1. Data Visualizations using Blackboard Analytics and Tableau

2. Presenters Kris Krishnan Michael Bullis
CSUB, Office of Institutional Research, Planning & Assessment
Michael Bullis
CSUB, Information Technology Services

3. Overview
Creating insightful and impactful Tableau visualizations on student admissions, using Blackboard Analytics
Using this process users can access “real-time" information
Examine OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) data sources

4. Providing a Context
Managing the volume, variety and velocity of data is critically important to its value, but also of importance is finding ways to organize and view the information to actually be able to identify trends and shifts that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Enrollment managers can use this data to direct and assess the strategies imposed for growing their student number efficiently and effectively.
The challenge is finding a way to express the data in an efficient way that can be easily read and understood.

6. SURVEY Who here has Tableau?
Who here has Tableau connecting over a live connection?
Who here has built or has any kind of ETL platform in place?
Is anyone familiar with OLAP? Is this a term you have never heard?
Glad you are here!

7. Technical Overview
Blackboard Analytics vs Tableau
ETL
OLAP
Perspective

8. DATA = An Exercise of Insanity
Cost
Ad-hoc reporting
We all share (and contribute) this insanity

9. Data-driven decision management
an approach to business governance that values decisions that can be backed up with verifiable data.
The success of the data-driven approach is reliant upon the quality of the data gathered and the effectiveness of its analysis and interpretation. (
"quality of the data gathered“
"effectiveness of its analysis and interpretation“
Having the right hammer for the job

10. Methodologies Manual to Automation Report Evolution
ETL model – Star Schemas

11. Star schemas

12. Performance bottlenecks
Relational database reporting
The OLAP layer

14. Implementing ETL with OLAP
Technological OLAP platform irrelevant
Costs: Time, Money and knowledge requirements

15. Enter Blackboard Analytics and Tableau
We have both. A long story on how we got here.

16. Blackboard Pros: Provides a running start
Lessened knowledge requirements
Delivered as a turnkey solution
Pyramid front end – Demo Time?
Full ETL development platform

18. Blackboard Cons: 
Pyramid
Learning Curve
One Size Fits All
Overwhelming

19. Tableau Pros: Look at it, it's beautiful! Data source connectivity:
Microsoft Excel,Text File,Microsoft Access,JSON File,PDF File,Spatial File,Statistical File,Other Files,Tableau Server or Tableau Online
Actian Matrix,Actian Vectorwise,Amazon Athena,Amazon Aurora,Amazon EMR Hadoop Hive,Amazon Redshift,Anaplan,Apache Drill
Aster Database,Box,,Cloudera Hadoop,Denodo,Dropbox,Exasol,Firebird,Google Analytics,Google BigQuery,Google Cloud SQL
Google Sheets,Hortonworks Hadoop Hive,IBM BigInsights,IBM DB2,IBM PDA (Netezza),Intuit QuickBooks Online,Kognitio,MapR Hadoop Hive
Marketo,MarkLogic,MemSQL,Microsoft Analysis Services,Microsoft PowerPivot,Microsoft SQL Server,MonetDB,MongoDB BI Connector
MySQL,OData,OneDrive,Oracle,Oracle Eloqua,Oracle Essbase,Pivotal Greenplum,PostgreSQL,Presto,Progress OpenEdge,Salesforce
Splunk,SAP HANA,SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse,SAP Sybase ASE,SAP Sybase IQ,ServiceNow ITSM,SharePoint Lists,Snowflake
Spark SQL,Teradata,Teradata OLAP Connector,TIBCO Data Virtualization (Cisco Information Server),Vertica,Web Data Connector
Other Databases (JDBC),Other Databases (ODBC)

20. Tableau Cons: "Next generation" visualization tool
No ETL development platform
It is a barebone system
Data extracts and Relational database live connection

21. The Win Win situation
OLAP live connection from Tableau to Blackboard
Simple to set up
Flexibility

22. Is OLAP dead?

23. Conclusion
Dashboards and data analysis can be enormous tools for enrollment management.
Identifying the institutional activities that increase the likelihood of enrollment will allow you to enhance your recruitment strategies.
Dashboards won’t answer every question
OLAP connections provide speed and flexibility