Behind the scenes of the making of TARGIT Decision Suite 2019

Originally published March 16, 2020. Updated March 20, 2024
Jakob Bak
Jakob Bak
3 min read
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Have you ever wondered what it looks like in the TARGIT development department as we prepare for the yearly major upgrade of TARGIT Decision Suite? I thought it would be fun to celebrate the release by drawing back the curtain a bit.

The making of a truly excellent software upgrade has so much to do with the minds behind it, in addition to the market trends and feedback from our customers. It is particularly important when those diverse brains come together to challenge you to think differently about something or find a new way around an old problem.

 

Human talent is key

 

It’s this type of team thinking that makes great things happen. And with so many great minds with so many different backgrounds and valuable experiences noodling away at how to make TARGIT Decision Suite better than ever, it’s no wonder that this is one of our strongest releases.


The Development team ranges from four months to 26 years of seniority at TARGIT. And if you were wondering, they make up an age range of 21-years-old to 61-years-old, but I won’t tell you who falls on which end of that spectrum 😄 - whether relative newbie or TARGIT lifer, we all have our fingerprints on TARGIT Decision Suite 2019.


Truly though, levels of seniority or age are not what make a critical thinker and creative software developer. One of my favorite stories resulting in the making of a new 2019 feature is when our new UX designer, Emma, asked the other very experienced colleagues on the development team why it was not possible to remove a single drill on a chart by simply clicking the chart element again. There was a long pause in the room. Well … because we hadn’t thought of it!

Obviously, the ability to remove a single drill with a click is now available in TARGIT Decision Suite 2019. And that’s just one of the wide range of new features available in the new release. It’s hard for me to even select a single favorite.

 

What we love

 

What we truly love about the 2019 version is the fact that it enables all of our users – both experienced TARGIT experts and brand new users – to implement their creative ideas around dashboard and report design. The combination of the new free flow canvas and multiple layouts erases any technical restrictions to creating the design you want for any device you want.

In previous TARGIT versions, the options for building beautiful dashboards were somewhat limited. Decision Suite 2019 truly lifts TARGIT into a modern platform with unrestricted design experience. Everything works smoothly and intuitively.

New dashboard capabilities such as these are a great improvement for the Designers who are working to create the most insightful dashboards, but the Consumers are going to reap the benefits as well. The vast majority of TARGIT users are Information Consumers who get their key metrics delivered to them in user-friendly dashboards. Now, those dashboards are more informative and more elegant. We believe that makes a difference in their daily work lives.


But that’s me. If you ask my colleague, TARGIT Core Developer Uffe Refsgaard, he’ll tell you his favorite feature of TARGIT Decision Suite 2019 is the brand new report engine:

 

As impressive as the new free flow dashboard design is in 2019, the new feature that I personally am most proud of is the new report engine. When we came up with the concept for the new reports, we looked at each other and said, ‘Can we really make it that simple?

 

 

Yes we could. In TARGIT 2019, any Designer can create reports because it works exactly the same way as creating dashboards. Are dashboards and reports the same in 2019 then? Nope! Reports are beefed up in several ways. They contain multiple pages, they intelligently span long crosstabs across multiple pages and can even allow you to specify exactly how it should do so.

 

Simple things like designing headers and footers and inserting page numbers also just works. And we have much more in the pipeline. I'm already working on the next update where you will be able to repeat specific pages over dimensions or anything else, really. The fact that you can make reports so simple and set up automatic scheduling in a few clicks is amazing. None of our competitors have anything that comes close if you ask me.

 

You can read more about all the new canvas, new report engine, and all of the biggest new feature updates in this post.


We went through a lot of late nights and weekend testing sessions to ensure that everything performed the way we set out to make it. Ease of use and user empowerment were our goals, and we weren’t going to settle for anything less.


Of course, every major development accomplishment must be celebrated. Our favorite way to do that is with giant steaks at a steakhouse not far from TARGIT headquarters in Aalborg, Denmark.

We’re so excited for you to experience these new features and functions. Now that TARGIT Decision Suite 2019 is here, we’re already thinking about TARGIT Decision Suite 2020.

If you haven’t watched the official webinar, register here to see it all in action. Enjoy!

See TARGIT Decision Suite 2019 in action

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Originally published April 24, 2019. Updated March 20, 2024

Jakob Bak
Written by

Jakob Bak

Head of Development