Dan Murray’s Tableau Best Practices Top 10 List
1. Avoid the use of quick filters on dashboards to improve load times. Use cross tabs, heat maps and highlight table filters….sometimes pie charts work for this purpose as well. 2. Keep dashboards to 4 panes and imagine a Z pattern of importance from upper left to lower right. 3. Don’t build grids or pivot-table-looking […]
Setting up a Drupal 7 Locations Map
It’s not uncommon for a client to have multiple locations within their organization. When those locations are updated and changing frequently, a flexible locations map page on the client’s website is essential. We’ve implemented several solutions to this challenge. On one end of the spectrum, we’ve created custom map backgrounds and JavaScript to plot points […]
Customizing Twitter Sharing with AddThis and Drupal
If you missed my intro into getting AddThis installed and configured, you can view it here. Requirements Drupal 6+ CCK AddThis (6.x through 7.x-2.x) Optional Maxlength After getting AddThis up and running (see previous post), you can customize AddThis a bit more to give you / your end-users even more control. You can create a custom […]
MSTSC Commands and Creating a Custom Remote Desktop Shortcut
Overview This article explains some of the parameters available when using MSTSC.exe to open a remote desktop connection. These commands can also be applied to create a remote desktop connection shortcut with custom set parameters. This article is a continuation of the Enabling Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and MSTSC article. MSTSC Parameters Several parameters are available. […]
PPC Management – Don’t Set It and Forget It
Anyone can set up an account in Google AdWords or Microsoft adCenter and run an ad. Proper PPC management is much more involved than that. One must decide which keywords to target, write intelligent ad copy, and create a landing page optimized for conversions. All parts must work cohesively with one another or you will […]
Enabling Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and Using MSTSC
Overview This article explains how to enable remote desktop on a Windows machine and some of the basic syntax to be able to remote on to a machine. This article is in conjunction with the MSTSC Commands and Creating a Custom Remote Desktop Shortcut article. Enabling RDP in Windows 7 Right click on your My Computer icon […]
2011 wrap up.
It’s been a remarkable year for me; without a doubt the best year of my career (ever). I was fortunate enough to be invited to give presentations on Tableau and SQL Server in Canada, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Louisiana and Michigan. I delivered 16 presentations this year (for a total of 27 since my first talk […]
How do I overwrite SQL generated by a View?
There are several reasons to overwrite an SQL query generated by a view whether it’s to improve performance or join to tables not available to the view. After setting up the view, create a module with a function using hook_views_pre_execute. function [module name]_views_pre_execute(&$view) { if($view->name==”[view name]”) { $sql = “[the new query […]
How to add your personal private/protected Twitter account to Drupal
(Note: In this post I use the terms private and protected interchangeably.) There are times you may want to have your protected Tweets available on your site. Perhaps protected Tweets are available to your members but not necessarily the world at large. Non-private accounts are easy enough to pull: These feeds are easily accesible using […]
Undeliverable Message and 451 Greylisted
Overview/Problem This article explains how to fix the 451 Greylisted, System Administrator message that is received when you send an email to someone that has the same domain name. Example: If you had the email person1@domain.com and were trying to email person2@domain.com, you will get a message from the system administrator with a message regarding […]
