Category: Finding

Concept & Category view – comparable data in data-tree

Purpose

Our data-tree has different views, Concept & Category view is the best to find the same indicators for different countries or regions. This is especially useful if you don't want to leave the Analytics tab to find a time series or if you simply prefer the logic of finding data via a tree structure.

What is the 'Concept & Category view'?

The Concept & Category view groups data by similar key indicators or data concepts (i.e., total population data from Eurostat, forecast GDP data from IMF WEO or employment data from national sources). Once a concept is selected, you can choose from a list of countries that have comparable data for that concept.

Note that not everything is connected by concept and some data aren't comparable.

How to use it?

First, you’ll need to decide if you want to select from All the sources or only the National sources.

Let's say that we want to find government debt data from Eurostat. It is an international source; we’ll use All sources as an entry point. Select one of the main categories to view a list of data sources. Then, click on the source you’re interested in and navigate to the relevant concept.

Once you’ve selected a concept, a list of comparable countries will appear below. If you want to select multiple countries at once, hold down the Ctrl button.

When you’re done, click here to add the selected series to the document.

Overview in Browse activity tab – comparing main indicators

Purpose

With Browse tab's Overview you can quickly find the same indicator for different countries. With just a few clicks you can visualize the data as a simple chart and, if necessary, move it to Analytics to develop further. The Overview gives you access to a collection of key indicators, generated per country.

How to use it?

Selection of key indicators is displayed by category in the Actions ribbon. Keep in mind that sources provide a varied offering of data, so you may not find the same indicators for every country you view. Note that some of the panels can be expanded.
Highlight a country and click on the indicator to generate a simple line chart. To compare the data to other countries, navigate back to the Actions ribbon, and click on 'Add to active'.

Moving data to a file

If you want to apply calculations to the data, or make changes to the chart, click on the orange A button. This will transfer the selected time series to a document in Analytics tab.

Using Favorites

Purpose

Favorites is a way of creating an easy-to-navigate reference list of time series. Here you will be introduced to two main use cases for favorites, looking at how to mark time series as favorites, saving them to different accounts, how to organize your favorites into folders, and adding comments.

What is this helpful for?

There are two main use cases for favorites:

  • quick access to time series
  • consistent data use across teams

Favorites can be saved to your personal account for quick access to the time series you use most often.
Alternatively, if the choice of time series needs to remain consistent across a department or company, you can use favorites as a reference list. So, instead of having to check for example which time series to use for German GDP, you can use the favorites tab to access the correct series directly.

How it works

Let’s assume that you have the series you want to favorite on the screen. Right click on this series and select add to favorites list from the context menu that pops up.

Once this option is selected, a dialog box will appear, prompting you to select an account.

When you’re not in the Favorites tab, favorited series will be marked in the tree with a yellow star. So, to avoid having a multitude of yellow stars visible to everyone, make sure to select an account based on how you’ll be using the favorite. If it’s simply for your personal convenience, it’s best to save it to your personal account. If the purpose is to create a reference list that your colleagues should use, then place it in the department or company account, accordingly.

Favorites folders

If you plan to tag more than a handful of favorites, you’ll want to organize them into groups using the 'New Folder' button, especially when it’s for department- or company-wide reference. You can use the cut or copy, and paste command to add time series to the relevant folders.

Once you have created folders for your favorites, you can tag and save series directly to the relevant folder.

Once you have created folders for your favorites, you can tag and save series directly to the relevant folder. It’s common that an organization or department may want to specify which of these time series should be used. In this case, you simply tag the given series as a favorite and save it to the relevant public account.

Comments

Adding comments

It is worth to mention that there is a field for adding comments when saving a favorite – this can be used to provide information about why the series has been tagged.

Highlighting comments

If you open the Favorites tab you’ll notice the yellow star, this is used throughout the application to indicate that a series has been favorited. Hovering the cursor over the star will display the comment, as well as who added it, and a time stamp.

Editing the comments

If you want to edit the comment, highlight the relevant series, press F2 or right click and select Edit favorite(s) from the context menu.

Creating Favorites from different activities

You can create favorites when viewing time series in Browse, Analytics, Search and even in the Excel add-on. Simply follow steps mentioned above.

Using Bookmarks

Purpose

Simply put, bookmarks can be used to organize data by category, source, release and country to create a customized data tree, which you can access through a separate tab. Bookmarks allow you to collect the data most relevant to you, your department, or organization and then group it in a way that suits your needs.

What is this helpful for?

As we mentioned earlier, blue bookmark icons will be visible beside all bookmarked entities, throughout the database tree. These icons are not only visible to the person who created the bookmark, but also to all the users who have access to the account the bookmark is saved under. You can see more information about a bookmark, such as the title, comment, and who created it, by holding your cursor over the icon.

How it works?

Let’s say you often use Flow of Funds data for the United States, and want to make it easy to access a selection of those indicators you typically review. Start by finding the relevant category you want to create a bookmark for, in this case, Flow of Funds for the United States. Hover the cursor over the entity to activate the bookmark icon and click on it to open the Add bookmark dialog.

Let’s change the title to something easily identifiable and add a comment for reference. At this point you should select whether you want to create this bookmark for personal, or shared use. All bookmarked entities are indicated with a blue flag, in the database. So, if you save your bookmark to a department or company account, the people included in that account will also have the blue bookmark icons visible in their application.

How to access bookmarked data?

To access the bookmarks you’ve added, click on the Bookmarks tab in Browse or Analytics tab. If you want to organize your bookmarks further, you can arrange them into various groups by adding folders.

All bookmarks are arranged in a tree structure, with expandable subcategories. If you want to know where in the database a bookmark derives from, click on the circle icon. This will open the Time series tab at the point in the database that the bookmark refers to.

Creating bookmarks from different activities

Bookmarks can be created and accessed from anywhere in the application where data is presented in a tree structure, so, Browse and Analytics, as well as from the Excel add-in.

Locate series in Tree

Overview

Most time series are available in more than one view of the database, such as Source & Release or Concept & Category. 'Locate series in Tree' is an action that makes it easy to hop between these different views when looking at a particular series.

Locate series in tree in

Search activity

The first case we’ll look at is when you come across a series without having looked it up in the Tree, for example, via Search, and want to see where it is located in the Tree. Once you find your series in the list of results, select it, navigate to the actions tab and find the 'Locate in Tree' group. Multiple options will be available, depending on which database views the selected series can be found in.

You’ll notice that the actions groups are assigned colors. The color of a group indicates where the action will take place. In this case, the group is orange, the same color as the Analytics tab. So, once you select a database view, the series will be shown in the Analytics tab.

Analytics activity

Next, we’ll look at quickly switching between different database views for a selected series, without manually navigating the database. A typical case for using the action this way is when you’re working in Analytics, and want to look into one of the series in a chart. This is especially useful if you’re looking at a chart someone else made, and you want to find out more about the data they used.

As you can see here, we’ve added the US industrial production series we looked up earlier, to an Analytics document. Let’s say you want to see what other data is available from the source. Navigate up to the Actions tab again, click on by source and you’ll see a new tree structure appear on the left. If you want to see a list of equivalent series for other countries, click on by concept. You’ll notice that this time, the Action group is orange, which is why the data is being displayed in Analytics, and not in Browse, as before.

Other types of in-house series

Beside Account and Excel in-house you can create other in-house series with Macrobond:

Document in-house series

If you need one-time data that will be accessible only in that file it's what you were looking for. Its prefix is ih:mb:doc. For more information see Document series – adding external data.

Calculated in-house series

If you have a calculation in one place/file and want to use it elsewhere then you can create calculated in-house which will save an entire file with series needed for this calculation. It can be edited later. Its prefix has double naming (for file and series) ih:mb:priv:calc1:series1. For more information see Calculated in-house series – saving your own calculation.

External in-house series

You can also use in-house data from other sources like Bloomberg, Factset or from your own SQL database or APIs. For more information about these solutions see Connect Macrobond to your data.

Excel in-house – creating & managing

Purpose and warning

If you want to work with data that is not available in Macrobond, there are multiple options for doing so: Account in–house, SQL and WebAPI Series providers and Excel in-house. If you prefer to store in-house data on your company computers or servers but still want to use the data in Macrobond SQL Connector and WebAPI Series provider are recommended solutions.

Excel in-house also allows to work with data that is stored and processed only within your company.

We discourage use of Excel in-house. This in-house mechanism depends on functionality exposed by MS Excel which is not reliable. It's especially problematic when Excel documents are stored on network shares and accessed by multiple users simultaneously. We've also seen cases of client data loss where information stored only on a local PC of the user was not covered with backup.

 

How it works?

Excel in-house creates a link between the application and an Excel file. This data, and any Macrobond documents made with it, can still be accessed by, and shared between you and your colleagues, if anyone who wants to use it has access to the Excel file the data is stored in.

Creating Excel in-house

You can either upload series directly from within the application, or by creating a template in Excel. All Excel in-house series starts by default from ih:xl but xl can be changed.

To start uploading a series open the My series tab which you’ll find in a list of additional activities. Select Excel in-house from the drop-down menu, and then click on the 'New series' button.

Next, you’ll need to fill in the basic, required information for the series:

  • Series name - unique code used to find series in the application
  • Description - title of the time series
  • Frequency, Start date, Region and Category
  • Optional information - if you’d like to classify the series further

You will need to add direct link to the Excel file where the data is stored. For information how to do this see paragraph below.

How to link Excel file?

Once you’ve filled in the necessary information, you can create the link to your data set in Excel. Open the Excel file with your data in it and make sure to save the file if you haven't done so yet. Copy the columns you want to add data from. Then, go back to the application and click Paste Excel link.

Because we included the dates column in our selection, Macrobond will automatically add frequency and start date information from the file. Otherwise, you’ll need to do so manually. Finally, you can click on OK to complete the task.

Range vs Entire column

Let’s say you intend to add more values to this series at a later point in time. You might have noticed that in the example above we selected whole columns, rather than just those cells that were populated with data. If you selected the entire column when creating the link, Macrobond automatically includes these new values the next time you access this series in the application.

So, for example, if we add two new dates to our file, the application will reflect these changes. If the time series is already open in the application when you update the data set in Excel, simply click on the F5 button, to refresh the series with its latest values.

Adding Excel in-house to a chart

To access in-house series, go to Analytics or Browse tab and select the Excel in-house database from the drop-down menu. Remember to refresh the data tree to show the series you’ve just added.

To add it to a chart, double-click on it or use red ' + ' sign.

Sharing Excel in-house

Sharing Excel in-house requires some preparation from you and your colleagues.

Location of files

First, please make sure that the Excel spreadsheets are in the same location for your colleagues. If you have them in, say, C:/Excel files/, then the same files must be located on your colleague’s computer under C:/Excel files/.

If the spreadsheets are stored on a network drive, then there’s no need to copy them to a local drive, but make sure your colleague has access to the network drive.

Settings for sharing

After ensuring the above conditions are met, you need to create Configuration file path. To do this go to Configuration > Settings > My series (for MB pre-1.28: Edit > Settings > My series), select Add > Excel. Choose the name, prefix (xl in ih:xl) and Configuration file path. Your colleagues can then copy them to their own machine and access in-house Excel series.

Configuration file

What is the Configuration file?

Under Configuration file path you should have a special xml file with the path to Excel file inside it. The xml file shouldn't be replaced with anything else.

How to create the Configuration file?

Go to Configuration > Settings > My series (for MB pre-1.28: Edit > Settings > My series) and select Add >Excel. You will see 'Connector type: Excel' with ready new xml file - it is created automatically.

How to point to the Configuration file?

Press on '...' icon next to configuration file path to make the application point towards the right XML file. For example, it might be under:
C:\Users\user.name\AppData\Local\Macrobond Financial\Excel Provider

How to change path inside XML file?

Open xml file (in Notepad) and change row:

<xl:Path>\\mgi-file1\userdata$\HomeFolder\adunning\Desktop\mb_test.xlsx</xl:Path>

to:

<xl:Path>your network drive path name</xl:Path>

After this save xml file and share it with your colleagues or save it in a shared drive and provide path/link to your colleagues.

Embedding Excel in-house

Excel in-house can be embedded in the document but nobody else will see it.

This is unfortunately how things works. If metadata for data source isn't defined, main-app checks what values are embedded and shows them. In the case of Excel in-house most probably data source is defined in metadata, so the embedded data will not be considered.

Editing Excel in-house

How it works and what is important?

Because Excel in-house series are not stored in the application, managing them differs from the way you modify Account in-house series. The series you access via the Excel in-house solution are simply being mirrored from a particular file in a particular location. Note that:

  • Any changes to a series should be made in the Excel file, not in the application.
  • If you move or rename the Excel file containing your data, the link with Macrobond will be broken. So, remember to update this information in the application.

How to edit Excel in-house series?

Any changes you make to your data set in the linked Excel file will automatically be reflected in the application.

To edit the settings of a series, go to the My series tab, select Excel in-house and navigate to the series.
You can also find it from Analytics or Browse tab. In such case you need to navigate to series and in Actions ribbon select My series > Go to in-house series.
After that select one of the two options that are presented:

  1. Open in Excel – this will open the Excel file directly from Macrobond. Use it when you want to edit data.
  2. Edit link – allows you to access series settings:
  • Modify the reference information about a series, e.g. Description or Category.
  • Update the location or name of the file under path.
  • Edit the data range by changing which cells are being referenced for data.


Click OK to complete the task.

Deleting Excel in-house

To delete an Excel in-house series, go to the My series tab, select Excel in-house and navigate to the series or you can find it from Analytics or Browse tab. In such case you need to navigate to series and in Actions ribbon select My series > Delete in-house series.

A warning will pop up, confirm it to proceed.