1. Build your first Inforiver report

This guide is designed to get you up and running with Inforiver Reporting Matrix & Writeback Matrix as quickly as possible. If you have not already installed Inforiver, see the install guide here. The datasets used throughout the guide can be downloaded below. You can also use your own datasets and follow the steps outlined.

6MB

Inforiver Datasets.pbix

Sample dataset used in the guide

1. Add the visual

The first step to using Inforiver is to add it to the Power BI canvas. Click on the Inforiver icon in the visualization pane. Resize it to fill the entire screen.

Add Inforiver visual to the canvas and expand to fullscreen

Inforiver can be used with other native and custom Power BI visuals, but throughout this guide, we will be using Inforiver in full-screen mode for the best experience.

To start building reports in Inforiver,

a) Use the Launch Wizard (optional)

The Launch Wizard is used to configure the initial report view by applying customizations such as theme, templates, and subtotals/totals. These changes can also be made once the data is assigned.

b) Start assigning the data

2. Launch wizard

a) Once you expand to full screen, you can see the 'Get Started' section in the Launch Wizard. Click on 'Start building'.

Start building using the Launch Wizard

b) The customization screen opens up. You can apply a template such as financial, change the subtotal position, enable/disable grand total, and apply a light/dark theme.

You can apply a template, configure the subtotals position, enable/disable grand total and apply a theme

c) As you configure, the changes are reflected in the preview screen.

Preview changes

Once you have made the desired configurations, you can start adding the data as explained in assign data.

3. Assign data

Similar to using a pivot table, to use the visual you need to specify 3 things:

• Rows

• Columns (optional) and

• Values

If you’ve used pivot tables before, this experience should feel familiar. If you have experience with Power BI, this process is identical to any other Power BI visual, especially a table or matrix visual.

In the below image, Region hierarchy, Category & Year, and Sales have been assigned as Rows, Columns & Values respectively.

Assign row, column and value fields

You can see that the canvas shows a matrix based on the data assigned. Notice that the position of subtotals and grand totals that were defined in the Launch Wizard have been applied.

Apart from AC/PY/PL/FC, Inforiver will allow you to add any number of additional measures/dimensions in the Others(OM) parameter.

Others visual parameter

You can add dimensions like category or region in the Values(AC) section or the PY/PL/FC sections. Special characters in the data like % or # symbols will be supported and displayed as is.

Inforiver Writeback Matrix requires the report creator to sign in while creating the report. Without creators signing in, other users will be able to view the report but will not be able to save any changes made to the report. Interactions with the report would mimic using a free version of Inforiver

4. View licensing details and statistics

Click on the Inforiver icon at the bottom right corner of the visual to view the license details and visual statistics like the number of row/column dimension categories, total number of rows, number of forecasts/data inputs, etc.

View licensing details

In the next section, we'll be covering how to display information using Inforiver.