ShufflePoint users can create reports that strain Excel to the breaking point. This is often manifest in Excel crashing when you try to save a file. This is due to the creation of erroneous data connections "hidden" in the document. Luckily there's a quick solution. 1. Open the file that will not save. 2. Click on the "Developer" tab in the Excel ribbon menu (read this to enable the developer tab if it is not already visible). 3. Click on the Visual Basic editor and then right click on the VBA project with the same name as your workbook and...
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We get asked quite frequently about how ShufflePoint works with Google Analytics with respect to GA data sampling. If you aren't aware of what data sampling in GA is this reference will help. Answer ShufflePoint doesn't do anything by default to deal with the data sampling that can occur via the Google Analytics API. However, we do offer time dimensions which run separate queries for each period, and using those will usually nullify sampling seen in the GA web interface. SP Dimensions that run separate queries for each period sp:month sp:date sp:week
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"The numbers don't match!" - a common cry in the world of web analytics! Why don't the numbers from one source match another? Or worse yet - why don't the numbers from the same source match when you get them in different ways?! We get this question very frequently in regards to Google Analytics - especially since ShufflePoint uses the Google Analytics API to pull GA data. As most GA users know, GA is subject to data sampling where large amounts of data (usually a wide timeframe) are concerned. The same data pulled through the API is also subject to...
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An update was done today which many Excel users will find useful. You can now have a web query timeframe parameter which has two periods. A timeframe clause with two periods allows for period comparisons to be made directly in AQL. Previously such a timeframe clause had to be in the query parameter. Now you can have a timeframe parameter such as "thisMonth, lastMonth". One nice thing this now allows is for a cell to contain a formula to build a month-over-month timeframe comparison for arbitrary months. I do this by entering the following formula in the timefame parameter cell:...
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Using a formula expression is a common technique in Excel reports built using ShufflePoint, and I see that we don't have a blog posting about it. In a nutshell, there are times when you need a query to be dynamic beyond what is provided by the timeframe and property parameters. Two common scenarios are a) filtering out branded keywords, and b) special timeframes. In this article I'll show a query formula which does the later. In the attached workbook, you'll see there are rows labeled "today" and "today last year". These have, respectively, the formulas =TEXT(TODAY(),"yyyy-MM-dd") and =TEXT(DATE(YEAR(TODAY())-1,MONTH(TODAY()),DAY(TODAY())),"yyyy-MM-dd") On the...
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Got this email today related to the new AdWords API: Some API users have noticed a difference between the search volume numbers returned by the TargetingIdeaService in versions v201206 and later compared to earlier versions and the user interface. When running a query of 'STATS' request type with the latest API version, you will typically get a higher number for search volume compared to the user interface. The reason for the difference is that the volume returned by the latest API includes Search Partners data in its calculation, while the UI and the older API versions don’t have this metric...
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Hey there Google Analytics fans! If you've been following the Google Analytics Summit here in Mountain View today you know that it was just announced that, among many other hot new features, Google Analytics now supports the ability to import cost data from sources other than Adwords into GA. Hence the name of our new product that supports this feature - In2GA! In2GA allows you to automatically populate a "Google Analytics Custom Data Source" with Bing Ad cost data. Other data sources coming very soon. Read more about this exciting new development on the Official Google Analytics Blog
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We are looking for help from any of our customers who have YouTube reporting needs. The new YouTube reporting API is currently in beta and we have an initial integration in place that needs some "real world" testing. Note: we are looking for customers who have regular YouTube accounts and need to report regularly on the associated metrics - AND ALSO any customers who might be in the YouTube Partner Program which will allow for reporting across multiple YouTube accounts. If you would be interested in working with us on this, please email [email protected] and indicate "YouTube API Testing" in...
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A huge thanks to Feras Alhlou, the founder of E-Nor, for tipping us off to the posting of this video on online-behavior.com. The video is one of Feras talks at a recent eMetrics, where he talks a lot about using tools like ShufflePoint to automate reporting. Nice works Feras and thanks for the shout out!
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ShufflePoint deprecated the XML Spreadsheet feed so that we could avoid having to support two different feeds. Since the HTML feed works with both Windows and Mac, this was chosen as the single feed format. What we didn't realize was that Excel 2007 could not refresh reports created with the XML Spreadsheet IQY file but fed the HTML feed. I spent some time today (happy 4th of July!) to create a macro which corrects the web queries present in an Excel workbook so that they will work. If you refresh a ShufflePoint query in Excel and get an error that...
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