Yellowfin Launches Android App for Mobile BI

Business intelligence (BI) vendor Yellowfin has launched a new HTML 5 application for Android devices, offering the same feel and functionality as its existing native applications for iPad and iPhone.

The application is available on Android version 4.1, and like Yellowfin's other mobile applications, comes as part of a standard Yellowfin license. This latest application replaces Yellowfin's original native Android app released in February 2011.

"The new application brings Yellowfin's support for Android devices into line with its industry acclaimed and award-winning support for Apple's iOS platform," said Yellowfin CEO Glen Rabie in a statement. "Yellowfin for Android now integrates Yellowfin's renowned ease-of-use and collaborative capabilities to deliver a mobile BI application based on the intuitive, interactive, and collaborative principles underpinning the world's foremost social media platforms and applications."

The application is available for free download from the Android Marketplace and complements Yellowfin's native applications for iPad and iPhone, released in November 2011 and April 2012 respectively.

Yellowfin's new Android application supports device multi-touch interfaces and includes a completely restyled user interface that mirrors Yellowfin's current apps for iOS, enabling users to view all their dashboard tabs and favorites at a glance, interact with reports, and toggle between chart and table mode with a single swipe. A dropdown inbox allows users to control all information delivery, access, and dissemination from one central location. The new UI also makes knowledge sharing easier, allowing users to comment on, annotate, and email reports.

Users can subscribe to and save favorite reports, filter results, drill down and through reports, sort data, and set alerts. Any reports created via the browser are immediately ready for mobile distribution.

Enriched analytical capabilities include the ability to apply series selection and section reports. Series selection allows users to dynamically change the metric or metrics that are being displayed on charts, enabling easier interpretation of charts that are crowded or have different scales. Section reports allow users to split a report into multiple sections to compare categorical information and identify trends.

Rabie said the new application would deliver a compelling mobile reporting and analytics experience by embracing the consumerizaiton of BI and enterprise IT at large.

"Above all else, we want to offer business people a genuinely enjoyable, collaborative user experience, so the application has been designed with a consumer mentality front of mind," he said. "We've looked at how people like to use leisure-oriented mobile applications and interact and share content on popular social media platforms, and replicated that experience in a business environment. As with Yellowfin's applications for iOS, we wanted to ensure that customers accessing BI from Android-based mobile devices could also engage with their BI content, and each other, in an immersive and enjoyable fashion."

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