The Problem:

You created a document in web that looks great in a web browser:

But when you send it using distribution services, it loses formatting and ends up looking like this:

The Solution:

As always, there is a simple solution to this issue.  You just need to find the right place.

Using MicroStrategy Desktop, navigate to the Administration section and expand Delivery Managers, then select Devices.  This will show you a list of devices that can be used when sending anything from Distribution Services.

Double click the Device you’re using (Generic email is the default device, so this is likely the device you need to change), then click the Options button next to MIME.

Check the box at the bottom for “Use only tables to position elements in HTML” and click OK.

Now send your document again and the formatting should export correctly.  Problem solved!

The first path is accessible if MicroStrategy’s plug-in architecture was utilized in creating your customizations.  The plug-in architecture is strongly recommended for a number of reasons, one being portability.  On this path you should be able to find a folder (or multiple folders) inside their existing MicroStrategy Web “Plug-Ins” folder (found at <webroot>/MicroStrategy/plugins).   The high-level plan on this path (as with any upgrade decision) begins with confirming you still need the plugins in 9.3.  If so, save your plugin folder (or folders if you have multiple plugins) someplace safe, upgrade to the 9.3 web (preferably HF2 or higher) and then put the plugins back into the new website.

Before starting on the upgrade take a few moments to consider the following:

1. Measure twice, cut once.  A little planning is in order when executing a MicroStrategy migration.  Ideally, you will have the opportunity to deploy MicroStrategy Web 9.3 in parallel with your existing system, allowing you to review the new interface.  You may find customizations you’ve made to previous versions are not needed anymore as MicroStrategy web’s functionality continually expands.

2. Say hello to the new interface.  Within MicroStrategy 9.3 you will find the system deploys its own plugin called “_Interface”.  This customization is what gives MicroStrategy 9.3 Web its distinct look and feel.

3. Understand who is doing what. Reserve some testing time to determine which of your plugins are responsible for each functional or appearance change in the system, particularly if you have multiple plugins prior to the upgrade.  Plugins that alter the headers, tool bars and menus in MicroStrategy may need careful consideration as those items have a higher probability of having been changed in the 9.3 Interface.

4. Get to know their names.  A single deployment of MicroStrategy cannot have two plugins with the same name.  In the unlikely event your system has used the name “_Interface” for one of your own plugins there is more work to do.  Simply changing the name of the folder may not be enough; internal references within your plugin may need to be updated as well.

5. Dealing with conflict.  Assuming there is no naming conflict one of the benefits of the plugin architecture is you can put your plugins right next to the _Interface plugin and see if things work as expected.  Don’t panic if they don’t; MicroStrategy 9.3′s revised UI may change the appearance of something your plugin was also altering leading to conflicts.  Step back and review your plan, focusing on your user’s needs and the goals of the customizations.  Understand which parts of the existing customizations you’d like to carry forward and which can be omitted in the new environment.

But what if the plug-in architecture was bypassed for your customizations?  If you do not find a folder (or folders) inside of the plugin directory you may have a MicroStrategy Web installation that has been modified in a manner inconsistent with MicroStrategy’s guidelines.  Systems fitting into this category may contain a few modified core files (e.g. the logo image) while others may have changes to multiple files.

Finding yourself on this path may require a couple extra steps, some tips for dealing with this scenario include:

1. Expand your Plan. You may want to expand your migration plan to include tracking down and documenting the exact post-migration expectation and test scenarios that will demonstrate your migration was successful.  A parallel deployment of MicroStrategy Web would give you the ability to test “before” and “after” appearances and functionality.

2. Accommodate Change.  Remember to reserve some time for trial and error, MicroStrategy Web is not a small application and it can take time to determine what’s been changed.

3. Keep the end goal in mind.  Nobody wants to “break” a production system over the course of a simple upgrade, and whether something is “broken” or not depends on your end user’s expectations.  Keeping an open dialog with your user group or their representatives can be helpful in determining what is important in their use of the system.

Start/stop/get status of I-server
./mstrctl -s IntelligenceServer start
./mstrctl -s IntelligenceServer gs
./mstrctl -s IntelligenceServer stop

Start/stop listener
./mstrctl -s Listener stop
./mstrctl -s Listener start

To be able to configure an I-server
./mstrsvr-configure

To be able to access License Manager on an I-server
./mstrlicmgr   (if you have reflection X software)
./mstrlicmgr  -console (if you are doing this with command line only)

To be able to use the configuration wizard
./mstrcfgwiz-editor

To be able to check an ODBC connection from the I-server itself
./mstrtodbcx

You can use the following commands to actually test the id/password directly on the I-server to ensure that the id has correct connection privileges as well as whether it has the correct privileges on the various tables to pull back data.

Run SQL on Linux

From time to time, you will need to run additional diagnostic commands to troubleshoot various issues with Microstrategy.

The following scripts can be used to set up the diagnostic logs and then turn on/off the various diagnostic tracing on an I-server from a command line (no Reflection X software needed to see the GUI panel).

Enable tracing for Report and Document caches
Server Cache Logging

Enable Job tracing to diagnose specific issues with a given job
Kernel Job Trace Logging

Enable User tracing to diagnose specific issues with a given user
Kernel User Trace Logging

Enable XML API tracing to diagnose specific issues with SDK customizations
Kernel XML API Trace Logging

Issue Summary:
Report SQL changes from “not in” to “in” when re-prompt a report using a ‘not in list’ filter in MicroStrategy Desktop 9.3.0

NOTE: This is a known issue in MicroStrategy V9.3.0.
Refer to TN 42081 in the MicroStrategy Knowledge Base for details on this to this known issue)

Workaround Steps

1.  Create a new Expression Prompt. Create New Prompt and select “Qualify on an attribute”

2.  Select the Attribute (this example is from MSTR “Tutorial Project” and the “Region” attribute)

3.  Select “Web options: Modify” button

4.  Use these settings.  NOTE: “Not in list” is the Default operator chosen in this example (you can play around with display style and the other properties if you wish)

5.  Select Next (no changes here)

6.  Select Finish, Save & Close

7.  Create a New Filter (you may wish to modify the existing filter, after you test this workaround out)

8.  Browse to the Prompt Ojbect created in steps 1-6

9.  Drag and Drop the Prompt into the Filter definition

10.  Save & Close Filter (example: Propmted Filter saves as “MJA_Region-v2Exclusion”)

11.  Create new Report with Region Attribute on Grid and the prompted Filter saved in step 10

12.  Report Template in Desktop

13.  Execute report in MSTR Web. Qualify on Prompt — Move “Region” to the Selected pane on the right side

14.  Select the “Empty” link and select and Attribute Element (Canada is this example)

15.  Canada is exclude in results

16.  Select “Re-Prompt” button and switch to Central Region

17.  Central is now excluded.  NOTE: Issue is no longer present (“Not In List” operator is not change to “in list”)

I was only able to attend 1 session on Mobile, however it was a reoccuring theme throughout the keyntoes and future presentation.

Performance and security are key focus areas in the mobile realm. Time and time again I heard about customers who did rapid prototyping of MicroStrategy Mobile in order to get it out to a subset of users as quickly as possible in 2012. For 2013, they have to roll it out to a larger user base and are not sure how to execute. Ease of use was a secondary issue during the POC phase. Performance bottlenecks were less of a concern then vs. now. Rolling this out with scrubbed data is one thing, but how can security be guaranteed when accessing private data across the public internet on a device that could be lost, stolen, or simply mishandled at any time?

Now onto the session notes on Mobile Performance Tools for Measuring Mobile Performance:

• Enterprise Manager
• Diagnostics Tool
• Web Server Statistics
• Device Slide Logs (9.2.1+)

Tip 1: Use Device Cache as much as possible

• Resulted in 30%+ improvement vs. document cache only

Tip 2: Use Subscriptions as much as possible

• Can be used in offline mode
• Stored in history list
• On app startup, doc is loaded onto device

Tip 3: Pre-cache on the device as much as possible

• Load at mobile app startup vs. being schedule driven
• Available in offline mode
• Pre-cache all supporting objects based on folder
• Have a “home dashboard” and load children while user is viewing home

Tip 4: Use the best hardware possible across all layers

• iPad 3 is 40% faster than iPad 2 in benchmark tests
• iPhone 5 is 30% faster than 4s
• Android varies greatly

Tip 5: Use the best network available

• WiFi > 4G > 3G
• Internal network hardware matters too

Tip 6: Use cache at ALL layers possible

• Document cache
• Results cache
• Element cache
• Object cache
• DB connection cache

Tip 7: Use incremental downloading

• Limit panels to only those needed
• Limit the number of slices
• Uses links to other Dashboards (link drilling) vs. embedding dashboard in layout

Tip 8: Use slicing and filter selectors

• Slicing Selectors – all data for slice, offline mode available
• Filter – only required slice is loaded, no offline mode available

Tip 9: Reduce the number of objects whenever possible

• Widgets, graphs, grids, etc.

Tip 10: User images wisely

• “Flatten” them
• Locate images close to web and app servers, public http servers also work well
• Images can now be added as part of the “App Resource Bundle”

This session was geared toward administrators or power users, particularly those who had limited exposure to MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager. The focus was on the out-of-box reports (which I feel are extremely lacking, if you’re trying to do enterprise manager report development and getting stuck, let us know).

New EM Mobile Dashboard available in 9.3 (iPhone only)

• Basic stats – 20%
• Report job – 2%
• Document job – 8%
• SQL – 15%
• Job tables/columns accessed – 10%
• Prompt answers – 20%
• Subscriptions – 15%
• Inbox – 10%

MicroStrategy recommended only keeping stats around for approximately 2 weeks if possible, 3 months maximum or you will see performance issues.

Java based Unix version of EM Console coming soon.

Next week, we will post presentation highlights from “Mobile Performance & Security”.

• Wisdom: http://www.wisdom.com/professional/ – market intelligence network/app
• Usher: http://www.usher.com/ – mobile identify network/app
• Alert: http://www.alert.com/ – mobile commerce platform for retailers

It seemed like reactions to this “app focused” direction was somewhat mixed. Customers I spoke to were not exactly sure what to think, while others were openly concerned that it would pull focus and resources away from the core BI platform. Only time will tell.

Another focal point was MicroStrategy Cloud. Again a large amount of time was spent on promoting this offering during the keynotes and sessions. MicroStrategy stated they have around 40 current customers, 1,000 peak concurrent users and around half of the projects are using a data warehouse solution hosted by MicroStrategy vs. in the customer’s corporate network. Customers receive support and administration on the hardware stack only, no application support is included without purchasing additional resources from MicroStrategy Managed Services (therefore, Cloud alone does not replace the need for a service like LancetCare). I’ll include more on this topic in an upcoming session recap.

MicroStrategy Mobile continues to be a hot topic; not only on the design and development side, but on the administration side as well. I spoke to numerous customers who are trying to roll-0ut Mobile on a larger scale but are being held back by security and configuration challenges. It seems that finding a sweet spot between adequate security, good performance and ease of use is not as easy as originally hoped. This will hopefully get easier as upcoming releases add more functionality, including the ability to monitor app behavior more closely.

Regarding MicroStrategy 9.3.1, look for some nice Report Services Design Tools improvements, which are due out sometime in 1st quarter.

From a Financial Services perspective, the MicroStrategy platform is aggressively expanding in this vertical. This was apparent at World. While at World we spoke with:

• 3 out of 5 largest retail banks
• One of the largest electronic funds transfer companies in the world
• Several of the largest broker/dealer entities

In addition, to these large firms, we had numerous discussions with multiple regional and local financial institutions. From an app perspective, we shared our Fusion Intelligence app. The app streamlines disparate alerts into a holistic workbench. We provided six demos and received some great feedback/interest on how we are leveraging transaction services.

From a MicroStrategy technology perspective, some neat new features on the horizon are:

• A closer integration to R to call advance analytic functions
• Cube joins (future release)
• MicorStrategy Express: http://www.microstrategy.com/express improved visual insights
• Enhanced Cloud offerings

All in all, 2013 was a great MicroStrategy World event…

When I started my career in healthcare data I was responsible for a massive outcomes protocol at a small hospital.  I didn’t have the advantage of understanding BI or data warehouse best practices.  What I did have was a transactional system that recorded specific instances of experience at one point in time.  Because it was a small hospital, and our patients were generally there for months, the ability to track one specific patient and all of his records over time was easy compared to the issues facing healthcare today.  I simply grouped all the data by a unique patient ID and measured improvement between the admission and discharge date at specific intervals in therapy.  My transactional system at the point of care didn’t have to track patient’s outcomes because I had a unique ID and a relatively controlled population.  We have neither of those today; we have patients that go in and out of different health systems, different payers and with different addresses.

You may think that modifying the transactional system, in this case the EHR, would be the way to go.  I would say no.  Here’s what I learned during that first outcomes-based job: that system and our EHR, have to be set up to ensure a smooth clinical workflow.  While gathering data is important it has to take a back seat to the service our clinicians are providing.  We can do a better job of reducing the voluminous clinical notes, but we can only use so many drop downs and radio buttons.  Care is contextual, and recording that isn’t going to happen in discreet formats.  Transactional systems, no matter their use, are meant for a point in time interaction.  We can and should bridge the gap in the systems behind the EHR.  Attempting to be all things to all people (or scenarios) will add so much ‘stuff’ to the EHR that we will have a back-lash of poor data quality as our clinicians just try to get through screens.

Here is where data warehousing, BI and other products and systems can help.  None of these things can stand alone, but put together they are a powerful tool to address the changing healthcare landscape.