaries Leave You Wanting More?

You’ve learned how to use Monarch’s Summary feature (there’s a primer in this video), and you’re now comfortable with building summaries. They’re great tools in and of themselves.

But now that you have a general understanding of the concept, you may find that as useful as they are, the process of creating a summary is a bit cumbersome. The end result is a little static too. Sure, you can drill up and down, but if you want to change the basic structure, well, that takes a little more effort.

Wouldn’t it be great if your summary was a bit more interactive? What if you could reposition your fields just by dragging them around with your mouse? What if you could filter the data displayed in the summary on the fly, based on the live content?

These are the types of things that you can do with Excel’s pivot table feature.

Building a Pivot Table is Simple

It’s interesting. I’ve demonstrated the benefits of using pivot tables to literally hundreds of people, and what I usually hear is “I need to learn how to do that”. But when I follow up with them later, they’ve made no progress. Why is that?

People are somewhat intimidated by pivot tables. To some, it seems so difficult that they don’t believe that they can create pivot tables themselves, so they don’t even try.

That’s a real shame, because creating and using them can be very simple.

Start with the Basics

Pivot tables are a bit like Excel and Monarch in general: they’re packed with features, but you don’t need to use every feature all the time.

Let’s look at using a pivot table to perform a little monthly sales analysis. Let’s say that you’re reporting for a retail chain, and you want to prepare an overview of both the location unit counts and total revenues for multiple product categories and sub-categories. For instance, you might sell music CD’s and DVD (your product categories) and Classical, Rock, Pop, Action and Soundtracks might be your sub-categories.

Pivot Tables are Reusable Structures

It might take you few minutes to initially build the structure for your table, to get just the right layout. But when done right, it’s a one-time investment of your time. That’s because pivot tables are like Monarch summaries – once they’re built, they can be reused over and over again with new data.

This is a huge time saver. Think about it. Every time you want to update that fancy, complicated report all you need to do is make a couple of mouse clicks (once you have the data of course!). And if your computer is up to the task, you’ll have an up to date report in seconds.

Automate the Data Range for the Table

If you’re already a little familiar with pivot tables, you know that when you create a table based on an Excel list, the data is read into the table from a specific range which includes fixed columns and rows, such as $A$1:$Z:100. The next time you update your data, you may have more or fewer rows of data. So to get the table to point to the right data, you must edit the data range manually.

There’s a better way. You can create a named range that will always adjust itself to your current data set automatically – you won’t need to adjust it anymore.

Create a range named PivotData, or even better SalesData, as being clear lets you manage your data better.

Now for the “Refers to:” area, where you normally supply a range, type the following formula instead:

• The Offset function returns a range.
• ‘Sheet1′!$A$1 tells the function that cell A1 is the top-left corner of the area.
• Then go over zero rows, and
• zero columns from there.
• COUNTA(‘Shee1′!$A:$A) tells the function the number of rows that have data, including the heading, and finally
• COUNTA(‘Sheet1′!$1:$1) tells the function the number of columns that have data

As a test, hit the F5 key, type the range name you created (SalesData in our example), and hit Enter. You should see the data range highlighted.

Here is a short video of the process of creating a dynamic range name, and a little demonstration of its functionality.

Once the data is ready (best prepared with Monarch, then exported to Excel), you’re ready to build a pivot table. The second video today shows you how to create a pivot table and an overview of how you can manipulate the content.

Using pivot tables to summarize your data is an absolute necessity for great reporting that needs to be updated regularly. Building the right content in a manner that your audience will understand should make you very popular.

Pivot tables allow you to summarize and analyze a great deal of data, and there’s no better way to supply that data to the pivot table than to start the process with Monarch.

How would you describe a painting by Da Vinci, Renoir or Monet? A picture truly is worth a thousand words.

Similarly, I could go on and on describing the benefits of Monarch to someone who has never seen it action, but it’s just not the same as seeing for yourself.

So, to that end, I’m pleased to present what I believe to be is the first freely available web video for building a Monarch model (6MB). It runs almost exactly four minutes long. There’s no audio. I need to shop for a decent mic. Any excuse to shop for gadgets!

The video shows how to extract data from a typical list style report, and how you can quickly add summary information that doesn’t appear in the report.

Producing videos such as this is a bit of undertaking, so before I go off the deep end preparing material in which I think you might be interested, it would be really helpful if you just told me. I’m open to suggestions!

Post a comment below, or drop me a note at sandy DOT cavalaris AT excelwithmonarch DOT com (sorry for the lack of a link – trying to avoid the spam bots as much as possible as they seem to have found the site already).

And if you’ve never seen Monarch software in action before this, what do you think? Did you immediately think of a few ways to put it to good use?

Personally, I think the idea of one day being able to work faster and smarter probably put the smile on Mona Lisa’s face. Are you ready to excel with Monarch?