Have you ever had a software project that you’ve put off for months? I’m in the midst of one right now … Way back in June, I set out to do some research on an executive dashboard application. The good folks at Infommersion kindly set me up with a copy of their very cool app, Xcelsius XL and I had all intents of diving head first into the project …

Then summer happened, and I lost my bearings.

I’m finally back in the saddle, running through the demo exercises, trying to get up to speed with the program.

I freaked when I first heard about Xcelsius XLs capability to link Excel files to interactive Flash executive dashboards. I’m sitting on a boatload of data that begs to be displayed over the Web within a dashboard-like application. While I have (digital) reams of static charts, I knew that an executive dashboard could provide unique views into the numbers.

While I’ve never been truly comfortable working in Macromedia Flash itself, I’m a huge fan of the Flash format. When Infommersion offered a demo copy of Xcelsius, I jumped right on it.

I put the software away with all intent of picking it up again in a couple of weeks. Here I am, two months later, and I’ve only now had the energy/opportunity to install the program and take it for a whirl.

The project is more than a bit overwhelming … it’ll take some time to make that data jump through hoops. Creating the interface is one thing, but the process of consolidating scores of spreadsheets into a mini data warehouse is something else, indeed.

[tags]executive dashboard[/tags]