Creating and Sharing a Spreadsheet-based DSS

In in this video  you will see how to create an analytical spreadsheet with parameters (inflation in this case) and then observe changes in your model based on formulas when the parameters change (like changes in inflation, price, quantities of sold goods, etc.).

MIS and DSS

The main goal of MIS is in allowing you to see (like in those sci-fi movies) the entities of the real world as they really are in all their properties, changing views, angles and focuses as you need to inspect some features closer and some from a bigger perspective. For example, when you walk through the College you do not see much beyond the walls, offices, and posters. Once you access the College MIS – you immediately see (supposedly) all involved entities and processes in their normal activities and deviations that have to be noticed and corrected. Augmented reality (AR) allows you to combine physical vision with MIS orientation (this is where the research on MIS and AR will be appropriate!). 
  Decision Support Systems serve not as much as vision enhancers but as enhancers of your abilities of making decisions based on the vision. Human abilities to juggle numbers and keep various relationships among multiple parameters in mind are severely limited. Here come DSS. They allow you to use such tools as scenarios (when you change some assumptions and see what will happen to ALL parts you are interested in by providing formulas of the corresponding relationships), optimization (when the system quickly finds for you the best decision among many possible), and many others. Armed with such tools (especially now available in mobile formats) you become super beings (cyborgs, if you wish, as part human and part systems) far more advanced in your mental abilities than those who doesn’t use special supporting systems.
  I, actually, run a special course fully dedicated to DSS where students learn the decision theory (on how to always make best decisions in all situations) as well as how to arm yourselves with simple (and more advanced) DSS dramatically enhancing your decision-making abilities and outcomes in all your activities. Recently one student emailed me that he got a job because of this knowledge. You can use this power throughout all your life experiences no matter what you do and where you work. Although many industrial systems of this kind are very expensive, there are some simple tools (like spreadsheets in advanced forms of use) that already upgrade your abilities significantly. Some of them we are learning in this course. This is kung fu of modern life. The more work and understanding efforts of the material of this week you apply – the more you will get out of it. This is the way to compete with AI allowing the mankind to stay relevant.

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More About Cloud Services

Here I want to emphasize that not only IS are also systems with their general properties, but they also make systems out of non-systems (or poorly developed systems with insufficient feedbacks and concerted collaboration among its parts by connecting entities and processes together in a new mutually beneficial way. This is a new power of business growth: not by using more resources, but including more stuff in the orbit of their networks.

The reason why we use quite a few software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools in this course is that many of them are free, easy to use, and are very powerful mechanisms of connecting things, processes, and people over the Internet. They are the modern resources of organizational and individual power. Simple hardware, like smartphones and publically available software services can allow individuals to have full office support on the run (go mobile, like you can do with this course). Mafia understood the benefits of being connected long ago :)

Finding a spreadsheet service on Zoho

If there is a problem with your spreadsheet embedding from Google Drive (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets), or if you just want to try a similar tool from Zoho see below how to find it on zoho.com.
Please understand that a spreadsheet is NOT a database table, although might look somewhat similar. Doing it in Zoho is just another option for you versus doing it in Google Drive. You do not need to do both (unless you want to show a better effort in learning different tools).

alternatively, you can go to https://docs.zoho.com/sheet/new ,

or choose Create, Spreadsheet from https://docs.zoho.com/

Embedding the Google Spreadsheet into your blog

At this point, it should be clear that your blog is not just a blog but a distribution carrier for your information services and communication functions. It is a small information system. Here you can control access to various subsystems on your blog (like analytical spreadsheet services or database selections - another topic of the final week). Each of such data services can allow access to information for different customers or departments since there could be many spreadsheets and database tables for various data sources and functional services: HR, accounting, R&D, and many other projects/functions. More than that. You can allow for each data service embedded into your blog (spreadsheet, database, RSS links and many others) to have other team members to have access not only for reading but for editing, thus supporting collaboration in project teams.


Important to note that Google Drive is a cloud-based service (similar to Zoho) which means that all hardware, availability, and scalability headaches are resolved without you having an IT department doing this job. If one computer or connection go down - they automatically switch to other resources. If your delivery time to the client on another continent is too big - they will use resources closer to that country thus minimizing the connection time. If the number of your customers using your small IS will suddenly grow dramatically - cloud services will scale automatically to many computers and Internet channels. All these operations would normally require you to create a small company with an IT department just to maintain your blog-based information services. Now with free cloud-based support - you can run your start-up for free. Until... there is a need in more people/agents supporting their local databases and analytical spreadsheet services. Such local resources could be integrated on your blog (you just need the embedding link from them) allowing a big distributed company to view their operations on such integral view as your blog as well as provide the necessary decision-making and information support for your customers. For example sharing orders from other stores in the chain, managing hotel branches, etc .


Of course, there are other means of integrating information subsystems like  creating full-fledged web sites, but for the purpose of the course, this simple bog-based IS could serve as a useful hands-on experience in using the theory of the book and the skills obtained in weekly labs.


So in order to embed your spreadsheet (I assume that you develop it in Google Drive or Docs) into the blog, do the following:

1. Get for your Google Drive spreadsheet the public link (chose Share, Get shareable link and the option "Anyone with the link") for the post in the Spreadsheet forum which might look like:


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aslm8JDe-wu4dGpYMnRQZVE2VFJpbFhGRFJwUnFESVE&usp=sharing&authkey=CJuj58UF


2. Although you can use the Google Docs' mechanism of creating an iframe for embedding into the blogs from File, Publish to the web menu of your sheet, I will additionally show a general method of creating an iframe (an embedding mechanism) by surrounding any shareable link with iframe tags and parameters like shown below (you can copy them from me to surround your link in the iframe). Pay attention to all parts ADDED to the link mentioned above:

<iframe frameborder=0 width='600' height='300' src= 'https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aslm8JDe-wu4dGpYMnRQZVE2VFJpbFhGRFJwUnFESVE&usp=sharing&authkey=CJuj58UF'></iframe>

Here you see that the embedding iframe text INCLUDES the link, which could be found inside for your further use, or be surrounded by the iframe parameters to serve the site/blog embedding.
For the task you can use either Google Docs method of getting an iframe from File, Publish to the web menu of your sheet or use the manual way of creating the iframe from the link manually.

3. Create a new HTML/JavaScript gadget in your blog, give it a name and paste the created iframe there. Move the gadget to the bigger part of your blog (which is usually the left one).


4. You might want to adjust width and height parameters in the iframe by clicking on the edit icon under the embedded gadget on your blog. But note that you can switch sheets and scroll.


Note: sometimes it might not work and sometimes the working embedded spreadsheet stops working. This might be caused by periodic Google's reluctance in allowing embedding. Then do the following:


Use Zoho to recreate the same what you did in Google (create a spreadsheet) and then click Share, Embed and get the iframe!

See examples of embedding from Google Drive (more complicated sheet) and Zoho on this blog

Making db view public

Here I am just repeating my post from my forum comment:

If your zoho window looks different from my previous videos you might follow the pic below on how to make your table view public:

For the url and the code that should be embedded in the blog get the code from the Publish option as shown here (the rest of the instructions are in my blog posts):

DB Task Videos

Since some features of zoho have recently changed I will show in two short videos how to do the zoho db task. Just click on the step-link and go to the shown url:

Step 1. Database and table creation (or the long version: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=CD10511C6AB2BEA!8695&authkey=!AG1ns1AU-arNeZw&ithint=video%2cmp4 )
Step 2. Publishing to the blog and the forum (or the long link version: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=CD10511C6AB2BEA!8697&authkey=!AJXP5JUDLZcYwaI&ithint=video%2cmp4 )

After this task, you should realize what a tremendous industrial power is this knowledge. Some students bring this technology to work and start using immediately. The database or particular tables could be created and maintained by different people or departments. The data could be made visible to only employees, to particular departments, or to the whole planet. Such skill can right there be the foundation of some business when you collect people's data (INPUT), process them (like in your formula column, and even more powerful processing) - PROCESSING, and distribute data as table views or embedded parts of your web sites (like on your blog) - OUTPUT. Seeing the processed total results, the customers can change the input -FEEDBACK - to do a more precise job or task.

DB Task on Zoho

After the table and the formula column  have been created, you have to complete the last part of the task - sharing your table over the Internet! Here you will have two types of sharing: one for the forum link and another is an iframe to be embedded into your blog. Note that the first one is a link, that if you click on - you get to the table. Another one is an iframe that works only if embedded into the HTML gadget in the Blogger.

Here are the sharing steps that might be even easier than the task proposed:

1. Make the view  of your table public (this is important for further sharing):

2. Copy the url that you will post into the Moodle forum and then confirm the public view

3. Select Publish, Embed in Website/Blog to copy the iframe and then paste it into the HTML gadget in Blogger

Since ZOHO periodically modifies its control tools of the reports/databases - please see my replies to students for the latest ways of sharing/publishing your tables. Depending on the version of Zoho the control buttons might look different. But still you have to go to https://www.zoho.com/reports/ to open an account.

For example, there were the following modifications:

Creating a blank database (see the last option on the picture)

Creating a new table inside the newly created database:

Databases

Although a database table might look like a spreadsheet, the capabilities of a database management system (software engine behind the databases) are quite different. For better understanding you might go to the Featured Samples (while on the Home page in your Zoho Reports site) to see that after the initial tables are created and filled with data, the rest of the database consists of various queries (that could be saved for future easy customer use), reports, charts, etc. All other database products, created from the data tables by using simple and effective tools, allow to SEE and ANALYZE a lot of DATA from  MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW, as compared to the relatively small amount in typical spreadsheets.

Well designed and developed (in terms of convenient analysis) databases - is what create added value to the initial data collection often stored in some input “flat” files. Data warehouses (or smaller data marts) are systems enhancing this analytical and decision support function of organizational (and even personal) data.

In my professional capacity, I was often asked by organizations that invested a lot of money into a collection of valuable data – to help them make better use of this information (bang for the invested buck, if you want). This usually results in the development of an information system with a database at its core (this is why they call them “information systems” :)