While anyone can make a website, our team specializes in truly cultivating the growth your business’ website.  What does cultivating a website even mean?  Excellent question!  Our process of website cultivation is an end-to-end process to continually evaluate the needs of your customers, your business, and — very importantly — your budget to maximize the Return On Investment (ROI) a website can bring to the success of your business.  The constant assessment of our website cultivation process is especially important in the Northern Virginia DC Metro area where so many start-ups and small businesses are competing for the attention of the same customers.

1. Interviews & Information Sessions

I’ve always thought this first phase to be the most important of all, as it sets the tone for everything else moving forward.  This phase is a lot like a first date because we want to know about you, your business, your customers, and anything else you feel like sharing, along with answering as much as you want to know about us.  Among the questions you should expect us to ask:

• Where did the name of your business come from?
• Why did you start a business, and what sets you apart from your competitors?
• What types of customers do you currently attract and do you want to attract other types?
• How do you currently advertise, and how successful to do you think that is?
• What are your expectations from a website?

These questions help us gain a better understanding of your goals and help you to get to know us better.  This type of interview will be ongoing throughout each phase to ensure the process, progress, and project milestones are understood and agreed upon by all involved.   Our stance of open communication, supported by our customer portal, helps avoid unnecessary changes down the road caused by uncomfortable requirement and functional misunderstandings.

2. Website Design and Web Architecture

Once we’ve got an idea of the design and functional requirements of your site, our graphic artists come aboard to start creating website design mocks while our web architecture team gets the ball rolling with technical specifications and wireframes.

For the majority of websites, this will be the most time-consuming phase of development because this is where the website is actually designed.  While large scale revisions can and should occur in this phase, we’re experienced with empowering you to make the decisions required to move smoothy and efficiently through the process.

3. Functional Specifications

With the big concerns tackled in the website design and web architecture phase, this phase is the nitty gritty details such as navigation effects, CSS enhancements, JavaScript and jQuery behaviors, and advanced enhancements such as Flash.  While we are hashing out these details, our development team is busy staging your testing environment, identifying hosting requirements, and readying the troops for the next phase: Website Development.

4. Website Development

With the other phases behind us, the website development is surprisingly fast.  Historically, this marks is a little more than the 3/4 point of a project budget and is a lot like approaching 3rd base on the diamond.   With the design mocks, wireframes, and functional specs in-hand our team of industry-leading developers translate the site requirements into an actual website.

Starting with a Content Management System (CMS), such as WordPress, our application developers and graphics designers work in parallel to execute on the website design and functional requirements to build the site to our agreed-upon specifications.

As this phase progresses, our usability team steps up to make sure the site meets usability standards and is easy for your customers to use.  Depending on the scope of the website, this may include marketing surveys and beta testing to make sure your customers can find your services and ultimately do business with your company.

5. SEO/SEM and other Marketing

Towards the halfway point of the website development phase, our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) team kicks into high gear to identify content and editorial requirements and begin optimizing the site for search engine visitors.

While SEM and other marketing – such as email marketing or print media – are optional site enhancements, we do not believe that SEO is an option for business in the Northern Virginia, DC Metro area.  As this area is especially ripe for entrepreneurs and is therefore rife with competition, we include a base SEO package with all of our websites and launch you with the best chances of being found.   Learn more about our SEO and SEM services from our Digital Marketing Service page.

6. Cultivation

This is what happens after your site goes live and is a lot like growing grass.  Up until this point, we readied the earth for your site by laying the foundation, placing the seeds, and preparing it to thrive.  The next step is to maintain the website by performing traffic analysis, providing regular updates, and performing routine maintenance.  While we will train you to keep your site up and running, we’re here to fill in any gaps or clear to-do’s off your list along the way.

Happy growing!

Remember Your Audience

Don’t forget that as a pediatric dentist, your website design should appeal primarily to parents with children — not the children.  Don’t fall into the trap of ignoring the needs of your patients’ parents while trying to make something childish and fun.  This means that the site must be easy to read and navigate, but should still be as fun and creative as your practice.  A website that balances the same fun-but-professional atmosphere your practice does will go a long way to setting you apart from the fierce competition amongst pediatric dentists in Northern Virginia.

Show REAL Pictures

While seemingly cost-effective, the use of stock imagery is something that tends to turn off parents. Those parents researching pediatric dentists through their websites will pick up on reoccurring generic children very, very quickly and wonder what’s wrong with your people or practice that makes you not want to show real pictures.

Quality webdesign firms, such as Wagger Designs located in Northern Virginia, have photographers on staff who will take pictures of your actual people and location, and alleviate the need for stock photography.

Show Images of Your Practice

Showing actual pictures of the examination area, operatories, waiting areas, and exterior location is very important for a pediatric website.  Parents who visit your site want to see that the areas are clean and in good repair.  Beyond knowing you keep up with your physical location, a sneak peak of your kid-friendly facilities also allows parents to get a feel for how you will interact with the children in your care.  Facilities with kid-friendly features will leave a great impression with parents and a website is a excellent place to show these features to the parents of perspective patients.

Typically forgotten, an exterior shot, great on a directions or contact pages, make it easier for parents to find your pediatric practice by giving them a visual idea of your practice’s exterior.

Show Pictures of Your Team

Never substitute stock-imagery for your actual team members or actual patients.  One way to get great action shots of your staff interacting with children is to host an open house night for children you know well.  Throw a little party and provide exams for them while you and your staff operate like you would in a typical day.  The pictures from this event will yield incredible shots of your friendly staff and happy children throughout your practice.  When parents researching pediatric dentists arrive at your site, they will notice the uniqueness of these pictures and will appreciate having the opportunity to see you in action.

Easy on the “Fun” and “Cute”

Some “fun” deigns elements are usability nightmares for parents.  One prime example is the use of a mouse cursor trails.  These seem SO CUTE! — but they are not only incredibly annoying when browsing a site, but are also horrible for parents browsing with disabilities.

Another element that gets pediatric dentists in trouble is a website that plays sounds. Having a pediatric website automatically play safari noises is the quickest way to encourage a parent to leave your site — especially if they are at work.

The last “fun” and “cute” example to stay away from is overly creative navigation.   Having stared at a few pediatric websites trying to find the navigation, I can attest that parents who cannot find the information they are looking for will quickly move on.

Wagger’s Pediatric Dentist Packages

Contact us to learn more about how our team can partner with you to build a website that compliments the uniqueness of your practice and encourages parents to convert from a website visitor to a customer.  We know technology and also understand how to integrate with leading third-party vendors, such as Dentrix, to get new patients into your practice systems quickly.

Find out how our strategy of levering a modern website design, SEO techniques, and fully customized graphics and photography will contribute to your practice’s success today!

During SXSW, Matt Cutts (a high profile search engine quality member of Google), was interviewed about a new algorithm change directed towards addressing people who are optimizing a site to “trick” the search engines into ranking the site well.

Now before we all get our panties in a twist, chances are, if you’re considered to be a “white-hat” SEO, you probably don’t have to worry about any “over optimization penalty.”  However, if you find you’re asking yourself, “Am I really doing something sketchy even though it’s getting me to Page 1?” The most likely answer is yes; yes, you are, and you bet your ass Google is going to figure it out.  But what exactly is “over optimization” anyway and how does one avoid such a penalty?

Here at Wagger Designs, we’ve compiled a checklist of issues and examples that may trigger Google’s over optimization penalty.

1. Excessive Internal Linking in Content

For years, SEOs have been talking about keyword to content ratio, but what they fail to mention is the importance of the internal anchor text link to content ratio.  While content on a page is one of the most essential elements of SEO, it’s also just as important — if not more so — not to make the mistake of having a high percentage of links vs actual HTML content.  This general HTML content is considered to be anything located within <p> (paragraph) tags.

In the “Women’s Cardigans” example below, the link to content ratio is approximately 51%.  This means that 51% of all words in this paragraph are internal links.  This is something search engines could easily red flag and penalize the site for over optimization.

2. Highly Targeted Links in Footer

Historically speaking, web designers have used footers to display only the very most important pages on the site such as an HTML sitemap or an “about us” page since top-level navigation will include most if not all sub-navigation pages.

In order to increase the relevance of internal page topics, websites will place an excessive number of keyword stuffed anchor links at the bottom of a web page.  These “over optimized” websites try to position deeper pages as the “footer.”

A prime example of keyword stuffed footers can be found on the screenshot of a wedding site below.  Not only does it contain optimized links within the footer, the site lists out a highly detailed list of links at the bottom of every page.

3. Link Stuffed Navigation

Over optimizing primary navigation to be filled with targeted keywords may also flag search engines that the site was intended to optimize against search engine algorithms and not be tailored to the end user.  We uncovered two primary examples of navigation “over optimization”:  Sub-Categories and Breadcrumb structure.

Breadcrumbs were initially created with the intent to help a user find their way back to the home page or go back to a higher level category.  Later on, search engines began to use this breadcrumb navigation as a cue and began to utilize the keyword category structure within search engine listings.  Some websites have begun to take advantage of this breadcrumb navigation and create more than one path home.  While this type of navigation may ultimately help search engines associate products with multiple categories, users may become confused.

For example, the screenshot of the clothing site below uses three separate link paths for users and search engines to retreat backwards.

A more common “over optimization” technique for navigation is targeting and creating a page for every product under the sun and then labeling it using optimized keywords with a clear intent to boost search engine rankings and no regards to the user.  The funny thing about this technique is search engines understand category relations.  In other words, search engines understand that if the primary navigation is “Women’s Wakeboard Shop,” all links placed underneath are related to “Women’s” and do not need to contain “Women’s.”  This technique also makes it harder for a user to browse the site, which is something a search engine, like Google, may counter with this new “over optimization” penalty.

4. Keyword Stuffing

One may say, “Wow… keyword stuffing?  People really do that?  Isn’t that sooooo 1999?  …Even more importantly, it works?”  Yes, people still do it on the sly, and it seems to still help websites (coupled with other optimization tricks) rank in the Top 30 to this day.

For example the footer on this Northern Virginia/DC Metro Web Design site lists out top targeted keywords.  While it’s not entirely hidden and done in a classy way, these are the kinds of things the “over optimization” algorithm may intend to target:

5. Keyword Filled Title and Meta Tags

Another issue related to “keyword stuffing” as noted above, is injecting a long line of keywords into title and meta description tags.  Title tags should always be limited to include just one primary keyword and 2-3 supporting keywords when relevant.  Titles should look natural to entice the searcher and meta descriptions should be written to promote a call to action while occasionally including keywords.  Since search engines want all aspects of a site intended for a user and not the search engine, the new Google algorithm may begin to identify when too many words are stuffed into a title or meta description and deplete the value of such a site.

The example below attempts to target every “Green Tea” related keyword into the Title and Description.

6. External Linking

Historically speaking, Google has come down hard on individually high-profiled cases noted in sources such as the NY Times about abusing external link algorithm.  Such examples include JC Penny’s paid link buying or discounts offered by Overstock.com in exchange for a link.  Smaller businesses have managed to shield themselves in the fact they don’t have the amount of budget or customer leverage to drastically increase links to the scope of JCPenny or aren’t big enough to gain the spotlight for shady schemes.  However, Google’s new “over optimization” algorithm may be coming to get these smaller players in the upcoming months.

The thing that has always baffled me is how the all-mighty stock-splitting Google has enough money to investigate these notorious link-buying companies and their web networks, but has clearly never taken action to detect them and wreak havoc.

For example, many websites and their targeted backlink anchor text are featured under a WordPress blogroll and other similar side bar of links:

What Would Wagger Do?

While Wagger Designs believes SEO is a core component of web design, we believe it’s most important every website we build is intended for the end user.  While it’s important to get users to your site, it’s even more important not to forget that your users are your customers.  After all, search engines aren’t going to pay your rent.

But how?  You can render static images or use tools like sIFR or FLIR to generate surrogate font renderings for you, but these each have their own drawbacks.

Assuming that you have a proper license or permission to embed your chosen fonts on the web (and please ensure that you do!) then the @font-face generator at Font Squirrel may be just what you need.

How It Works

Using the font-face CSS declaration, Fontspring has developed a cross-browser friendly syntax to nudge the requesting user’s browser into downloading and applying the proper font file format to the page where it’s needed.

In a nutshell (no pun intended), Font Squirrel’s generator takes a TTF, OTF, or PFB font file and generates every format necessary to support IE5+, Firefox 3.5+, Safari 3.1+, Chrome 6+, Opera 10+, and iOS 1+.

Trying It Out

Once you’ve uploaded your font files and chosen options (or ignored them — the generator works fantastically well on “Easy”), you are provided with a web kit download that contains the file formats, a CSS file, and a sample page for each uploaded font.  Opening the sample page in various browsers will show you the results before you commit to grafting the solution into your website.

Getting the Fonts Installed

When you’re ready, upload the generated font files into the same directory as the site’s CSS file.  Next, copy the contents of the web kit’s CSS file into that of your site.

It’s done!  You can now use the fonts within your site by way of the font-family declaration.  Just use the same font-family values referenced in the @font-face block and you’re off and running.

Alternatively…

When in doubt over the licensing of any given font, Font Squirrel provides a slew of free commercial-use font kits, and Fontspring (the creators of Font Squirrel) sell an even wider range of OpenType fonts which are explicitly licensed for use with this method.

Happy fonting!

Most analytics reports for ecommerce sites include general metrics such as traffic, orders and revenue to provide a bird’s eye view of traffic and associated key performance indicators. That’s great, for an executive.  But what about gaining deeper insight to provide a more informing strategy for mid-level managers?  Which products and their categories drive the greatest AOV and Revenue per Visit?  These are some of the most important  when making an informed SEO strategy for the future.  The answer, of course to all of this, lies in keyword -or in most ecommerce, product-categorization.

Mapping Out Your Categories

Although most categorization are customized according to the types of products within your offering, there are 3 major overarching categories applicable for all ecommerce categorization:

Brand Breakdown & Credit

 Odds are your site is already optimized to rank #1 for general branded keywords.  But perhaps multiple affiliate sites or third party retailers are optimized to rank well for keywords related to your brand’s product.  A great way to illustrate your SEO program is working to the fullest is to create a “Brand Secondary” category.  All product based keywords associated with your brand should be placed under the “secondary” category.  This will ensure you’re receiving credit for optimizing all product related keywords.

The example below illustrates the Brand vs. Brand Secondary breakdown:

Unbranded Breakdown:

A great starting point when determining unbranded ecommerce categorization is to analyze your website’s primary and sub-navigation.  Let’s take a look at Zappos.com’s use of unbranded categorization within its navigation:

 Here, the major product category we’re analyzing is Shoes  which is highlighted in light blue portion of the navigation.  The segments -or secondary categories- are “men’s” “women’s” “girls’” and “boys.”

Although your site’s main navigation and sub-navigation may help you organize your keyword clutter, there is always more than one way to customize hierarchy.  It is always important to ask yourself questions like: “Is it more important to breakdown first by gender and age or instead by product type?”  When in doubt, let your keyword volume and/or your paid search program dictate the primary category.

In the Zappos example, the category hierarchy can be sorted in multiple ways:

Upon analyzing the navigation on Zappos.com, the determined Product Category is Shoes and the segments are broken down by age/gender:

The Unidentified Bucket

 The unidentified bucket is all of the junk we can’t clearly determine its net worth.  It could have been a branded query, but it could have also been an unbranded query.  Typically, major typos/misspellings, foreign characters and the famous “Keyword Unavailable” all fall into this bucket.

Using Paid Search for Categorization

 Paid search tends to break down keywords in a much similar fashion through the use of Campaigns and Ad Groups.  In order to maintain campaign congruency, it is ideal to align your categories with your company’s Paid Search structure (or vice versa).   This provides your ecommerce search program to easily make an apples-to-apples comparison when sharing insights and strategies.

Key Metrics

 So you’ve finally found a home for all of your keywords.  What next?   It’s important to evaluate your keywords on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis.  Ask yourself the important questions to inform future keyword strategy and advertising campaigns such as:

• What product categories are driving me the greatest Average Order Value and Revenue per Visit?
• Which keywords aren’t converting in these categories and how can I get them to convert?
• Which categories encounter a seasonal trend while others remain unchanged all year?

The most concerning aspect of both of these bills is that our country’s decision makers stand behind SOPA and PROTECT IP as written to champion American interests and intellectual property ad, in turn, protect the American entrepreneurial spirit, our jobs, and our financial security.

In fact, both bills will ultimately fail to accomplish the intended goals and are, in the process, set to squash many of the freedoms we take for granted from a free-flowing Internet.

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

“To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.” – H.R.3261

What It Does:

This  bill would allow copyright holders and the Department of Justice to seek legal action against websites accused of facilitating copyright infringement, and to force service providers to block offending sites; this would prevent gateway services, such as Google Checkout or Paypal, from doing business with such sites and would even bar search engines from simply linking to an offending website.   For streaming content, such as YouTube, Vimeo, or a self-published video blog, unauthorized streaming of any copyrighted materials would be a crime backed by up to 5 years in prison after 10 incidents of streaming copyrighted music or video within a six month period.

PROTECT IP Act

“Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011” – S.968

What It Does:

As the bill states:  “An service provider of an information location tool shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, to– (i) remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the order; or (ii) not serve a hypertext link to such Internet site.”   Additionally, the information location tool, which is largely refers to Search Engines but can refer to any site, must delete all hyperlinks to the offending “Internet site.”  The net effect is that, without an up front burden of proof, Internet sites can be censored until such time as their names are cleared, no matter how long that takes, and without remedy if falsely accused and later proven innocent.

What Does All This Mean?

The summation of both of these bills is an attempt to control the flow of information on the Internet under the guise of protecting the American Dream from “rogue websites,” plagiarizers, and other intellectual property thieves.  As an organization that both uses the Internet to share materials that our are own intellectual property and that also helps other organizations share their own intellectual property, we agree with the masses that taking anything that doesn’t belong to you without any attribution or retribution is reprehensible behavior.

The language of both of these laws, however, invites other consequences.  Consider for a moment that if either of these laws had been in effect a decade ago, the landscape of today’s Internet would be very different indeed.  For starters, we would not have YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Etsy, Ebay, Dropbox, Twitter, Twillio, Vimeo, Tumbler, Pinterest, Can.vas, or a good number of open source software projects.

What Can I Do?

That’s a fantastic question!  Tell the House and Senate that you are exercising your right as an American citizen and say:

• You do not support restrictions upon the entrepreneurial spirit this country has been built on
• Enforcement of laws in this country should always require due process
• The United States of America is not China, and you do not support a Great Firewall of America
• That Internet Blacklist Legislation would drive jobs away from this country and will not be tolerated here

Tell Them Now!

Say NO! to SOPA by contacting your House Representative: http://www.house.gov/

Say NO! to PROTECT IP by contacting your Senate Representative: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Contact SOPA Supporters directly: http://gizmodo.com/5870241/presented-without-comment-every-single-company-supporting-sopa-the-awful-internet-censorship-law

With that said, sometimes the level of data being compared is not the same across the tables and duplicate records cannot be avoided.  Without opening the Pandora’s box of whether or not properly organized data warehouses should ever result in a situation where duplicate records can be queried, let’s talk about what to do when it does happen.  There are two ways to address this: the Easy, Not-Complicated way and the Not-Easy, Complicated way.  Unfortunately, the Easy, Not-Complicated solution usually doesn’t do the trick unless there are actually duplicate records in the source system. Even-though this is rarely the case, let’s cover that one first — just in case.

The Easy, Not-Complicated Solution

In the Query section, the right-click menu for the Request line offers the Properties menu item as shown below:

Once opened, the Properties dialog allows report authors to apply query governance limits or further modify the properties of the query using the interface shown below:

As seen in the screenshot, the “Return Unique Rows” option has already been checked, because checking this box is The Easy, Non-Complicated way of tackling this problem.  When this box is checked, the SQL statement sent to the source system is modified from a Select statement to a Select Distinct statement.  The addition of the Distinct ensures that only one row of each unique combination is presented in the Results section.

This solution is so easy that it’s a serious shame when people go down the Not-Easy, Complicated path when this could have worked.  I always try this first… even when I know it won’t work, just because it’s so quick.

 The Not-Easy, Complicated Solution

If you have vetted your query, you will likely have to walk through down this path.  For clarity’s sake, the solution itself is not specifically hard, it is just that there are a lot of little things that can be easily forgotten which would make this solution fail.

To follow along with this tutorial, use the sample.oce connection that is automatically installed with the Interactive Reporting Studio Client.

For starters, we need to create a situation where duplicate records are occurring that cannot be resolved with a Select Distinct statement.  This usually happens when two level-zero tables are joined on a level-zero key and higher-level items are requested from both tables where multiple sets of matched records exist but no facts, which could be summed, are queried.  Since the sample database has keys that are laid out well, we’ll artificially create this situation by joining the Wine and Wine Sales tables using a simple equal join on Vintage from Wine and Year from Wine Sales, instead of joining on Wine Id.  Add Winery, Vintage, and Grape from the Wine table and Region from the Wine Sales table to the Request line as shown below:

When processed, the Results section will display duplicate rows for each item.  As seen in the below screenshot, I’ve set the number masking on Vintage to display without the comma for presentation purposes, but there is no requirement that this needs to be done.

With duplicate rows in place in the Results section, lets get on with it.  The Not-Easy, Complicated solution requires the following components which will be discussed in-depth as we go:

• Results Section Sort
• Computed Item Key
• Computed Item Using Next or Prior
• Local Filter on the New Table Section

The Results Section Sort

The Next and Prior functions assess the row before and the row after the current row which means the rows need to be properly sorted so that all duplicate rows are grouped together.  In the context of our example, the sorts required to group our duplicate rows together are ascending sorts on Vintage, Winery, Region, and Grape.  Drag the columns from the Results section to the Sort line to apply the required sort as shown in the screenshot below:

Computed Item Key

To prepare for the use of the Next or Prior function, an item key needs to be created using the same logic as a hash key (for you database people) so that we can be certain that we are assessing a truly unique row.   Sometimes this key is a simple as concatenating two columns in the same row; other times, such as in our example, it is really better to combine several columns to ensure a truly unique identifier for each row group.  To be super-duper certain, lets create a Computed Item key that is a concatenation of all of the items in the sort, in the order they appear. Add a Computed Item to the Results section by selecting “Add Computed Item” from the right-click menu as shown in the screenshot below:

With the dialog for the Computed Item opened, update the Name property to “Row Key” and add the following code to the Computed Item Script Editor to concatenate the required columns into a single key:

Vintage + Winery + Region + Grape

When the code as been added, click OK to close the Computed Item dialog box and add the key as a column in the Results section.  With the addition of your newly created Row Key, the Results section should resemble the below screenshot:

Computed Item Using Next or Prior

The Next and Prior functions actually do what one might guess they would based on their names:  Next assesses the value in the next row for a defined column, Prior assesses the column’s value in the prior row.  To remove duplicate rows,  either of the Next or Prior functions can be used, depending on if you are a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty kind of person.   As an optimistic, forward thinker, I like the Next function.  However, since I am also a realist, I’ll show you the code for both and you can pick your own favorite, as the difference between the two is really the location of the flag for your unique row.   With the Next function, the last row of a group will be marked unique; conversely, with the Prior function, the first row of a group will be marked unique. This will make more sense if you try it both ways and see for yourself.

For both options, the process is the same, with only minor differences in the code.  To start, add another Computed Item to the screen and call it “Duplicate Flag.”  Using either Next or Prior, we will populate a value of 1 in all duplicate rows and unique rows will be unpopulated at null.   In a future step, we are going to use this flag to filter out any row that is equal to 1.

Using the Next function requires the following code to be entered in the Script Editor of the Computed Item:

if (Next ( Row_Key ) == Row_Key) {1}

This code is asking Interactive Reporting to perform the business logic equivalent of “If the value in the Row_Key column in the next row is equal to the value of the Row_Key column in this row, the value to display in the Duplicate Flag column is 1.”  When the Next function is applied on this results set, the first 16 rows have a value of 1 in the Duplicate Flag column before a unique row is flagged in the 17th row as shown in the following screenshot:

Using the Prior function instead requires the following code to be entered in the Script Editor of the Computed Item:

if (Prior ( Row_Key ) == Row_Key) {1}

This code is asking Interactive Reporting to perform the business logic equivalent of “If the value in the Row_Key column in the prior row is equal to the value of the Row_Key column in this row, the value to display in the Duplicate Flag column is 1.”  When the Prior function is employed on this results set, the first row in the Duplicate Flag column is flagged as a unique row as shown in the following screenshot:

Did you see how those paths are so similar that I copied and pasted the Prior solution with only minor modifications?  Now you know how to use both. Moving forward, pick whichever you’d like, because the remainder of the solution continues on to be the same for both.

Local Filter on the New Table Section

Something that frustrated me early on that made perfect sense once explained was the fact that the Next and Prior functions are members of an elite group of functions that — when used in a Computed Item — prevent that Computed Item from being sorted or filtered.  Because of this elitist attitude, we need to add another Table Section so that the data can be limited by filtering on the Duplicate Flag Computed Item column.  Add a new Table section using the Insert menu on the Menu Bar as shown below:

Add the Vintage, Winery, Region, and Grapes columns to the newly added Table section so the data is displayed.  Drag the Duplicate Flag column from the Elements Pane to the Filter line to open the Filter dialog.  When properly configured, the filter should look like the below screenshot:

The business logic for the above filter translates to “If the value in Duplicate Flag is not equal to 1, include that row in this table even if the value is Null.”  This ensures only unique rows (which now have a Null value in the Duplicate Flag column) are shown in this table.  Click OK to close the Filter dialog and apply the filter.

Ta-Da! We did it!

This guide is unique in that it is the first openly available resource that walks the reader through the steps required to grow a simple dashboard into a complex, enterprise-level Business Intelligence solution.   Users already versed in Oracle Hyperion Interactive Reporting and armed with basic JavaScript knowledge will learn how Interactive Reporting’s uniquely powerful report-centric model can be structured to scale away from the maintenance nightmares traditionally emerging from complex enterprise-level environments by implementation of the Cascading Code Repository (CCR).  The concept of the CCR allows JavaScript, which traditionally is embedded in the Interactive Reporting document, to be be extracted and stored externally so that developers can maintain scripts across the enterprise without managing the individual documents.

I’m very excited about the new life a guide like this can introduce to the loyal Interactive Reporting community. I hope that the ideas Ed and I have laid out in this guide inspire experimentation with this incredible Business Intelligence tool and encourage current users to rethink BI and the role Interactive Reporting plays in it.

If you are not sure if this guide is right for you, Chapter 3, which discusses creating a code-free custom Dashboard section in Interactive Reporting, is available free-of-charge and is the starting point for several additional chapters which build, each upon the last, to present layers of customization depth for Dashboard Graphics and Controls.

This guide is offered in eBook format form Packt Publishing, Kindle format from Amazon.com, and in print from both Packt and Amazon.  At $18.14US, the Amazon Kindle version is a steal — making it a must-have for anyone working with Oracle Hyperion Interactive Reporting.  For those of you starting out or who otherwise do not have the IR Studio client installed, check out Emily’s entry on how to install the Interactive Reporting Studio client and follow along with the book.

Every once and a while, someone comes along and does something, like deleting internet postings, that reminds the world of the internet’s golden rule: All posts are final.  Today that someone is PR Paul.  While Paul and his associates are in full “damage control mode” — hopping twitter accounts and scrubbing tweets, site content, and other social sites — the documentation of these actions through #OceanMarketing on Twitter, Penny Arcade, The Examiner, and Forbes are proving to be Paul’s ultimate folly.  One thing Paul has done well is to remind folks that once something is on the Net, it has made an imprint that extends far beyond any single person’s reach.

As he and his buddies hop around social sites trying to fix a situation that will probably fad itself out over a the next few weeks, I think PR Paul could benefit from a few good books that have come across my desk in the last few years:

• I Love You More Than My Dog
• The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself
• Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (And Other Social Networks)

For everyone else, including us at Wagger, this is a cautionary tale about the importance of researching any company representing you. Ask for references and ask to see the work they’ve done.  If they are a little green, or just starting out, they should admit it outright.  And, as a point of advice, be very suspicious if another organization wants full control of your business email, Twitter, and other public-facing elements without your oversight — especially if the owner comes off as a street thug masquerading as a self-proclaimed “Marketing Professional”.

After reading recently that IE is finally wearing out its welcome (except in government and huge companies), it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember precisely when I had started using Chrome as my primary frontend debugger, but that it is measured in months.

Why would someone use Chrome over IE or Firebug? Well, here are the things that I like:

Always Feels Light and Fast

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but Chrome doesn’t seem to suffer from the same bog-down bloat that Firefox does over the course of a debugging session.  New tabs and windows spring open, and script debugging is snappy.   I have to close a crashed tab occasionally, but I’d rather have that happen than experience debugger lag any day of the week.

Editing is Intuitive

Altering the DOM or CSS in-place just feels natural.  Tab orders make sense and do what I expect; adding or changing properties, styles, or elements is a breeze.

Help is Just a ? Away

Typing a question mark anywhere in the debugger presents a modal dialog with common key commands for each section.  It’s not a killer feature, but it’s more convenient than having to drill into a Help menu to remember how to increment a value by 100.

Live Tutorials in the Documentation

The documentation for Chrome Developer Tools is specifically designed for you to pop open your debugger and walk through the functionality.  This is a great way to learn-by-doing, which helps retention several times over.

Revision History!

This is, by far, my favorite new(ish) feature.  After making changes to JS or CSS in the Elements tab, switch over to the Resources tab and drill down to the file.  Expand the arrow, and you’re presented with a list of revisions for the entire session that you’ve been fiddling.  You can see what has changed in each version highlighted, and ultimately, opt to save off changes or revert if something goes awry.

Drag-and-Drop DOM

Ok, I’ll admit this is more of an oddity than anything else, especially since the revision history doesn’t extend to the HTML markup of a page.  But maybe it’s useful for rapid prototyping?  In the Elements tab you can literally drag elements around on in the DOM where you see fit.  Want to see what would happen if you switched the positions of two divs?  You can do that now!

But Wait, There’s More!

Not enough? There’s also remote debugging and the ability to pretty print minified scripts, with more features added regularly.  Check out this presentation earlier in the year from gurus Paul Irish and Pavel Feldman, and happy hacking!