Announcing the new DocRead 365 Analytics Module

We are thrilled to announce the release of our brand-new DocRead Analytics Module add-on! This powerful new feature gives our DocRead 365 customers the ability to create their own employee compliance reports using Power BI, adding a level of flexibility and customisation that many of our customers have been asking for.

Out of the box, DocRead already provides a real-time dashboard that offers a high-level overview of an organization's employee compliance status. This dashboard is great for quick insights but also allows administrators to drill down into specific details such as documents, users, groups, or libraries to get a more granular view of compliance. While this built-in reporting is valuable, we recognize that not every organization has the same reporting needs. Some customers require more in-depth, customizable reporting capabilities to meet their unique compliance requirements.

This is exactly why we built the DocRead Analytics Module.

Some of the key benefits of the DocRead 365 Analytics module:

Created with performance in mind:

The new module goes beyond just adding a few extra reports. It creates a completely separate analytical data store for each customer. This data store can be queried and reported on independently of DocRead’s transactional database, meaning there’s no impact on the performance of the day-to-day use of DocRead. This separation ensures that all compliance data is readily available for deep analysis without affecting the regular workflow within the organisation.

Quick Start with Pre-Built Power BI Templates

To help our customers get started right away, the module also comes with a Power BI template that includes several pre-built reports. These serve as examples of how the data can be used and can be easily customised to fit the specific needs of each organisation. With these templates, customers can immediately start exploring their compliance data while also learning how to create their own powerful reports.

Whether our customers need to build custom reports for management, audit trails for compliance teams, or just want more insight into how documents are being read across the organisation, the new Analytics Module is designed to help achieve that. And with the added power of Power BI, the possibilities for customising and visualising this data are virtually limitless.

Looking ahead

We’re really excited to see how this new functionality helps our customers get even more value from DocRead. As always, we’re committed to evolving our product based on customer feedback, and we believe this new module is a huge step forward in helping our customers tailor their compliance reporting to their specific needs.

Ensuring all of your compliance tasks are completed on time and by the right people can be complicated. Additional complexity arises when new people join the organization, or move within it. However, as with a lot of things, a little control and planning can minimize your exposure to non-compliance. 

In this post we are going to show how you can use PowerBI to find out which documents have been assigned to a specific audience using DocRead. This will allow you to ensure that all documents (policies/ compliance requests etc.) have been assigned to the correct audience. It will also help you spot any items that have been assigned in error. 

With its own dedicated reporting engine (VertiPaq - “Brains & Muscles” behind Power BI), Power BI has no problem working with large data sets. When combined with the rich data created by DocRead, it allows you to create beautiful and powerful reports giving insights about how your SharePoint content is being targeted, read and acknowledged by your users. These reports can also be used to demonstrate to regulators how you are communicating, targeting and tracking your Policies, Procedures (and any other important content) and thus ensuring that your employees remain compliant with them.

The “Documents assigned to an Audience“ report that we are going to build in this post will look like this:

The report above uses the standard data view called "Readership.vwTaskInfo" available in the DocRead database (find more information here). It contains three slicers at the top of the page that allows you to select a specific audience, document and site. The table then shows a list of all documents that have been assigned to the selected audience. 

The remainder of this post will explain how to create this dashboard in Power BI. 

Slicers

1) Select the Slicer visualization as shown below. This will add a slicer onto your report canvas. Resize it and move it to the top left corner of your report canvas.

2) From the 'Readership vwTaskInfo' table, select 'DocumentName', or click and drag it into the Slicer Field.

3) Click on the down arrow for this field and select 'Rename for this visual'.

4) Add a space into the field name so it displays as 'Document Name'.

5) On the report canvas, click the down arrow in the top right corner of the slicer and select 'Dropdown'.

6) Your slicer is now ready.

7) Add two more slicers to your canvas and position them along the top of your report.

8) Repeat steps 2-5 to create slicers for the 'AudienceName' (found in the 'Readership Audience' table) and 'SiteURL' (found in the 'Readership Document' table) fields.

Notice how the data in the table changes as you select different combinations of audiences, documents and sites.

Add a report background

To make your report look more appealing or fit in with a corporate color scheme, you may like to add a background layout. This post explains how to do this.

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The DocRead reporting suite provides several reports to help you manage your compliance tasks. The out-of-the-box reporting options allow administrators and line managers to track progress with real-time reports. Whilst powerful out of the box, it's impossible for the suite to cover more customised reporting requirements. That's where Power BI comes in. With its own dedicated reporting engine Power BI has no problem working with large data sets. When combined with the rich data created by DocRead, it allows you to create beautiful and powerful reports giving insights about how your SharePoint content is being targeted, read and acknowledged by your users.

Here is a list of all of the DocRead and Power BI related posts I have recently created.

Display the status of DocRead reading tasks

Document Reading Dashboard

Downloadable background templates for your Power BI reports

Power BI allows you to create amazing visualizations from your data. You can easily get carried away and create hundreds of different combinations. 

Once you have worked out the best way to summarize and display your data, chances are your Power BI report screen will look something like this:

My report above uses the standard data available in the DocRead database view. It contains a slicer at the top of the page that allows you to select a specific document. The table then shows a list of all employees who need to read that document and the date they did so. If the employee has not completed their reading task, then this will be shown as either overdue (if the due date has passed) or assigned. 

The visualizations on the left include:

i) a gauge showing the proportion of completed tasks compared to the total number of tasks.

ii) a donut chart showing the number or reading tasks by status (assigned, completed or overdue) and their proportionate percentages.

iii) a card displaying the latest due date. Once this date has been reached, and assuming everyone who needs to read it, has done so, it can be archived.

Although my report contains a lot of really important information, it looks a bit boring! It is really easy to create and add a background image to your Power BI report and make it look more appealing. I'm no Picasso, and I'm sure that many of you will think the report below could be improved, but I think it looks way better than the original effort.

Creating your bespoke report background image

1. Firstly create all of your visualizations and size them appropriately. There is no need to be exact, just a rough size and placement on the Power BI report will suffice at this stage.
2. There are many different ways to create an image. You could use your preferred publishing tool or graphics package to create something fancy. I went old school and simply used a word document and created shapes that layered on top of one another.
3. I then took a screenshot and saved the picture as a .jpg My report background looked like this.

FREE Downloadable Templates

If you'd like a quick start, this post contains downloadable templates that you are welcome to use. They could make a great starting point and are amendable so you can tweak them to suit your needs.

How to add a background image to your Power BI report

1) Click on an area of your Power BI report that doesn't contain a visualization. Keep clicking around until you manage to find a spot that means you don't have a visualization selected.

2) Click the 'paint roller' icon to view all of the styling options for the report page. 

3) Then click the drop down arrow for 'Page background'. You should see the following options:

4) Use the browse option to find the report background image you have just created and also select 'Fit'. This will stretch your image to fit the size of your report page.

5) Set the transparency to 0% so your background is displayed.

6) Tweak the size and placement of your visualizations to fit into the report you created. You may also need to adjust the font color of titles, legends, slicers etc. so they contrast with your new background colors.

I hope you've found this useful and have fun making your own reports and adding background images in Power BI.

Power BI allows you to create amazing visualizations from your data. Once you have worked out the best way to summarize and display your data, adding a background image can make your dashboard really stand out. At the bottom of this post, you will find some free background templates to download and use.

The examples below show the same information, with and without background images.

Hopefully you agree that the background images help make the Power BI report information look more interesting. 

Creating background template images for your Power BI reports is not difficult (I've added a link at the bottom of this post explaining how to do it). However, if you'd rather use existing pictures, then check out the Free Power BI Templates Download links below. 

Free Power BI Templates Download

If you don't have access to a whizzy graphics package then you can make simple images to use in Power BI. Here are some sample dashboard images that you are welcome to download and use. They are Word documents, so you can easily edit them to change color schemes and tweak images etc. 

Once you are happy with the format, you need to save it as a picture to upload to Power BI. I used a simple screenshot and saved as a .jpg file to make my Power BI template.

Would you like to make your own background images?

This post explains how I created the Power BI dashboard templates and how to use them in Power BI.

I hope you've found these Power BI dashboard template downloads useful. Have fun making your own reports in Power BI.

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All of the DocRead task data is stored in a SQL database, meaning that it is available for further analysis and reporting with Power BI.

Here's how to create a summary of all DocRead tasks showing the reading status (assigned, completed, overdue) in Power BI. The end result will look like this:

All items assigned by DocRead will be listed and the total number of Assigned, Completed and Overdue tasks shown. 

If you click on the '+' symbol by the policy name, you can drill down to see more detail. In this case, only the First Aider has completed the task, all five Warehouse employees have overdue tasks.

Create a new field in your DocRead database to show the "Real Status" of DocRead tasks.

There are two information fields that need to be combined to work out the status of DocRead tasks:

1) The Status field. This is a text field and can either be "assigned" or "completed" and

2) The Task overdue field. This is a boolean field which is calculated from the due date of the task. It can either be "True" (i.e. overdue because the due date was in the past) or "False" (because the due date had not arrived).

Ideally I don't want a completed task to be considered overdue. Only assigned (but not completed) tasks that have passed the due date need to be chased. Please refer to this post to find out how to add and calculate a new field to use in this analysis.

Create a matrix report in Power BI

Add the matrix visualization into your Power BI report.

You then need to select the fields that you want to see in the matrix. This can be achieved bydragging and dropping them into the relevant section as shown below. 

For the rows in this report I used DocumentName and Audience name.

I wanted to see the "RealStatus" of tasks as columns. This is the field created by following the post above.

I used the RealStatus field to provide the values for my report.

To show the RealValues as a meaningful number, select the down arrow and select 'count' as shown. This will count all of the tasks for a document with that status.

Adding a Slicer

It is also easy to add a slicer to this Power BI report to only show the tasks associated with a specific audience.

Before adding the slicer, make sure you do not have anything selected on your Power BI report. Then select the Slicer visualization as shown below. 

Drag and drop the "AudienceName" field into the slicer.

Notice that the details in your Matrix report change based on the options you have selected in your slicer.

You can change the format of the slicer by selecting the "paintbrush" icon as shown below.

I turned on the Slicer header and entered "Select Audience" to use in my visualization.

Add other visualizations as required

Treemap

I also added a Treemap to visualize the status of the DocRead tasks. This displays the number of tasks in different sized boxes. The greater the number of tasks (relative to the other options) the larger the box.

Again, before adding the treemap, make sure you do not have anything selected on your Power BI report. Then select the Treemap visualization as shown below. 

Drag the "RealStatus" field into the Group and also use it as the Value. Amend the value to show the 'Count of' as before. Your selection should appear as below.

My final report looked like this (I know - it could be prettier, design is not one of my strengths!)

Once you have the basic information in your visualization, you can easily change its style by selecting another visualization. You need to click on the visualization you want to replace and ensure that it is outlined in grey and highlighted in the visualizations pane first e.g.

Then select the visualization you would rather use.

Donut chart

Without changing the fields, changing the visualization to a donut chart looks like this...

To add a legend to the chart, select the 'paint roller' and use the toggle button to turn the Legend on. Then position it wherever you prefer using the drop down options.

Stacked Column Chart

Again, without changing the fields, changing the visualization to a stacked bar chart looks like this...

Notice how the visualizations change when using the slicer to select specific audiences or group.

I hope you've found this useful and have fun making your own reports in Power BI

Creating hierarchies in your Power BI data provides opportunities to further enhance reporting capabilities. For instance, Power BI will automatically calculate a date hierarchy. This will allow you to drill down from annual data, to quarters, months and days. You can also create bespoke hierarchies within your data to represent other relationships. Hierarchies will allow you to provide drill through visualizations, dashboards and reports to your users for easier analysis.

Examples of hierarchies:

• A geographic hierarchy could allow you to drill down from Country, to State, City, and Street.
• A product hierarchy could allow you to drill down from product category, to subcategory and individual item.
• A personnel hierarchy could reflect the organization structure from Director, to Manager, Team Leader and individual.

Firstly, this post will explain how to create a hierarchy in Power BI. Then it will suggest data hierarchies that you may find useful in DocRead data. Finally, it will show an example of a hierarchy in Power BI and how it is reflected in a visualization.

Understanding DocRead Compliance Data

The DocRead database is automatically created when you install DocRead. The 'Readership vwTaskInfo' table contains most of the information you are likely to need for reporting purposes. This view was created specifically for reporting to ensure that any queries do not affect the original databases.

The 'Readership vwTaskInfo' table contains (amongst other things):

1) Details about the documents that have been assigned, document ID, location, version, type, comments etc.

2) Details about who the items were assigned to, audiences, users, user email etc.

3) Details about task deadlines, due date, completion date, status etc.

Report example using the Audience name hierarchy

After you have created your hierarchies, you can begin to use them in visualizations. You need to ensure that you use the data fields from within your hierarchy and not the original database fields.

The drilldown icons highlighted below will be displayed above your visualization and allow you to navigate through your hierarchy.

For example, the image below shows the reading status of tasks assigned to different audiences by DocRead. Each audience is displayed on the left hand column with a '+' image next to it, indicating additional detail is available. The matrix report shows a total of 230 tasks, of which 54 are overdue.

Clicking on the icon to 'Expand all down one level in the hierarchy' changes the report as shown below. Each Audience has been expanded to show the reading status for compliance documents that have been issued to that audience. The total number of tasks (230) is still displayed at the bottom of the visual. A scroll bar can be used to view more of the detail in this report. Notice that the documents have '+' signs indicating additional levels of detail are available.

The report below shows that 18 tasks have been completed for the Collaboris Staff Handbook.

Expanding the hierarchy further to the User level will display the names of the people within the audience that received each document.

You can either use the arrows above the visualization, or the '+' and '-' icons to the left of each level to display the level of information required.

The DocRead reporting suite provides several different reports to help you manage your compliance tasks. The out of the box reporting options allow administrators and line managers to track progress with real time reports. For more in-depth reporting needs linking your DocRead databases to Power BI provides an opportunity to create enhanced reports. This post explains how to bring your DocRead data into Power BI.

Linking your SQL Database

1) In your Power BI Desktop app, click on "SQL Server" in the Data menu.

 2) Enter your SQL server name and Database name.

3) Once you have made your choice, click "OK" to proceed, enter your access credentials and click "Connect". This may take a few minutes to complete.

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I'm currently trying to learn the basics of Power BI to try and replicate some of my existing reports. I figured I would learn faster by trying help our customers making the most out of DocRead rather than following a set training course covering information I don't need to know. 

My end goal is to use Power BI to generate custom reports for our DocRead compliance tool. DocRead stores all of its data in a SQL database and has views that have been specifically created for reporting. However, step one is for me to learn how to replicate the existing reports. 

The current data structure

In the DocRead database there are two fields:

1. The Status field. This is a text field and can either be "assigned" or "completed" and
2. the Task overdue field. This is a boolean field which is calculated from the due date of the task. It can either be "True" (i.e. overdue because the due date was in the past) or "False" (because the due date had not arrived). 

My requirement

I wanted to create a new field in my database table to aggregate the values from these two fields to provide a single overall status.

The logic goes as follows:

If the DocRead task status was "completed", then the final result needed to be "completed" (comparing to due dates is irrelevant because the task is completed).

For the assigned tasks, there were 2 possibilities. Either 

1. the due date for the compliance task was past, so the task was "Overdue", or 
2. the due date was in the future, so the task was "Assigned"

The solution

I knew I needed to use 2 nested IF statements, but the second element was a Boolean field (showing TRUE/FALSE) After many failed attempts to get the IF statement correct, I realised that because the Boolean value was already giving a TRUE/FALSE answer, the answer was simpler than I thought.

= Table.AddColumn(Readership_vwTaskInfo, "RealStatus", each if [Status] = "Completed" then "Completed" else if [Overdue] then "Overdue" else "Assigned")

I've broken this down below:

I was therefore able to create one new field showing whether the compliance tasks sent by DocRead were Assigned, Overdue or Completed and use this information in my Power BI pie chart.

DocRead is an add-on for SharePoint that allows you to target and track content to the right users in your organization.

DocRead comes with a report suite that is accessed from the DocRead admin pages inside SharePoint. Whilst powerful out of the box, it’s impossible for the suite to cover more customized reporting requirements. Also, because the reporting suite runs inside of SharePoint web pages (with no dedicated reporting engine) it can struggle with large data sets containing hundreds of thousands of rows.

In this post we are going to show how you can use Power BI to create a “Document Reading Dashboard” using the DocRead data. This dashboard can be used to show the status of the reading tasks associated with a specific document (these tasks are automatically generated, and managed by DocRead ).

With its own dedicated reporting engine (VertiPaq - “Brains & Muscles” behind Power BI), Power BI has no problem working with large data sets. When combined with the rich data created by DocRead, it allows you to create beautiful and powerful reports giving insights about how your SharePoint content is being targeted, read and acknowledged by your users. These reports can also be used to demonstrate to regulators how you are communicating, targeting and tracking your Policies, Procedures (and any other important content) and thus ensuring that your employees remain compliant with them.

The “Document Reading Dashboard“ that we are going to build in this post will look like this:

The dashboard above uses the standard data view called "Readership.vwTaskInfo" available in the DocRead database (find more information here). It contains a slicer at the top of the page that allows you to select a specific document. The table then shows a list of all employees who need to read that document and the date they did so. If the employee has not completed their reading task, then this will be shown as either overdue (if the due date has passed) or assigned. 

The visualizations on the left include:

• Gauge showing the proportion of completed tasks compared to the total number of tasks.
• Donut chart showing the number or reading tasks by status (assigned, completed or overdue) and their proportionate percentages.
• Card displaying the latest due date. Once this date has been reached, and assuming everyone who needs to read it has done so, it can be archived.

Slicer

1) Select the Slicer visualization as shown below. This will add a slicer onto your report canvas. Resize it and move it to the top right corner of your report canvas.

2) From the 'Readership vwTaskInfo' table, select 'DocumentName', or click and drag it into the Slicer Field.

3) Click on the down arrow for this field and select 'Rename for this visual'.

4) Add a space into the field name so it displays as 'Document Name'.

5) On the report canvas, click the down arrow in the top right corner of the slicer and select 'Dropdown'.

6) Your slicer is now ready. Notice how the data in the table changes as you select different documents. 

Donut chart

1) Select the donut chart visualization.

2) From the 'Readership vwTaskInfo' table, select 'RealStatus' and drag it into the Legend Field. Use the same data in the Values field but ensure that this will be displayed as a 'Count of' the RealStatus.

3) Select the paint roller icon to change the colors for the different classes of reading status. Expand the 'Data Colors' option and amend the display colors to your preference. I used green for completed tasks, red for overdue tasks and amber for tasks that have been assigned but are not overdue. I also set the Legend to 'on' so this information is displayed in the visualization.

4) the donut chart is now ready, notice how the values change when you select a different document.

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