MicroStrategy Mobile Design and Administration Guide

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Designing Reports and Documents for iOS and Android Devices Mobile Design and Administration Guide
Best practices while planning reports and documents
• For documents that will be displayed on phones, outline how users will
navigate them before creating them. Because screen space is limited on
mobile phones, content that could be displayed in a single dashboard in
MicroStrategy Web may need to be divided among multiple documents
when displayed on the device. There are many ways to divide existing
reports and documents, as well as many ways a user can navigate between
the resulting documents. Prior to developing a document, it is useful to
diagram the documents and links that will need to be created. This allows
you to identify:
The order in which documents must be built. Links must be created
after the document they target has already been created.
Where duplicate functionality exists. If two documents display
different data with the same formatting, you may be able to create one
document, duplicate it, and change the datasets to save development
time.
The datasets that are needed. One dataset can frequently supply data
to multiple documents, which can speed up development and reduce
cache sizes on the Intelligence Server.
• Create your documents using fonts that are available on the device you
are designing for.
• Ensure that the document displays correctly on the mobile device by
defining the display properties, available in the Properties dialog box.
These properties include optimizing the layout for display on a device,
and whether or not the page-by bar and re-prompt icon are displayed. For
descriptions of these properties, see Creating documents for display on
mobile devices, page 8.
• To allow users to write data to the data warehouse using a mobile device,
create documents that use Transaction Services. You must have the
Transaction Services product to use this feature.
For an introduction to Transaction Services, and instructions to create
Transaction Services reports, see the MicroStrategy Advanced Reporting
Guide. For instructions to create Transaction Services-enabled
documents, see the Document Creation Guide.
• Consider the size of the device’s screen when building your reports.
Although users can scroll through data, reports with fewer metrics
improve performance, and are usually easier to read. In addition, take
advantage of the larger screen size available on tablet devices.
4 Best practices for designing reports and documents for viewing on mobile devices © 2012 MicroStrategy, Inc.