Announcing New Beyond 20/20 Product Releases

Beyond 20/20 Web Data Server Version 6.3

Beyond 20/20's Web Data Server version 6.3 was released on February 14, 2003.

Here are some of the great new features:

• Power Searching - Our most powerful searching ever. Searching produces a customized report that filters on only the items of interest. Quickly filter data from thousands of items to just the items of interest.
  
  Administrators can choose to offer users a basic or advanced search and can decide which components of the reports are searchable.
• Profiles - The administrator and the end-users are able to select items in dimensions and save these selections as a Profile. The Profile can then be used on any report on the site that contains the same dimension (eg. age). This is an excellent feature for people who always analyze the same items in every report. For example, if someone analyzes the age groups between 40-45 and 60-65, they can save this profile and use it again with other tables. This will allow the user to save time on selecting its items.
• Totals/Percentages - Administrator enabled totals and/or percentages will allow end-users to dynamically add a total to a selection or view a percentage breakdown of their selection.
• Netscape 7 support - In addition to the browser versions we currently support, the February release of WDS will function fully with Netscape version 7.

Beyond 20/20 Web Data Server 6.3 fully complies with Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act.

Beyond 20/20 Announces a New Web Product for Viewing OLAP Cubes Created with Microsoft Analysis Services

Beyond 20/20's new MS OLAP product, Vista 1.0, will be released at the end of February 2003.

Here are some of the great new features:

Beyond 20/20 Vista 1.0 offers a full range of features found in other Beyond 20/20 products such as:

• High-impact visualization
• Drag & drop customization
• Data download
• Ease of use
• Zero footprint

Beyond 20/20 Vista 1.0 is based on the Microsoft Analysis Services and in addition it offers:

• No inherent size limitations
• Drill through to record level data
• Capability to add through Microsoft Analysis Services a broader range of custom calculations at build time and run time, such as variance, standard deviation, sub-totals, percentages, shared error and many more
• Ability to leverage Microsoft SQL Server applications and data stores
• Customizable, including functionalities such as mapping
• Dimensions categorized in different ways using multiple hierarchies in Analysis Services
• Cross-cube functionality with virtual cubes

Demonstration of Beyond 20/20's Web Solution Available on the Internet

A demonstration of Beyond 20/20's Web solution is now available on Beyond 20/20's Web site. Once you have completed the registration form, you can view a Flash demonstration with the key features of Beyond 20/20's Web solution. Please click here if you are interested in viewing this demonstration.

Events this Month

2003 ESRI Federal User Conference
February 5-6, 2003 in Washington, DC.

Beyond 20/20 exhibited at the GIS Solutions EXPO in the ESRI Conference. As Beyond 20/20 recently became an ESRI partner, we were excited to demonstrate our new mapping features, which can be added to our dynamic Web solution for data dissemination.

The 2003 ESRI Federal User Conference (Fed UC) provided an opportunity for federal government users of ESRI's software to share their knowledge and information with each other. With such keynote speakers as Steve Cooper, the Senior Director for Information Integration and Chief Information Officer of the U.S. Office for Homeland Security, and Mark Forman, the Associate Director of Information Technology and E-Government for the US Office of Management and Budget, this conference certainly offered a valuable learning experience. Technical overviews, hands-on sessions, user presentations, ESRI technical sessions and speakers from many US government organizations provided conference attendees with ample opportunity to increase their knowledge of ESRI software.

For more information about the ESRI conference and the GIs Solutions EXPO, please visit http://www.esri.com/events/feduc/.

16th Annual National Center for Education Statistics Management Information Systems Conference
February 26-28, 2003 in Salt Lake City, Utah

The 2003 MIS Conference is a concentrated three days of information about best practices, innovative ideas, current issues, and practical how-to advice about management information systems for K-12 education. Co-sponsored by the Utah State Office of Education and the US Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the MIS Conference brings together the people who work with information collection, management, transmittal, and reporting in school districts and state education agencies. For more information about this MIS 2003, please visit http://nces.ed.gov/conferences/mis2003.

If you are planning to attend the conference, please visit Beyond 20/20 in the demonstration room to view our software solutions in person. Our company representatives will be happy to answer any questions you may have about disseminating your data easily and dynamically on the Web, desktop or on CD-ROM.

Tip of the Month

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) is using Beyond 20/20 to disseminate its data on the Web.

Every year Engin Konanc, Chief Data Consultant in the Statistical Research and Data Center of the NCDPI, has to prepare the projections of the number of students per grade for 117 different school systems. These projections are used to determine the State's annual budget for each school board.

Through the use of Beyond 20/20's Builder, Engin has been able to create tables which enable him to make more accurate projections.

How did Engin do this? He created a table with three dimensions, including School Year, School System Number and Data Type. The Data Type dimension is a key element to help him with his projections. The items in this dimension include, Actual, Projection, Difference and Percentage of error.

With all of this information accessible in one table, Engin is able to create charts to help him analyze the projections of the next school year. Engin indicated that Beyond 20/20 is the only product he could find that allowed him to do this kind of process.

This example might help you think of other ways you can use Beyond 20/20 products within your organization. If you are an educational organization or if your job requirements include forecasts and projections, Engin's projection analysis method might be useful for you and your clients.