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Evaluate and Learn Pentaho Business Analytics

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As you explore Pentaho Business Analytics, you will be introduced to the major components, watch videos, work through hands-on examples, and learn about the different features. Go at your own pace. Feel free to dig into the documentation or to contact Pentaho sales support if you have questions.

This section is divided into four parts that will help you get familiar with Business Analytics:

  • Tour the User Console and create your first reports
  • Explore and learn data source basics
  • Learn about Report Designer
  • Discover more about Pentaho Business Analytics

Tour the User Console and Create Your First Reports

The User Console is a web-based design environment where you can analyze data, create interactive reports, dashboard reports, and build integrated dashboards to share business intelligence solutions with others in your organization and on the internet. In addition to its design features, the User Console offers a wide variety of system administration features for configuring the Pentaho Server, maintaining Pentaho licenses, setting up security, managing report scheduling, and tailoring system performance to meet your requirements.

If you have installed the trial download on your laptop or desktop machine, you are ready to get started exploring. If you have the software installed on a server, and want to use your machine to point to it, see Develop Your BA Environment for details.

Table 1. Explore and Learn Pentaho Reporting Capabilities
Lesson  Do This Notes
Tour the User Console
  • Understand the features of the User Console
  • View the sample reports on the Samples tab of the Getting Started section
Create Your First Reports and Dashboards
  • Created and saved an Interactive Report
  • Created and saved an Analysis Report
  • Created and saved a custom Dashboard
Schedule Your Report
  • Scheduled a report to run and email automatically.
  • Received your report through email after the schedule runs.

Explore and Learn Data Source Basics

If you have already worked with the Steel Wheels sample data, and want to learn how to create your own data sources and data models with Pentaho, use the Data Source Wizard. The Data Source Wizard helps you define a data source that contains the data you want to use and guides you through the creation of your evaluation data model for use in creating reports.

After you define a data source, you can make it available to other evaluators so they can create reports and analysis by simply picking the data source from the data source list. Any number of reports can be created using a single data source.

Table 2. Explore and Learn Data Sources Basics
Lesson Do This Notes
Create Your First Data Source
  • Understand how the Pentaho Server and Data Source Wizard work together to create usable data sources and data models.
  • Explore the Data Source Wizard interface.
  • Learn the basics of creating a data source using the Data Source Wizard.
Choose Data Source Types
  • Learn about the different data source types supported by the Data Source Wizard.
We recommend using a CSV data source for evaluation.
Create Your First CSV Data Source
  • Import a CSV data file using the Data Source Wizard.
  • Create the CSV data source.
We recommend creating a report using this new CSV data source, then refining the data model with the Data Source Model Editor as needed.
Refine Your Data Source Model (Optional) Edit your evaluation data source model using the Data Source Model Editor.
Inline Model Editing
  • Learn how to edit your data models while working in Analyzer.
Learn about Streamlined Data Refinery
  • Learn how streamlined data refinery works. 

Learn about Report Designer

Pentaho Report Designer is a report creation tool that you can use by itself, or as part of the Pentaho Suite. It allows professionals to create print-quality reports based on data from virtually any type of data source.

These resources will help you get familiar with the Report Designer interface, and guide you through the creation and publishing of a print-quality report.

Table 3. Explore and Learn about Report Designer
Lesson Do This Notes
Explore the Report Designer Interface
  • Tour the Report Designer interface before you begin building reports.
Report Designer Workflow Overview
  • Look over the work flow concepts for Report Designer.
Create Your First Report
  • Create a report.
  • Add a chart and parameters to your report.
  • View and then publish your report.
Refine the Look of Your Report
  • Explore more advanced features of Report Designer, beginning with report elements.
Add a PDI Data Source
  • Add a PDI data source and use it to create a report in Report Designer.

Discover more about Pentaho Business Analytics

  • Create Analysis, Interactive Reports, and Dashboards provides in-depth details about creating eye-catching business intelligence deliverables for your user community.
  • The Solutions section of our documentation contains a large number of topics on working with the Pentaho Suite. Here you can learn about defining data models, fine-tuning your reports, how to create print-quality reports, or work with Big Data.
  • If you are a system administrator, check out the Configuration and Administration sections. Both have details on configuring and administering your Pentaho Server using the User Console, as well as a section on the variety of things you can do to maintain your server manually.

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