Build no-code games with Squirrel365

You probably don’t think of Squirrel365 as a tool to build no-code games, but you might be excited to know that it is in fact possible!

One of the joyful things about creating software is seeing the totally unexpected things that people do with it, and Squirrel365 is no exception. No-code games were not something we expected people to create with Squirrel when we released it, but that is exactly what some of our users have done. Check out these examples below, and remember – these are all powered by the logic of a spreadsheet!

Sliding Tile Puzzle

Created by Rob Scott, this addictive sliding tile puzzle game will take you back to your childhood days. It’s still just as fun, and just as challenging.

Play the Sliding tile puzzle game

Tetris

The Squirrel team set a challenge to the community members to see who could recreate Tetris using Squirrel365. Two people rose to the occasion! Both versions are pretty faithful to the original…

Play Tetris by Graham Ames

Play Tetris by Josh Tapley

Wordle

Josh Tapley also recreated this popular Wordle game. However, the Squirrel version allows the user to play over and over again, meaning the fun never ends! We think it should be called ‘Squirdle’!

Play Squirrel Wordle

Pokedex

This mobile version of a Pokedex was created by Josh Tapley. We’re loving the use of animated characters and the randomize button!

Play Pokedex

Sport of Kings

Rich Harvey was inspired by a classic for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum (if you are old enough to remember that). This horse racing game allows you to challenge your friends to pick a winner. Once the race is started only Squirrel knows who is going to win, watch events unfold and see who will get to the line first.

Play Sport of Kings

Want to make a no-code game in Squirrel?

Whack-a-Squirrel… tutorial

If you are keen to make a game in Squirrel but aren’t sure where to start… try out our step-by-step tutorial that guides you through creating a simple whack-a-squirrel game.

Try the whack-a-squirrel tutorial

Share your Squirrel Games!

We’d love to see what games you can create with Squirrel365. All you need is your spreadsheet skills and some imagination! Make sure you post them on the Squirrel Community…

Happy Squirrelin’

Education Geographics is an organisation that provides demographic analysis to help schools to plan, manage and market themselves.

The tool that Education Geographics used previously was nearing its end-of-life. They needed to find an alternative solution quickly to ensure stability of their service. At the same time their dashboard needed an upgrade in terms of design.

It was not acceptable for the end users to be dependent on their own capabilities to select the correct analysis options. Tools such as PowerBI and Tableau were quickly ruled out, due to the potential learning curve for their users. The Education Geographics team planned to build the solution themselves. A flexible, no-code software tool was essential to minimise overall cost and time.

On top of this, the dashboard was over 7 years old and looked very dated. Over time, the user experience had also become sub-optimal and user engagement had dropped as a result.

Squirrel365 is the perfect solution!

After researching various other tools and set-ups, it became clear that Squirrel365 and its flexible, no-code capabilities would be the perfect tool for the build of their new dashboard. They combined this with InfoBurst with its secure and sophisticated data connection layer.

They created a new flagship demographic app comprised of six main modules including powerful ESRI based mapping. Users can drill into detail sections within the modules, accessing a client-specific mini-census of some 800 demographic variables, and a collection of census-based time series charts going back ten years.

“Squirrel is no code, affordable, and triggered a total makeover of our niche dashboard product – our clients love it. With an above and beyond approach to support and innovation, the Squirrel365 team is more of a business partner than a service provider”.
Reg Kernke – CEO Education Geographics

Improving the design and UX

Education Geographics used the Squirrel Design Service and a comprehensive design review was undertaken early in the project. Several improvements to the navigation and overall user experience were recommended and implemented, as well as a revamp of the visual styling and layout.

“The most effective assistance was paying for 10 hours of Squirrel365 support and using all of it on a design review.”
Reg Kernke – CEO Education Geographics

Education Geographics have spent a few months re-creating its new & improved dashboard solution.

After implementing everything on time, within budget, and with no major issues, they have successfully removed any dependency on the previous dashboarding tool. The new dashboard is faster, more process efficient, and is getting much better engagement from its users.

Download the Education Geographics Case Study PDF

Mitch Lewis
Research Associate, Evaluator Group

Check out the full Evaluator Group case study.

Salesforce’s extraordinary no-code, ROI sales enablement app

Recently I talked with Ziv Barzilay from Salesforce on the Limitless BI Podcast to discuss his remarkable sales enablement app. Here are a few highlights of his extraordinary story.

Q branch

Ziv works in “Q branch” at Salesforce (yes like in James Bond). As Ziv puts it, Q Branch is:

“an innovation team providing business apps for various groups, including sales engineers and account executives, using cutting-edge technology”

One of the cutting-edge technologies they use (and the one Ziv is responsible for) is Squirrel365.

Using Squirrel

You might know Squirrel as a tool which allows you to create interactive web content like ROI calculators and interactive financial models directly from spreadsheets. But Ziv has taken Squirrel to a whole new level. In his words what he has created is:

“a full-blown business application which provides a next-generation business value framework for our account executives”

In other words, a web-based tool allowing salespeople at Salesforce to articulate the value of Salesforce solutions to their prospects in a fully customized and engaging manner. You could say it is an ROI calculator on steroids, but that would dramatically understate its capabilities.

Business Results

But any business application is only as good as the results it generates and here too Ziv’s app comes into its own:

“we have about 3000 account executives using the tool, we just rolled it our a year ago and [in that time] we were able to touch more than ¼ billion dollars of annual contact value (ACV)”

Which is all the more impressive given the application was initially built using no code in under 2 months by one person.

The Application

The strength of the application is that is offers a guided path through the complex ROI calculations which means the sales team can be self-sufficient in using it with their customers and prospects.

The culmination of the app is a screen which gives a presentation quality “dashboard” explaining the ROI benefits of moving to the Salesforce cloud.

Try for Yourself

If that has piqued your interest then you can hear the full podcast at Limitless BI – Business Intelligence Podcast.

Or you can see Ziv demo an early version of the app at Webinar on demand – customer spotlight Salesforce – Squirrel365.

Or if you want to try using Squirrel for yourself then register for a free account here.

What is IBIS?

Last week some of the Squirrel team attended the Infosol IBIS event in Arizona. IBIS is the leading independent BusinessObjects education and knowledge event.  We were there both to hear how people are using Squirrel and to update them with all our latest product news.

Many BusinessObjects customers use Squirrel as a replacement for the missing dashboarding in the BOBJ BI Platform. Others use Squirrel stand alone or with direct access to their databases through the InfoSol InfoBurst product.

IBIS, it is a great opportunity to see BI organisations showcase their work, impart their knowledge, and share their experiences. With many talks to choose from each day, there was never a dull moment and always an opportunity to learn new things.

Squirrel Case Studies at InfoSol IBIS

There were many fascinating case studies, including:

• USPI – improving Healthcare Operations using BusinessObjects and Squirrel365
• Hain Celestial – Improved Processing and Visibility to Warehouse Shipments Using BusinessObjects and Squirrel365

These IBIS sessions were notable for their operational nature. Usually dashboards stop at providing data on historic trends but these were different. They also provide near-real time information to drive operational decision-making in the USPI medical facilities and Hain’s warehouses.

In fact, these dashboards were great examples of “BI Dashboard Apps” as discussed by Squirrel’s own Donald MacCormick in his keynote “BI Dashboard Apps – The next big thing in BI”.

In terms of standalone Squirrel dashboards, the standout examples were from Bill Straus, CEO of Future Metrics. BIll presented twice during the conference:

• How Dashboards are Helping International Trade in Renewable Fuel that Replaces Coal in Power Generation
• How Dashboards are Helping Replace Hydrocarbons with Carbohydrates in the Power Generation Sector

These fascinating sessions explained how Future Metrics is helping reduce our collective carbon footprint by championing a move from coal to sustainable wood pellets. Included in the presentation is some of their suite of 15 Squirrel dashboard calculators (all built “no code” from spreadsheets). They use these on their website to share and communicate their industry expertise (you can see all their dashboards at https://www.futuremetrics.info/).

Hackathon

Continuing the environmental theme, InfoSol IBIS featured a Squirrel hackathon. Here attendees were invited to build a Squirrel project based on a spreadsheet to calculate personal carbon footprints.

Neither of the two winners had used Squirrel before the conference but both quickly took to the tool and produced great looking interactive carbon footprint calculators. The younger winner (who was only 13) left the conference with a plan to hold a similar hackathon for her fellow pupils back at school.

On a lighter note, David Behr from USPI presented a session on:

• Building an online jewellery store mobile application for my 11-year-old daughter with Squirrel365

Which featured a Squirrel app he created which his daughter uses to sell bracelets she makes online. (Even school children have a side hustle these days)

Astronomy at InfoSol IBIS

However, for many of us, the highlight of the Infosol IBIS was an evening of star gazing. Mark Johnston aka AZAstroGuy (https://www.azastroguy.com/) brought along his telescope and his vast  knowledge of all things extra-terrestrial and treated us to two hours of wonder. We saw everything from binary star systems to whirlpool galaxies all projected on the big screen from his telescope. A truly remarkable evening.

Some photos from the night depicting the Milky Way! Yes – the sky was that clear!

Why Microsoft built a calculator with Squirrel365 to explain the sustainability of their products

What do you do when you have a great story to tell about your products’ sustainability credentials, which is backed up by solid data, but that data fills many sheets of an Excel workbook and will quickly induce drowsiness in your customer if you try to scroll through it?

This was the situation Gareth Cosker from the Microsoft Surface team in the UK was facing, as he explained in his recent session with us at the Global Excel Summit:

“The challenge is that hardware and everything that goes with it isn’t a simple kind of thing, data is a massive problem. If you are going to present to a customer and you’re going to become a trusted advisor and you’re going to be able to show transparency across the marketplace, it’s not just surface devices that you need to get the data for, you also need to get that for every other Windows 10 device out there, every other competitor within the marketplace and then formulate and visualise that in such a way that the customer can then take that information and make the right choices when it comes to sustainability within their device selection.”

But not only did he have to tame the data, he also needed to present it in the flow of his presentation, i.e. in PowerPoint:

“If you’re presenting in PowerPoint then surely you have to look at software that can integrate into PowerPoint, because you want to keep the flow going, you want to keep that customer engagement”

To solve these issues he turned to Squirrel365:

“what I found from working with Squirrel team is that there is very simple solution to this … that integrates all of that data via Excel into PowerPoint that gives a visual representation … that allows you to make these scenarios clear in front of the customer and have a an impact on them and their understanding of what you offer in terms of the sustainability”

Using Squirrel, Gareth created a sustainability calculator, in the form of a visual app. It allowed him to replicate a customer’s device landscape and interactively show the sustainability impact of various alternative choices, based on data in Excel and all without leaving PowerPoint. This meant that Gareth and the customer could have a real-time discussion about the options:

“in a sales cycle you don’t want them to come back to you a day later and say, oh, actually can you show me what it looks like on a laptop. You want to be able to say let’s do this now. Then I can pull up the different device ranges and the different devices and say, you have a play and tell me what you’re thinking”

All of this was built from an existing Excel workbook using Squirrel using nothing but ordinary spreadsheet logic, with the final result embedded interactively in a PowerPoint presentation with two or three clicks.

If you would like to hear more of Gareth’s story and see his solution in action then the recording of the session is below.

If you want to see what you can do with your spreadsheet knowledge and Squirrel then register for a free account at https://squirrel365.io

Josh recreated Wordle in ‘just a few hours’

A couple of days ago Joshua Tapley (all-around data visualization guru) published his second public Squirrel365 project.

It was a pretty faithful recreation of the viral, online word game Wordle, as the short clip below shows (yes, this is a Squirrel project).

We have always said “Squirrel allows you to take a spreadsheet and turn it into amazing, interactive web content”. Josh’s Wordle clone is both interactive and amazing but I don’t think that we ever expected anyone to use Squirrel to create something like this. The fact that Josh did says a lot about both:

1. Josh’s ingenuity
2. Squirrel’s flexibility

Josh looked beyond the more mainstream uses for Squirrel – such as creating interactive visualisations of financial models, business value calculators, or even carbon footprint calculators (as our customer FutureMetrics has done here*). When Josh first mentioned to me that he wanted to recreate Wordle in Squirrel I didn’t think he was being serious, how wrong I was! He said his wordle clone only took him a few hours build in Squirrel!

Intelligent dashboards

Let’s have a look at Josh’s first Squirrel project. Over the recent holiday season, Josh created a stylish dashboard in Squirrel.

Below is a short video of it in action, or you can view the live dashboard here.

You may notice that this is not your normal “put it on the wall and wait for it to go red” dashboard. It is one of a new breed of “intelligent” dashboards which are equally considered applications as they are dashboards. The interface layer allows users to find information they need quickly by using clicks, hovers, toggles, pop-ups etc. Basically all the UI elements you would find in a normal app but overlaid on a “dashboard” view of the data.

This means that it is possible to create content embodying a comment Josh made in a previous blog post about data literacy:

Just as a young child can pick up an iPad and use it without instruction, our users should find everything we produce intuitive. The ability to understand intuitively is the easiest way to bridge data literacy

Squirrel allows you to create exactly this type of content using nothing more than your existing spreadsheet skills.

So even if you don’t want to create a clone of an online game using Squirrel, we hope these projects have proved that the possibilities are endless. Josh’s remarkable Wordle clone is good evidence that shows that you too can add “intelligence”  to your Squirrel project to enable quick and easy use by your audience.

Try Squirrel for yourself by signing up for a free account at https://squirrel365.io/try-squirrel/.

Footnotes

Read more about Josh’s experience with Squirrel in his LinkedIn posts on his:

Intelligent Dashboard

Wordle clone

*For more FutureMetric interactive calculators scroll down the page at https://www.futuremetrics.info/