A Smart View survey? Oh yes. Or no. You decide.

A time of surveys

No, not a political one for those of you in the States.  Gah, I have enough of those from the eleventy-billion polling firms in this Great and Glorious country.  A pox upon them.  Yr. Obt. Svt. only goes this far in mentioning politics in his blog but he does wish that said eleventy-billion polling companies would please stop calling his abode.  It’s not like I answer the phone in any case.  And if I did, I’d lie just to confound them.

Having just (gently) savaged the American voting system, is this survey to be assiduously avoided the way many of us don’t answer the telephone?  No, because it addresses one of the key components in Oracle’s EPM technology stack – Smart View.

Smart View! Yes or No?

Is that a fair or even a valid question?  I’m not sure that it is.  After all, it isn’t as though there are many viable alternatives to Smart View except for Applied OLAP’s Dodeca and Dodeca Excel Add-In for Essbase.

Think of this poll as a message to Oracle as the results go to Oracle’s product management team for review.  Continuing the political theme, how you vote is anonymous, just like being at the ballot box so feel free to praise or damn Smart View without fear.

For the record

There are those who claim I am no fan of Smart View.  I will answer that by saying that this poll was my idea.  I like the concept of Smart View – one tool, many providers.  It’s what set Essbase apart in 1992 with its then revolutionary Excel add-in and I very much want Smart View to continue in that tradition.

At the same time no product is perfect.  This is your (and my) chance to let Oracle know what you think of it, what you use, and where you’d like to see the product be available (there is more to life than Excel).

Some of the guilty

Speaking of blame, as always there are many who contributed to this effort.  

• Gary Adashek
• John Booth
• Natalie Delemar
• Tim Tow
• And unnamed (and thus likely quite thankful) Oracle employees

If you don’t vote, don’t complain

Vote, won’t you?  This is your chance to make your opinion heard and it’s a pity not to take advantage of it.

Be seeing you.

Oracle wants you to help make OTN better

Oracle wants your help again

Isn’t it grand being loved?  Or at least being consulted?  I’ll take the latter from a ginormous technology company.  It’s all I’m likely to get in any case.

Why oh why do they want your opinion?  Could it be because you are the customer and they think listening to you is important?  Could be.  :)

Spend any time on OTN?

I’ve spent a few hours of my life over on the Essbase forum.  It’s a great place to get information about all things Oracle EPM.  I hear they have a few other products as well…what is this Cee-Kew-Eel they speak of?

In any case, Oracle are now asking you, oh Cameron’s-Blog-For-Essbase-Hackers readership (I lurv each and every one of you, really I do), and everyone else (that number is rather larger than the audience for this blog) to weigh in how to improve the OTN forum experience as part of an OTN upgrade in 2012.

The categories

OTN (and of course Oracle) want to know:

1. What forums improvements are you hoping for out of this project?
2. How frequently do you login to Oracle Forums (i.e. to participate, not just read?)
3. Rate your satisfaction with the following data migration approaches (live posts back to 2001, all posts to 2001 with only more recent posts live, partial migration back to 2004 with only more recent posts live)
4. How many years of live data would you expect to have?
5. How would you rate the importance of migrating forums content that is already archived and read-only today?

Don’t just read about it here, go ahead and vote

Five simple questions and how you answer them will have an impact on what Oracle does with OTN?  Like I wrote earlier, isn’t consultation awesome?  Don’t just read about here, fill out that survey.  I have.

It's survey time

Introduction

The prelude to summer must be survey time in Oracleland as there seems to be a bumper crop of them at the moment.  

Instead of reading my usual caffeine-fueled hallucinatory gibberish, instead spend some of your precious free  time with three worthy surveys that are striving to make the tools we work with better.  How can we not take them?  Unless you like products that don’t get better.  Your choice.

Be quick though, these surveys have expiration dates, some of them are coming up quite soon.

The BI Survey 10:  The Customer Verdict

I hope that BARC (Business Applications Research Center) doesn’t have a problem with me cribbing from their survey launch page – hey guys, I’m trying to drive traffic to you.  <grin>  

What is the purpose of the survey?

BARC's annual survey gathers input from a large number of organizations to better understand their buying decisions, their implementation cycles and the business benefits achieved.

Who is BARC?

BARC (Business Application Research Center) is a leading independent software industry analyst specializing in Data Management and Business Intelligence. For more information on BARC please visit the BARC Homepageand www.BI-Verdict.com.

And they are vendor-neutral

The BI Survey has always adopted a vendor-independent stance. While vendors assist by inviting users to participate in the Survey, Business Application Research Center (BARC) - the publisher - does not accept vendor sponsorship of the Survey, and the results are analyzed and published without any vendor involvement.

Who should take the survey?

Business and technical users, as well as vendors and consultants, are all welcome to participate. If you are answering as a consultant, please answer the questions (including the demographic questions) from your client's perspective; we will ask you separately about your own firm.

Why should you take the survey?

As a participant, you will:

• Receive a summary of the results from the full survey
• Be entered into a draw to win one of ten $50 Amazon vouchers
• Ensure that your experiences are included in the final analyses

Also, I am told that the survey is short on Essbase, BI Enterprise Edition Plus, and BI Standard Edition.  BI?  What’s that?  Essbase?  That I (and we) know.  Go get ‘em.

When does the survey end?

This survey ends 18 June 2011.

Finally, how do you take the survey?

Go right to the ODTUG launch page here or directly to the BARC survey.

Oracle BI User Survey

Again, I will steal in order to drive business.

What is the purpose of the survey?

The Oracle Business Intelligence User Experience (BIUX) Team is committed to using customer feedback to continuously improve our BI products.

We would like to invite you to participate in our first large-scale BI user survey to inform us about your main job responsibilities, technical background, tool usage, and work environment.

Who should take the survey?

Our goal is to reach as many users as possible, so we would also like to ask you to help us spread the word by forwarding the survey link to other BI users in your company/institution. They can range from developers to business end users.

When does the survey end?

Soon, really soon – 31 May 2011.  There’s still time, but not much.
^^^This has been extended till 8 June 2011. 

How do you take the survey?

To access the survey, please click on the unique URL below.

http://www.oraclesurveys.com/se.ashx?s=705E3EFC3D7B563A

Or you can access this OTN post to read the original request.

And one I already talked about

You can read about it right here:  What the heck is the Q?  

I see that they fixed the typo and actually name the survey.  Bummer.  I really enjoyed the mystery but I can appreciate that it’s probably better to list out the name of the survey.  

So get going

This is your chance to have your voice heard.  Unless you are an International Man of Mystery and want everyone to be in the dark as to your true EPM desires and needs, you must participate in the surveys to have your voice heard.