Hands down, Informer is the icing on the cake!
Updated January 07, 2016
Hands down, Informer is the icing on the cake!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Informer 4.1
Modules Used
- Web Reporting and Dashboards
Overall Satisfaction with Entrinsik Informer
Entrinsik Informer Web Reporting is being used by most departments at Juniata College. We currently have a few more departments to train and move to using Informer. It is unbelievably easy for end users to grasp, which makes our job of training end users very easy. One of our Vice Presidents is very excited about the dashboard feature. We have been able to create dashboards for him to know exactly where the college stands on budget vs. actual spending at a moments notice. In addition to other dashboards that show total deposited applicants along with their demographic and financial information which is one of the most important factors in determining the College's future budget.
- Ease of Use - This product is almost self explanatory. Very little training is needed. The training videos developed by Entrinsik are wonderful.
- Using javascript for calculated columns is a big plus as it's a language that many employees know, or can learn.
- Dashboards - this product is the icing on the cake. No need to purchase and learn a different software package. It's all there with Entrinsik Informer.
- I think the most difficult task in Informer was setting up the security. It's very flexible, which is both good and bad. I would like to see more detailed instructions or examples of different security settings.
- Would love to have a feature on the dashboards that would allow a load "live" without having to "refresh". I would like to see this as a choice for refresh on opening or manually by user.
In the past we have used Query Builder and Crystal Reports. Query Builder was very difficult for end users to learn, and only created reports, there was no other features such as charting or dashboards. When we used Crystal Reports, it was version 8, and again it did not have any features other than reporting, and it was more costly than Informer. Hands down, Informer is very cost effective and packed full of features that the other products do not have.
Using Entrinsik Informer
3 - Skills required to support Entrinsik Informer include having an understanding of large relational databases and keys, and previous programming experience, preferably JavaScript. Experience in setting up software security would also be helpful in supporting Informer.
Using Entrinsik
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Basic reports are very easy. As easy as drag and drop.
- Linking of files is a great feature to allow users to pull data from more than one file at a time. It saves the programmers a lot of time in that they don't have to write a lot of calculated fields.
- Dashboards are a dream. If you have a report that you would like to show graphically, the dashboard feature is pretty much just a fill in the blank process. Very easy to create a graph or chart.
- The biggest obstacle that our employees had to overcome was normalizing the data. Normalization is not a term that they are familiar with coming from a multi-valued field database.
- Before Informer, we created calculated fields for our end users if data resided in a different file from the one they were working from. With Informer, we no longer need to create as many fields and the end users are not particularly happy about looking for the fields in their original files.