What gaps in the market are most lucrative? Which products will ensure our success over the next few years? Data visualization such as dashboards can help to find the answers to these questions but they mostly have to be created by developers. At Pentaho Community Meeting, Nuno Pereira will present Layout Editor, a tool that enables business users to create their analyses and dashboards without needing the help from the IT department.
Nuno, who are you?
I am a Data Analytics and IoT Senior Consultant at Hitachi Vantara, based in Portugal. I’ve joined the company in April 2016 when it was still Pentaho. I’ve started my professional career as a software developer in a small Portuguese company, delivering on-demand solutions. In Hitachi Vantara, I’m part of the Portuguese Services Team where we deliver end to end solutions on top of Pentaho. Our team is known to be specialized in CTools and frontend solutions, although due to our versatility we can cover all Pentaho functionalities.
I’m married and have 2 girls with 12 and 9 years old. I mostly enjoy travelling with my family and in my free times I like to trail running, surfing and reading.
What connects you to Pentaho?
As mentioned previously, I’m part of Pentaho since 2016. Immediately, I’ve identified myself with the team and the spirit of the company. Even after the acquisition from Hitachi, the team spirit, the team cooperation is still present nowadays along with the value that the company gives to its resources. One of the things that most motivates me in the Services Team is the opportunity to build solutions for different businesses and markets dealing with different problems that the customer can´t solve or doesn’t have a solution to it. Supported with such a complete tool like Pentaho, our team and knowledge is able to deliver the correct solution leading the customer to success.
What will your talk be about?
My presentation will be about what we internally call the Layout Editor. Built on top of a customer use case, I’ve developed a plugin that gives the user the ability to build CTools dashboards in a simple way. The added value is that any Pentaho user, even without technical skills, is able to build pixel-perfect dashboards.
Nowadays, business users have a more comprehensive knowledge about the tools and technologies that they use. From our experience delivering solutions we can assure that giving the business user the ability and flexibility to manage their visualizations will add value, knowledge and new skills to the dynamic on their daily work.
Tableau has become very popular for endusers. Where do you see the benefits of Ctools?
The added value of CTools is above of all, the level of customization. You’re able to use CTools from two different perspectives: Components Out of the Box to create your pixel perfect dashboard where you just limit yourself to choose the components, set a placeholders and data sources, save and you have a dashboard.
If you are technically skilled and want to explore the potentialities of CTools, you’re just free to use your imagination. CTools allows you drilling down your data from a component, navigation between components or other dashboards, interaction between components – components reacting to other components, filter data, export data, etc.
From Pentaho 7.1 forward a new concept of visualization was introduced in the product which is the VIZ API (Visualization API). VIZ API provides you with the possibility to visualize data across the entire Pentaho Suite including CTools allowing you to create a custom visualization (e.g. SVG file) in a way that it suits your business. A simple use case can be an analysis on top of the occupancy rates for meeting rooms. The best way to have this analysis is to have a map of the meeting rooms and have the KPI’s on top of each room. VIZ API allows you to do that and integrate the visualization across all Pentaho.
What do you expect from PCM?
This is my second presence in PCM and my first time presenting in the event. My first PCM was a surprise in all senses. I had the chance to know people that are as much involved in Pentaho as I am, sharing experiences, either professional and personal, all of this in a relaxed and informal environment. That’s the spirit of community which I would like to see held for many years.
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