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Omniscope Tutorials

Omniscope Tutorials

Links to Tutorial screencasts and User Guide sections

Below are links to animated screencasts and various sections of the User Guide demonstrating the most common aspects of navigating and preparing Omniscope files.

Questions? Always consult our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page first

Getting Started with Omniscope

Configuring Omniscope files for others requires more knowledge of the many powerful features available to make the most of your data. General overviews on how to use Omniscope and configure .IOK files for others are available both as Omniscope files, and animated audio/video screencasts.

How to Use Omniscope (150 K .IOK) accessible from the Omniscope opening desktop under Learning

View the full screencast - over two hours of Flash video, divided into chapters, with audio narration.

Downloadable Flash screencast .SWF files (242 MB .SWF) for viewing offline...
       download, extract, then double-click startScreencast.html 
       (Warning: 242 MB of disk space will be required).

Tutorials by Topics

Below we provide links to additional screencasts, User Guide pages and Knowledge Base articles relating to specific topics.

Installation

First, install the free Viewer. For questions about installation and activation on Windows, see the User Guide. For non-Windows and advanced administered desktop and network installation options and troubleshooting, please consult the Knowledge Base.

Exploring Omniscope .IOK/.IOM files

The Omniscope free Viewer can open and navigate any published .IOK file of any size. Activated Omniscopes are required to open and navigate .IOM files, which work identically. Once you have Omniscope installed, clicking on an embedded demo, or an Omniscope file in a folder or e-mail attachment will open that file in Omniscope. Omniscope files usually contain many records (rows) and fields (columns). Most views in Omniscope provide ways of selecting specific subsets of records, and either moving (excluding) or keeping (isolating) them in the visible data views. At any time, you can display the details, some or all of the field values for one or more selected records.

To learn more, see the User Guide sections and screencasts below:

 Using .IOK/.IOM files

Activating Omniscope

It you wish to create .IOM/.IOK files using your own data, you must first convert your free Viewer into an activated edition. Depending on the Edition you license, you will be able to open and save data files of any size as either .IOM (Standard Edition) or .IOK (Professional & Enterprise), connect directly to databases, configure persistent Report Pages, refresh and export your data etc. To activate, you must first obtain a license key.

Importing Your Own Data

Omniscope opens or connects to almost any table of data, whether in a spreadsheet or delimited data file (Standard) or a database view/table (Professional & Enterprise only). In the tutorials below, we show how to start with a table of data, open it and configure some typical views in Omniscope. We supply a spreadsheet of data, or you can use your own.

Creating & Managing Report Pages

Once you have configured all the relevant views in Omniscope, you can prepare single (Standard) or multiple (Professional & Enterprise) tabbed multi-view Report Pages with filters set and titles and text annotations describing the points you would like to make on the opening and subsequent slides. Save your file while open to the first Report Page and it will open next time looking just like a presentation. The readers of your file(s) need only click on the named Report Page tabs or Side Bar buttons to view their Report Pages as slides...which are fully interactive!

Reports in 5 minutes: - from raw data and image folder to final report in 5 minutes.

Refreshing Data

Omniscope files can be refreshed from the source data in various ways, using both user-initiated 'pull' and data change/database update-initiated 'push' (Professional & Enterprise only). This section of the User Guide introduces the options for keeping the data up to date.

Introducing the Tools Menu

The Tools menu on the Main Toolbar contains many options for increasing the usability of your files by changing languages, setting options to display the details associated with selected records, and adding links to your files.

Using & Adding Links (local and web)

Omniscope files can include links to documents, files and web pages available on the same local network, or remotely over the Internet. Omniscope also includes a Web View, which means that related pages on the web can be displayed within Omniscope, and/or in your default browser. The tutorials below demonstrate adding adding web links, and how to use the embedded, pre-configured links to popular online information services like Google, eBay, Wikipedia, or financial information web services including Bloomberg, Reuters, etc.

Adding and Working with Images

Omniscope can embed one or more sets of images into each file. The size of the resulting Omniscope file can be scaled down by decreasing the resolution of the embedded pictures.

Working with Maps

Omniscope files can include embedded vector maps, or the Web View can be used to overlay data on Google Maps, creating an interactive, filterable 'mash-up'. If you add a map into an .IOK file, and send the file to someone else, the map will be embedded or downloaded and installed when they open the Omniscope file. To see the Maps available, visit our Maps Library.