Visual Fusion 4.5 Overview

OverviewVisual Fusion® 4.5

IDV’s Visual Fusion® software unites

data visually, exposing hidden trends

and driving rapid insights that enable

better decisions.

Visual Fusion helpings organizations

turn the corner and gain understanding,

improve their bottom line, and

keep their people safe.

Let us show you how.

Visual Fusion is a trademark of IDV Solutions, LLC. Other marks referenced herein are the service marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks of their respective manufacturers.

Visual Fusion is protected by U.S. Patent No. 7567262

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© 2009 IDV Solutions, LLC

Visual Fusion is a trademark of IDV Solutions, LLC. Other marks referenced herein are the service marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks of their respective manufacturers.Visual Fusion is protected by U.S. Patent No. 7567262

Visual Fusion (VF) from IDV Solutions is a geospatial mashup platform for creating interactive, map-

based applications utilizing the power of SharePoint.

VF allows everyone in the enterprise to build visual mashups combining Web feeds and enterprise data

with online maps, timelines, charts, graphs or other visualizations. It can be used to create a single

robust application, or multiple small-scale apps, each focused on a specific question or problem.

VISUAL FUSION PRODUCT OVERVIEW

Key Capabilities:

CONNECT to virtually any data source •

within the enterprise or on the Web.

VISUALIZE information in meaningful •

context such as interactive maps,

timelines, and charts.

CREATE custom variables & hotspots •

to alert users to important information.

PROVIDE permission-based publishing •

and workflow integration so people

have access to information and the

collaboration tools they need.

ENABLE contribution from individuals •

in real time through SharePoint or

mobile devices.

Key Benefits:

For the • IT Admin: FLEXIBILITY &

AGILITY – Short development cycles

and applicability to just about any

business problem makes VF the best

tool in the box.

For the • Knowledge Worker: INSIGHT

& PRODUCTIVITY – Spend less time

finding & compiling information and

more time in analysis & discovery.

For the • Business Decision Maker:

PROFITABILITY – Extend the value of

your investments in data & systems

and give your team a powerful tool that

anyone can use.

Organizations all over the world currently rely on VF to build apps for continuity planning, supply chain

management , retail analysis, crisis management, strategic planning, asset management and more. It

allows business leaders and knowledge workers to make more informed decisions in less time.

This overview describes what you can build with VF, how it integrates with Microsoft’s

SharePoint, and the key steps to building a Visual Fusion application or mashup.




Visual Enterprise Mashups

Power users can set up Visual Fusion mashups

in a few hours or less. These are small-scale

projects, combining just a few data sources. For

example:Overlay sales performance data with •demographics and competitor locations to find underserved retail markets.Combine maps, news, and on-the-scene •photos to create a common operational picture for an event or emergency.Turn an excel spreadsheet of customers into a •heat map to quickly show market penetration.Visualize point of sale data over both location •and time to get a greater understanding of which locations do better at what times.Mashups allow the enterprise or the business •unit to answer specific business questions quickly, with little or no intervention from the

IT department.

Visual Composite Applications

IT professionals can build robust VF applications

to illuminate on-going issues within an

organization. Use VF applications to manage

business interests (assets, continuity, risk, supply

chain, etc.) and analyze business information

(sales, marketing, consumer trends, etc.).

Enterprises are currently using VF to:Bring together worldwide news feeds, •building security logs, facilities maps, and video feeds in a system for monitoring assets and responding to incidents.Visualize factories, suppliers, products and •business relationships to proactively protect supply chains.Support marketing strategists by filtering •and analyzing marketing data from multiple sources, internal and external to the organization.

With VF, the story within your business data can be told more fully and in less time. You can unite data

from disparate sources and make sophisticated use of icons, colors, and other visual elements to

communicate vital aspects of the data instantly.

In an application built with VF, users can access text displays, charts and graphs, video and audio,

and links to Web feeds. They can contribute to the view and quickly disseminate discoveries to peers.

As a result, business users understand their business scenario more quickly and clearly, and make

better informed decisions.

WHAT YOU CAN BUILD WITH VF

The flexibility to build quick mashups and robust

applications on the same platform means VF can

serve multiple needs and users across the enterprise,

providing a significant return on investment.




Visual Fusion Server (VFS)

Sitting in the middle of the technical architecture, VFS integrates data from a variety of sources,

standardizes the geographic and time-based aspects of data, and then makes all the content

accessible in a variety of industry standard formats (KML, GML, GeoRSS, etc.).

VFS includes a robust styling engine for formatting data, and two technologies that facilitate rapid

application development: VF App Hub and VF Composer. Using these, anyone can instantiate a new

mashup in minutes, and then add and style data to complete the application in a few hours or days.

Visual Fusion Server (VFS) and Visual Fusion Experience (VFX) are the core technologies of Visual

Fusion. Although VFS and VFX are perfect complements to each other, either product can be

implemented independently or in concert with other technologies.

VISUAL FUSION CORE TECHNOLOGIES

Data StoresEnterprise

Applications

Portal Mobile

Cloud DataNews & Alerts

External Web Services

Virtuallyany data source

Endlesspossibilities

Mapping

Reporting

InteractiveVisuals

Timelines




Visual Fusion Experience (VFX)

VFX delivers a flexible, highly-responsive

user experience, leveraging all the

strengths of Silverlight (and Flash in

VFX3).

Users can view and filter data, perform

in-depth analysis by viewing multiple data

feeds together, and add additional feeds

“on the fly.”

End users benefit from intuitive

interfaces, tools, controls, and visuals.

The end result is better, faster decision

making for the knowledge worker and

business leader.

Other VF Technologies:

SpatialWiki• – Create geographic points, lines or shapes by drawing on a map; then

edit, and share the content, or add it to VF mashups. SpatialWiki can be integrated

with VF mashups or serve as a standalone product.

VF Enterprise Search• - Search against any data source connected to VF:

SharePoint content, databases, or Web content. Turn your search into a data source

for VF mashups, and view up-to-date search results as a point layer on the map.

VF Tile Server• – Increase the performance of in-house imagery and integrate it with

other data in VF mashups.

Data Connectors• – Leverage both native connectors and an SDK that facilitates

connecting to virtually any data source.

VF Mobile: Contribute• – Turn users’ iPhones into real-time data creation tools.

Contribute is an add-on product for uploading mobile phone photos and comments

into SharePoint Libraries and VF mashups.




Create and manage content Users can collaborate and create a variety of content through VF, while retaining all the benefits of SharePoint content management, including authorship, access, and versioning. Typically unmanaged content, such as KML files, SHP files, and even links to cloud-based data, can be stored and managed in VF Lists and Libraries. SharePoint “views” can be used to filter and create different map layers from the same data.

Render SharePoint data mashup-ready VF automatically fetches latitude and longitude coordinates for SharePoint data, based on item addresses or locations; you can manually refine locations using an embedded Bing Maps map. Converters are supplied for geotagging your existing lists and libraries.

Geo-enable Excel files for mashupsExtending SharePoint’s Excel Services, VF stores your Excel files in a custom library and geo-tags each line item, so they can be used in geographic mashups.

Geo-enable Enterprise SearchVF extends SharePoint Enterprise Search to crawl and index SharePoint data, SQL Server content, databases, BDC connected content, Web feeds, and more, and display search results on the map.

Publish SharePoint data in geospatial formats VF renders List or Library data in industry standard formats (KML, GML, or GeoRSS) for use with VF or other client software.

Maintain securityVF leverages SharePoint to provide security trimming of data in VF mashups, so that groups of users can be allowed or blocked for each data feed.

Connect through the SharePoint Business Data CatalogVF has a native connector for the BDC. This means that any data source connected to SharePoint via the BDC can be easily connected to VF as well.

Rapidly develop applications in SharePointRapidly initiate enterprise mashups using SharePoint Workflow and site templates. VF App Hub and VF Composer are GUI tools that make this a no-code process. The SharePoint site-building capabilities mean that any number of Visual Fusion applications can coexist within a SharePoint portal.

Install and set up quicklyThere are no system requirements other than those already in place to support MOSS 2007 installations. A typical rollout of VF involves installing it on the Web Front End server(s), then activating VF features.

INTEGRATION WITH SHAREPOINT

Visual Fusion is deeply integrated with Microsoft’s SharePoint portal software; it uses SharePoint as

a repository for many types of content, and exploits the SharePoint architecture in multiple ways,

empowering you to:




ASSIMILATE CONTENT WITH VF

VF’s services-based approach to data assimilation lets you combine data from a multitude of sources

seamlessly in the same application.

SharePoint Lists & Libraries

VF uses SharePoint as a repository for many

types of content, including:

tabular data •

spreadsheets•

image files•

documents•

calendars•

InfoPath forms•

mobile device contributions•

KML/KMZ, ATOM, GeoRSS and SHP files•

Custom icons to be used in Visual Fusion •

applications

links to Web feeds •

VF automatically geo-tags SharePoint content,

assigning latitude-longitude coordinates based

on addresses or other location information

in the data.

Connectors

VF supplies built-in and add-on data connectors

for sources that include:

SQL Server •

Oracle •

MOSS Business Data Catalog (BDC)•

Bing Maps for Enterprise Web Service•

MapPoint Web Service•

ESRI ArcSDE •

Excel files•

Web feeds (KML/KMZ, ATOM, GeoRSS, •

WMS) & Shapefiles

Additional custom connectors can be created

using a template in the VF SDK.

Standards Support

VF supports the standards that have emerged

in the geospatial content arena, including KML/

KMZ, ATOM, GeoRSS, WMS, GML, SHP, and

WKB. The product can import data in numerous

formats, convert where necessary, and then

export in multiple formats, so you can use a

variety of map viewers with VF.




USE APP HUB TO BUILD APPLICATIONS IN MINUTES

VF App Hub is the directory and launch point for all mashups created with Visual Fusion; it’s also the

place to create a new application site in minutes. The App Hub leverages SharePoint workflow and site

templates; the app creator simply needs to fill out a short form, choose a template, and submit the

application for approval by a SharePoint administrator.

The use of templates

reduces app creation time

and expands possibilities.

In addition to the

templates supplied with VF,

administrators can create

custom templates that may

include pre-configured data

sources, a pre-populated

Feed Control, and other

customizations.

Once approved, a basic site

can be built in only a few

minutes, complete with the

VF user interface, data repository and

Composer. From that point on, the app

creator uses the Composer to arrange

and style data sources.




ADD & STYLE CONTENT WITH COMPOSER

The Composer enables users to create visual mashups without programming or database skills, and to

quickly update and transform these mashups as needed; it provides the agility that real-world business

scenarios demand.

This GUI tool automatically discovers and lists all content available from Visual Fusion data sources.

Just “drag and drop” from the list to pull data feeds into your application; then add labels, create feed

groups, and select visual styles for your feeds. Multiple levels of styling are available in the Composer:

Basic StylingUse the GUI to assign basic styling (colors, •icons, line widths, transparency) to feeds.Select the zoom levels at which the feed will •be visible.Determine whether the feed is automatically •“on” whenever the mashup starts up .

Advanced StylingApply conditional styling, to show different •icons or shading based on values in the data and rules that incorporate your business logic. For example, add color to areas based on population, sales revenue, or other data attribute.Create a buffer polygon around a data element •to visualize a protected zone or a zone of influence. Use buffers to communicate important aspects •of the data, by making buffer sizes vary based on a data attribute like revenue or population.Increase performance for point layers by •clustering groups of close or overlapping points into a single icon when the map viewer is zoomed out. Increase performance for shape layers by •smoothing line and polygon edge when the map viewer is zoomed out.




Heat Map Styling

Choose one of many color themes to apply to •

the frequency heat map

Choose a radius size for each point of heat; •

choose from presets or enter a custom value

Choose an intensity level for each point of •

heat

Tie intensity level to an underlying value, •

creating a weighted heat map where certain

points contribute more heat than others

Additional Capabilities

IT professionals can access configuration

options beyond those in the Composer, through

configuration files. Advanced features include:

additional configuration options for the spatial •

operations

custom procedures•

complex nested styling rules•

transformation on data created with North •

American-centric tools

Deeper levels of information

In addition to the data on your map and timeline, you can connect end users with more

information and deeper levels of detail, including text panels, audio, video, images, and links to

external content.

Tooltips and details panels for presenting this content can be created using HTML and

implemented entirely through configuration.

You can store the detail content and formatting within SharePoint, where it automatically becomes

part of your application, or bring in content from other sources and incorporate it through

configuration files.




USING APIS AND SDKS TO EXTEND VF & INTEGRATE OTHER ELEMENTS

While a VF application can be extensively customized through configuration, a set of developer tools

and tutorials is included to extend VF with custom code. Using these, developers can immediately

start building on top of the VF platform. Using the SDK, they can:

Add custom data •

connectors, data filters

and transformations to the

back-end

Add custom tools, controls, •

and Silverlight components

to the front-end

Incorporate third-party •

client software

Integrate custom charts, •

graphs, or tables

Apply localization to VF to •

serve non-English speaking

communities

VF lets you foster integration

with whatever data sources,

processes, components, or

Web Parts will benefit your

business the most.




GAIN INSIGHT & PRODUCTIVITY WITH VISUAL FUSION EXPERIENCE

The VFX user interface empowers users to interact with content like no other product in the market.

VF performance is rapid, not the click-and-wait commonly associated with traditional geospatial

products, and the interface provides powerful, intuitive tools for working with your data.

Navigation tools

The Pilot is an intuitive, graphical tool for •

zooming, rotating, and tilting the map. Tilting

works especially well with vertically extruded

points to emphasize important numerical

values in the data. [visual]

The fly to option lets the end user enter a •

place name or address and have the map

auto-navigate to that location. You can set

up custom hash tables to provide quick

navigation to enterprise locations based on ID

numbers, facility names, and the like.

MapTools

latitude/longitude sensor and grid•

scale bar•

ruler tool (measure distances)•

full screen mode•

snap shot (save an image of the map view)•

Tools for each data feed

The opacity slider (fade a feed to make it less •

dominant in the visualization)

Button controls to refresh the data, expand •

the view to the extents of the data set, or

launch a “more information” link.

ROTATE TILT

FLY TO

Lat LongSensor

Ruler

Lat LongGrid

Full Screen

Scale Bar

Snap Shot

FEED ACTIONS




Data Filters

For each feed, application creators can

configure data filters that use timelines, radio

buttons, checkboxes or sliders. Giving this

powerful filtering capability to the end user

relieves the site creator of having to anticipate

exactly how users need to slice and dice the

data. Instead, creators build in flexibility that

allows end users to filter the view according to

their own needs.

Spatial Query Tools

When the spatial query tools are enabled,

the end user can select an area by drawing

on the map; the site creator uses the SDK to

determine what the app will do with

the content in the selected area, such

as populate a datagrid component,

an Excel file, a chart or graph, or

perhaps an email.

RectangleQuery

RadiusQuery

PolygonQuery




Add feeds to the view on the fly

VFX not only presents the data that the app creator assumed would be useful, but also provides two

ways for the end user to add to the dataset:

A custom experience without custom programming

Through configuration (not coding), application creators can enable extensive customization:

Modify the look and feel of the user interface•

Add new base maps•

Enable and disable tools•

Add custom icons or extruded points•

Embed video, images, or links to other content sources in the VFX details panel to provide a rich •

user experience.

Create feeds through search. Users can search •

against any configured search engine, such

as VF Enterprise Search, Bing local search,

Wikipedia, MapPoint, Flickr, and so on. VF

Enterprise Search searches all connected

content- databases, SharePoint, Web feeds and

more-and returns the results as a new feed on

the map. Wikipedia and MapPoint searches are

enabled out of the box. For Wikipedia, an article

link is automatically enabled for each point

returned.

Add Web feeds. Many valuable sources of data •

are available via Web feeds, and VFX makes

capitalizing on these as simple as copy, paste,

and click. VFX supports inclusion of feeds in

the most widely used geospatial formats: KML,

KMZ, ATOM, GeoRSS, and WMS.


IDV Solutions, a Microsoft Gold

Certified Partner, is a software

company specializing in enterprise

mashups.

IDV assists Global 2000 and

government organizations in making

their information more accessible,

understandable, and contextual.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

IDV Solutions®

5913 Executive Dr, Suite 320

Lansing, MI 48911

Empowering the Insightful EnterpriseTM

Visual Fusion is a trademark of IDV Solutions, LLC. Other marks referenced herein are the service marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks of their respective manufacturers. Visual Fusion is protected by U.S. Patent No. 7567262

CONCLUSION

Visual Fusion empowers information workers

and decision makers by letting them

view disparate enterprise and cloud data

holistically within a Web portal.

Visual Fusion has won critical acclaim for

benefiting organizations in three key areas:

Shorter time to deployment• means

your mission-critical app is typically

deployed in days or weeks, not months

or years, and the organization can quickly

begin solving the problem or gaining new

insight on an issue.

Powerful, intuitive user experience•

benefits users at every level of expertise.

Applications built on Visual Fusion help

people do their jobs more effectively

and efficiently.

Deep SharePoint integration• makes

implementation and adoption a snap.

Being inside the portal provides

enterprise-wide accessibility, security,

and content management advantages.

No other mashup product or geospatial

product takes advantage of SharePoint

the way Visual Fusion does.

Visual Fusion is an opportunity for the

enterprise to enhance existing resources

with tools that provide immediate and

meaningful results.

For more information contact us today!



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Visual Fusion 4.5 Overview

Technology

Transcript of Visual Fusion 4.5 Overview