Omniture Excel Client – How to Deal with Bugs

The Omniture Excel Client Tool is indispensable for reporting purposes.  It is also as sensitive as Middle East politics.  I have very little idea of how it technically works, but over the years I’ve found some practices which help make the tool more reliable. 

First, how do you know the tool is broken?  Here are some things I’ve seen:

1)      Data Blocks return all “0’s” where last week there was real data.

2)      Line-items you’ve defined come up now as “Undefined” or “Unspecified”.

3)      Instead of the data-block, you get an Excel version of the Omniture Login screen.

4)      Your date-range is nonsensical (such as dates in the 1990’s).

5)      You get a “No Data Returned” message when you know data should exist.

6)      On “refresh”, the data-block disappears and nothing happens.

7)      The structure of the Data Block changes  (e.g. dates are now left-right instead of top-down)

8)      You get error messages telling you that an Excel-referenced value is missing.

If any of these happens, there’s a bug.  Here are some tips to try to fix it:

1)      Logout, then login again. 

2)      If you’re trying “Refresh All”, go to each worksheet and use “Refresh Worksheet” instead (Refresh All is notoriously unreliable).

3)      Quit Excel and re-enter, opening only the Omniture-fed document (other Excel Documents might be confusing the Excel Client).

4)      Do a “Edit Data Block”, don’t change anything, and refresh the request manually.

5)      Make sure there are no other people logged on as you in either Excel Client or SiteCatalyst (I don’t think this affects SiteCatalyst, but I know it effects Excel Client).

6)      If you’ve renamed the document recently, go back to the earlier version and refresh that one instead (this is a tip for symptom #8 above).

7)      Wait an hour or two, use a different computer, change your IP address, or use a proxy server (I think bugs are specific to different Omniture servers).

To avoid bugs, here are some tips:

1)      Keep all Omniture Data Blocks in one worksheet, with no formatting, and have forward facing, pretty tables in other tabs.

2)      Never insert, delete, or move columns, rows, or cells in the worksheet with SiteCatalyst Data Blocks.

3)      Excel-referenced values should be on the same worksheet as the Data Blocks, and should be kept to a minimum.

4)      Don’t move around in Excel when you’re refreshing a Worksheet.

5)      When designing the Data Blocks, decide whether to have data going top-down or left-right, and keep that consistent.

6)      Use the same login when creating multiple Data Blocks.  Also use the same Excel version (2003 or 2007) when constructing the document.

7)      The tab with the Data Blocks should be called something very simple – no caps, spaces, or strange characters.

If anyone has other tips or tricks, please let me know.  The last thing I ever want to do is call Omniture and open a ticket. 

Comments

[Kailee]

I've experienced a lot of bugs with Site Catalyst Version 14, Discover and also excel client. One of the major problems with excel client (for at least 2 months now) is that when I refresh the data block, some of my metrics would be missing. This obviously is interfering with many of our weekly KPI reports. I have found that sometimes, if you just edit the data block then reinsert it then it will work. Another option is that wait for a day and then login again. This hasn't always worked. Its very inconsistent.

[paul legutko]

Yes we've also seen an increase in buginess in Excel Client -- they pushed an update sometime at the end of May, which has interfered with many reports.

Most of the editing I've done recently on Excel Client data has been done on earlier versions on Excel Client, with old versions of Excel (2000 or 2003). These seem cleaner. To get an older version of Excel Client, login to 13.5 and re-install from that interface.

Good Luck,
Paul

[darryl]

With the Omniture Excel plugin spreadhseet open I cannot toggle (Alt+Tab) between other Excel spreadsheets! Most frustrating especially as this is required to access various data sources at once. Any help welcomed!!