7. Introducing InterSystems Reports (Carmen Logue)

Speaker 0 00:00:01 Welcome to data points, a podcast by InterSystems learning services. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast. App links can be [email protected]. I'm Derek Robinson and I'm Zach Crow yak, and today Speaker 1 00:00:18 Chat with Carmen lobe, product manager for data management and analytics about the new released Speaker 0 00:00:24 InterSystems reports. <inaudible> welcome to episode seven of data points by InterSystems learning services. And for the first time I'm joined by fellow co-host, Zach Crow, yak fellow online course developer in the online learning team. Zach, how's it going? Speaker 1 00:00:50 I'm doing great. Derek. How are you doing? I'm Speaker 0 00:00:52 Doing well. Uh, obviously we're all still adjusting, uh, with the whole global crisis. That's going on global health crisis with this virus. Uh, everyone's at home, uh, working remotely. We're still trying to keep the podcast going. Last episode we had, uh, Jamie Cantor joining remotely and this time, uh, not only are we going to have a remote guests, but we have a remote co-host. So how are you finding this whole situation, uh, as you're adjusting to the remote life? Yeah. Speaker 1 00:01:14 Yeah. Well, it's been a change, but I'm pretty used to working remotely with our team. We have a few people who are full-time remote even before all this happens. Uh, but I miss seeing everyone's face. And how about you? Speaker 0 00:01:24 Yeah. Yeah, that's really the big thing. I think I've mentioned before in a previous episode that our team is really well adapted to this. I think that we, uh, I think I might've mentioned before, it would almost be, it would be an ironic joke if the online learning team couldn't work remotely. Right. I think that's kind of what I've been thinking to myself, but, uh, but I think that missing that, that face to face interaction is certainly the biggest part of it where you don't get to collaborate and kind of work over someone's shoulder, if you need to, or even just see people and just have that different feeling, uh, video chat of course helps, but it's just a different stop being face to face. So we're all adjusting. And hopefully if everyone continues to stay socially distance and be responsible about it, this can end sooner than later, hopefully. But so hopefully all of our listeners are doing well and staying safe. Um, moving to today's episode. Uh, Zach, tell us a little bit about who we're going to be interviewing today. Speaker 1 00:02:09 Yeah. Carbon log is a product manager in data management, and I've worked with her a few times on creating video content for the InterSystems reports product that we're releasing now. And I'm really excited to get a chance to talk with her a little more and share that all with our listeners. Speaker 0 00:02:24 Yeah. And so a new feature that's coming out, InterSystems reports and Carmen will be able to tell us all about that. Um, and you know, you obviously have some interesting insight having worked with her on some of this content, uh, that will be available as learning content. So, uh, without further ado, let's kick it off into our interview with Carmen Logue. Speaker 1 00:02:43 All right, Carmen, thank you so much for coming. Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? Oh, I'm doing great. Thanks. It's great to be here. I'm glad to hear it. And how are you adjusting to living remotely these days? Wow. That's a big adjustment. Isn't it? We've got a, we had to divide up our house in four segments so everybody could have a to work. Yeah. Well my, my own monitor just came in before that my wife and I had been fighting for one computer monitor and sharing a desk and a breakfast table. Speaker 2 00:03:13 Amazing what we can get done huh. Speaker 0 00:03:15 And making the most of it for sure. So, uh, so Carmen, thanks again for joining us. And we're going to do a talk about InterSystems reports today. So really, really cool new topic that people might be interested in. So we'll get started with kind of the high level overview of this topic, which is what is InterSystems reports and why should people listen and care? Speaker 2 00:03:32 Yeah. Thanks so much for the question. Um, InterSystems reports is a new feature that we're, we're rolling out here shortly. And actually initially it's going to be really available to our developers and deployment partners and SES to get their hands dirty a little bit and start, uh, try and stuff out using it. And, uh, it's the ability really for our, our, uh, customers to create pixel perfect reporting, banded reports and other elements that they can include with their Iris, uh, solution. So I'm pretty excited about it. Uh, there's, there's two components to it. The first one is called designer, which is really a report development environment and it allows you to design and kind of prepare your reports there and then publish those to the server. And then the server, which will, is a report delivery mechanism, really. So it allows you to do things like distribute lots of reports at a time and email PDF, HTML, lots of, uh, formats. Speaker 2 00:04:28 So it gives our customers, I think our, it will give our customers a lot of flexibility in terms of how they deliver all that super important information that's coming out of Iris. And I think the reason that it's important right now is that it's, it's really a customer, a customer driven thing we've, we've known for a while that customers have had this need and they've been able to solve it in a variety of ways. Um, sometimes by acquiring another application to use, um, other times, you know, they've, they've used some of our existing products to make that work, but I think this will really kind of take them forward in terms of, um, in terms of giving, you know, that additional, those additional capabilities and making it just easier to distribute reports to their customers. Speaker 1 00:05:13 Right, right, right. Cool. Great. Could you tell us actually a little bit about those existing current analytics capabilities that inner systems provides and how your systems reports will fit into that? Speaker 2 00:05:23 Sure. Yeah. Happy to so, uh, inner systems, well, we now call it as part of Iris InterSystems, Iris, uh, business intelligence or BI. This is something that those of you who have used it on cachet know as deep sea and that's our business intelligence capability. So with that, we do dashboards and really digging into understanding the data and, uh, you know, a lot of interesting real-time information that you can dig into. And I think this reports capability will really compliment that, uh, in a way, because it's really looking at kind of historical more static data that needs to be distributed out. It's also gives us the ability to provide things as forms, bills, even, you know, we may have some customers that do their W2's this way. So you can, you can really define things in a way that's, uh, what they call pixel perfect, which means, you know, completely configured and designed and then distributed. Speaker 2 00:06:16 So I think that'll, it'll it'll fit well with our business intelligence capabilities. We also, you know, over the last year or so have been rolling out, uh, integrations with things like, um, Microsoft power BI and other tools like that because we, we know that our customers are all very different from each other, have lots of different needs. And the whole area of business intelligence has just exploded. And our customers have people on their staff who are experts in certain tools. And so we want to make sure that InterSystems Iris supports those as well. So there's a, there are a lot of options out there, but you know, it's largely because we have a variety of customers who want to, who want to support, you know, what they know best, Speaker 0 00:06:59 Really good explanation of the tangible kind of way that this is implemented in a lot of customers situations. And I'm sure that some people listening who, who employ those implementations are the bells ringing in their head based on what you're saying to take that in, twist it a little bit for the person that might not have that implementation already. Um, what are some real-world use cases, not so much from the integrations in technologies you're talking about, but the actual use case for why developing a more robust reporting solution would provide value to someone's business. Like what are a few business use cases that you can think of? Speaker 2 00:07:31 Oh sure. Yeah. So we've got a few of them, I think that come to mind right away. Um, the other thing that I think people might find of interest is that our, our track care solutions, InterSystems track care has actually been using this capability embedded in, in track care for a couple of years. And so they need to provide all kinds of, of reporting data, you know, within their solutions. I mean, right now with our current situation there, they need to provide reporting on incoming tests and, and positive negative, you know, to everybody from States and local governments to, you know, country governments as well. So being able to kind of create those reports and make them very easily distributable and schedule bubble, um, has been really important. We also have customers who I know are doing some billing or invoicing with our data as well. And so this gives them a way to, to do that as well. There's a feature called bursting, which allows you to take the same data and distribute a whole bunch of reports that wants to different customers with different data. So you could email out things like a, uh, a bill or an invoice on a monthly basis, for example. And it just makes that whole process much easier. Speaker 1 00:08:42 It sounds like a really enables customers to streamline that connection between the data they're working with and the users that are getting the value out of it. Um, now I just had a question. You mentioned track care and InterSystems. Uh, could you tell me a little bit about which InterSystems products, uh, will be able to support interested assistance reports? Speaker 2 00:09:02 Yeah, we're rolling out inner systems reports. Um, initially for InterSystems Iris and InterSystems Iris for health track care will continue to use the capability as well. It's embedded into their product, but we're gonna, we're gonna make this available and InterSystems Iris and Iris for health. And I think, you know, we'll, we'll look to adding other inner systems products as time goes on. And as we get a little more experienced with embedding this into, into our solution. Speaker 1 00:09:29 Great. Now, Carmen, can I ask you, what are you most excited about with regards to InterSystems reports? Speaker 2 00:09:35 I think the thing that I'm most excited about is that I know our customers and our partners are super creative and I'm really looking forward to seeing what they're going to be able to do with this, because there's tremendous flexibility here. You can create reports that have, you know, embedded charts, um, all kinds of, you know, graphical elements as well as, you know, the core data. That is what they're interested in. And so I am really optimistic that a lot of our customers are going to find this an easier way to just distribute the information that they need to get out and really put some more of the power in kind of those end users. So they've got report developers, but also giving, you know, some of the end business users, real access to that. Um, the data that they use every day. Speaker 0 00:10:23 Nice. So kind of transitioning to a slightly different topic. One of, uh, InterSystems has a great reputation when it comes to support, right? And I expect it will be no different with this product, but what are the plans for, uh, how this will be supported and what customers can expect to get in the area of support if they start using InterSystems reports? Speaker 2 00:10:41 Yeah. Good question. So, um, yeah, our, our WRC is going to be our source for support. Here we are, you know, this is a, uh, a product that we're, that is powered by lodgey analytics, but we are going to be that frontline for support and we will manage, um, all of that through our WRC. Speaker 1 00:11:01 Great. I have to say a wondering who can use InterSystems reports in when, if I want to try InterSystems reports, how do I get a copy? Yeah. Speaker 2 00:11:08 Shortly we're gonna, it'll be available for ordering through our, uh, standard, uh, ordering systems. And I should, I should mention this is important. We are asking people to sign off for check the box if they would like to use it, but this is included in your InterSystems Iris licensing fee. So there's no additional charge for inner systems reports, but you do need to order it. So this would be for any existing InterSystems Iris customers, as well as any new, um, Iris or Iris for health customers. So, so you can go in, add that to your order and, um, we will enable, you know, make the software and licensing available for you. Speaker 1 00:11:48 Great. Well, that sounds really exciting. Uh, Carmen lobe, thank you so much for joining us today. Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thank you for having me. So thanks again to Carmen to joining us today. Um, you know, Derek, one of the things that I found really interesting about that is that in this point of time where there's so much information that we're able to process with the InterSystems Iris product, we're now able to make it so accessible, not only to the users of the data platform, but to the ultimate end users, be those care providers or logistics, uh, support, uh, representatives. It's really great to see this addition. Speaker 0 00:12:26 Yeah. And I think, uh, one of the things that Carmen mentioned that kind of jumped out at me was, was a, that we've kind of known for awhile that this is valuable, right. But I think there's always been ways to do it, right. There's always ways you can buy, whether it's getting another tool or building your own tool or kind of using the existing, uh, dashboard and analytics functionality that was there. Um, but really this way to bring it all together and make it so much more accessible and easier. And I think what you bring up is a great point about widening that audience. Right. I think making more users have the easy accessibility to a suite of tools like this, I think is really effective. So, um, uh, yeah, it'll be interesting to see, I think, what, how people use that and how they leverage that technology to be able to build those reports. Speaker 1 00:13:10 Absolutely. I completely agree. So that'll do it Speaker 0 00:13:13 For episode seven of data points. Thank you so much again to Carmen for joining us, uh, look out for episode eight, when we're going to be discussing healthcare interoperability with Russ left witch and another one of our fellow course developers has a co-host. So you guys can look forward to that. So we'll see you guys next time on data.