1. Overview

Here are descriptions of main terms used in eazyBI.

Account

One account contains set of data which can be analyzed by one or many account users. In any given time you can work with one selected current account. You can select current account either from dashboard or from Select or Change account link in top right corner of the screen.
Accounts can be created as public if it contains public data and you want that any user can access it. If account is private then only account users can access account data.
Each account has subscription plan - there are free subscription plans as well as paid subscription plans with monthly subscription fee.

Account users

User who creates account is Owner of the account. Owner has all rights for this account and also can add additional users to account. In case of private accounts only specified account users will have access to account data.
When you add new account user then this user at first should register for eazyBI with his or her email and then you need to specify this user's email in Add account user input box. If you both are users in some other account then eazyBI will suggest other known users either by their name or email.
When you add new users to account you need to specify their role. User admin will be able to add new users. Data admin will be able to import source data and define calculated dimension members (see below). User will be able to analyze data and also save reports. Viewer will be able to analyze data and just open existing reports but will not be able to save reports. User admin has also Data admin and User rights, Data admin has also User rights.

Source Data

After creating new account you need to import data which you want to analyze. There are two ways how to import data - either upload source data files or import data from source application for which eazyBI data import is defined.

Source Files

Currently import from CSV format files is supported (other formats will be supported later, please write feedback if you want support of some specific format). After upload of source data file you need to define mapping from source file columns to cube dimensions and measures (see Cubes, Dimensions and Measures below).

Cubes

Imported data are stored in multi-dimensional data cubes. Cubes contain fact data that are divided by dimensions and each detailed fact "cell" contains measure values about that fact.This is example of Sales cube that has Customers, Products and Time dimensions and has measures Sales amount and Units sold. Each detailed cube "cell" contains sales amount and units sold for particular product, customer and time period:

It is easy to illustrate cube with three dimensions but you can have as many dimensions and as many measures as you need in one data cube.

All measures in the same cube share the same dimensions. If in one account you want to store different types of measures that do not share the same dimensions then you can create several different cubes.

Dimensions

Typical cube dimensions are Time, Customers, Products, Locations, Employees, Projects etc. Use dimensions that are best suited to your business domain.

Each dimension can have either just detailed level of all dimension members or you can define hierarchy with several levels. For example, Customers dimension could have Country, State and Customer Name levels:

All measures are automatically aggregated (typically as sum of detailed level values) in upper hierarchy levels. E.g. looking at Sales amount measure at Country level will give total sales amount for this country.

Typically each dimension has All level with one All member which aggregates all dimension members.

When you upload source file with date (or date & time) column then automatically time hierarchy will be constructed for corresponding dimension. Time hierarchy will have Year, Quarter, Month and Day levels which can be used to get totals of measures at selected time period level.

Measures

Measures typically are integer or decimal values that can be accessed either at detailed dimension member level or can be aggregated at higher dimension levels. Typical measure examples could be Sales amount, Units sold, Cost amount, Transactions count etc.

Calculated members

Sometimes you want to calculate new measures from other existing cube measures - these are called calculated measures. For example, you could define Profit calculated measure as Sales amount measure minus Cost amount measure. And then you could also define Margin % calculated measure as Profit measure diveded by Sales amount measure (and display result as percentage).

You can also define calculated members in other dimensions. For example, you could define in Customers dimension new calculated member North America as sum of USA and Canada members.

Calculated member formulas are defined using MDX language. Basic arithmetic formulas can be created very easily but by learning other MDX functions you will be able to create any calculated members you need. Read more about creating calculated members.

Analyze and create reports

After importing data from source files or source applications you can go to Analyze tab and start to explore data in create cube. You can start creating table reports by dragging needed dimensions to columns, rows and pages and exploring your data at different dimension levels. After selecting needed data in table report you can switch to different chart reports to explore your data in more visual way.

When you have created report layout that you want to use frequently you can save this report with given name. When later you will open saved report then you will get latest results drom data cube using saved report layout.

Learn more about Analyze tab in Analyze and create reports and Creating charts help pages.