Interesting way to present data? Suggestions Suggestions?

[Yennie]

Hi all,

I work for a general motor insurance company and currently using SAS 9.2 and Eguide 4 to build a tool that allows my managers and workmates to monitor the number of motorbikes sold on certain dates, the type of sales channels that make profit for the company, graphs to show the trend of claims frequency in the last twelve months etc etc...

Writting the SAS code is easy for me and all completed, however I am not a creative person so I am kind of stuck in presenting the data. My manager is wanting me to output the graphs and tables in a html so that every month they can just click on the different headings to access the graphs and tables. At the moment, my html contains one full page long of boring graphs and numbers. And my manager think it's too much for the eye!

So for now, I am hoping that someone can give me some interesting ways to present my data in terms of making this monitoring tool more interesting, user friendly and less boring?

Any suggestions? Suggestions? Pleaseee....

Thanks heaps people!

Yennie

[DanH_sas]

Hey Yennie,

Here are a couple of ideas for you to consider:

1) Use the CONTENTS option on the ODS HTML statement to generate a table of contents for your report. That way, they do not have to scroll through the whole HTML file to find what they want.

2) If you generate a group of graphs that are related to one another, consider paneling them instead of sequentially streaming them in the HTML file. With SAS 9.2, you have several options for paneling graphs in HTML:
a) Use the HTMLPANEL tagset
b) Use the layout capabilities of the ODS GRAPHICS system
c) Use ODS LAYOUT (pre-production)
d) PROC GREPLAY

3) Consider breaking the report into multiple HTML files that are referenced from a report "Main Page". That way, the amount of content in each file is not so overwhelming.

Just a few thoughts.

Thanks!
Dan

[Cynthia_sas]

Hi:
There are some very good dashboard type examples at this site-- they mostly use ANNOTATE and SAS/GRAPH "G" procedures:
http://robslink.com/SAS/dashboards/aaaindex.htm

cynthia

[Bill]

you might want to avail yourself of books written by Stephen Few ...

[Yennie]

Hey people!

thank you so much for the suggestions!!

I'm working on it now and will let you guys know how I go...

thanks heaps

cheers