Entrinsik Informer vs. Google Charts

Most schools that use Colleague (the Student Information System) have either UniData or SQL Server as the back-end database. If a school is currently a UniData school but has plans to move to SQL Server in the relatively near future then I'd advise against moving forward with Informer until after the conversion to SQL Server. There is a tool that will convert some reports, but there are many instances where the tool won't successfully convert the report and it will need to be re-written.

Incentivized

Google Charts is perfectly suited for most presentations that are data oriented. There's not much of a limit on the type of table or chart you can create, and being able to integrate with Google Sheets just makes things even easier if you've already got the data stored somewhere. It works well on desktop browsers, Iphones, and Android phones. The only drawback I've been able to find is for those that prefer to have a desktop application.

Incentivized

• Informer is pretty user-friendly. When teaching other employees how to use Informer, I typically don't have to repeat any steps or further explain how to do certain tasks because of how user-friendly it is.
• Reports in Informer are kept in a list that can be filtered by user, specific tags, or even by how recent the report was made or run. This makes it very quick and easy to find and run a specific report.
• Informer has many options for downloading the report output, including text (txt), comma separated values (csv), and even PDF.

Incentivized

• Google Charts is free so a terrific tool for universities and students
• Provides new users that need charts an inventory and gallery of potential charts and types to visualize data
• The software is useful to add charts and data for websites with limited effort but with success

Incentivized

• Informer needs more predefined date formats in its Column Display Editor. The existing 5 do not meet everyone's needs.
• It's a minor UI issue, but Informer's Edit Columns view stutters and displays empty space when scrolling left or right. It may be because I'm using Safari on Mac OS X, and Informer isn't designed for input devices that scroll with "momentum" (as Apple calls it).
• The Reports Listing takes longer to load reports than I believe it should. At least a progress bar displays to tell you when it's complete.

Incentivized

• I would like a couple more introductory videos or a live chat option for when you run into an issue. I think this is a Google-wide problem, not only linked to Google Charts.
• I have run into some issues with the Dynamic Data but also admittedly could potentially dive in deeper and investigate.
• It would be great if Google Charts made it possible to integrate Google Chat into the platform.

Incentivized

Informer has been handily meeting most of our reporting needs, and we've created a library of hundreds of reports that are used every day. They have a terrific support service to help when you have questions, and I've found them to be great at listening to what customers would like and adding new features. They are a small company that really listens and really cares, and I've been very pleased over the past few years getting to know them.

Google Charts is a good product. It's widely supported with deep documentation and a large community. But for me, it wasn't customizable enough. When we started with simple charts, it was great, but as we got deeper and more complex, our needs outgrew the library. If I was going forward, I would choose a more barebones library with more freedom and extensibility.

Incentivized

Since I don't know code, there are sometimes calculations that are beyond my knowledge to create. It would also be great to be able to format multiple columns at once (center, for instance), rather than having to format them individually.

Incentivized

Requires knowledge of Javascript, which can be difficult for a beginner. A business analyst often isn't as technically minded as a developer so collaboration is often required to produce a correct chart for the purpose required. However, the customisation capable due to this creates much better looking charts compared to other tools.

Incentivized

We have 10 concurrent licenses and we average between 6-8 at any given time during the day; and we host the application.

Google charts is always available and provides fast output.

Connectivity is occasionally very slow.

Always able to get acceptable solutions in reasonable time from friendly support staff. Initial contact is always with knowledgeable person - not someone reading from a script trying to screen calls. Thanks Entrinsik for being in tune with my needs.

Incentivized

Google Charts has a very good documentation that we can just go in there and find the stuff we need to implement our solutions on Google Charts. Plus, if we get stuck, we can also email the support and they are very responsive. So overall, the support is very satisfying.

Incentivized

The online training was solely done through self training on google's guide to charts.

We bought the product on a Thursday morning, and we were writing reports on Friday afternoon. We did take about a month to manage the Mapping, Linking and Security to allow us to open it up across campus. We are now mapping from as many third-party vendors as we can to enable the creation of more ad-hoc reporting.

Easy to implement

Our organization used to use the built in reporting tool for Datatel, but it required more knowledge about SQL so only a handful of users could actually use it. There was no customization of the output or ability to schedule the queries. If you wanted something more complex than what was available, then the programmers needed to write an extraction program to pull the data you needed

Incentivized

In comparison to Microsoft Power BI, Google Charts has more ease of use for businesses who simply need a way to visually display their data from their reports. Although Power BI may be more robust in more complicated data compilation, Google Charts can still be able to do some of the basics that Power BI delivers.

Google Charts is essential for quick, easy, reporting. There are opportunities for advanced features.

• We have definitely improved customer service due to better reporting using Informer. All departments are better empowered to help our students in a more timely and accurate manner.
• Using Informer has given us the ability to eliminate functionality within our ERP system and offload reporting to a data store instead of the transactional system. This has resulted in successfully upgrading our core systems and improved response times.

• teams were easily able to create charts and find out progress on our learning courses and thus take actionable insights to their managers, professors
• students could also know their progress on various courses from one single view, same for instructors in terms of imparting education
• sales team could learn which kind of courses sold more to focus more on those areas

Incentivized