Introduction

This article describes what Meridix Studio is and how the system handles integration against the supported target platforms.

What is Meridix Studio

Meridix Studio is a report generator and by itself Meridix Studio does not have any native support for any specific type of reports or target platforms. Each supported platform is built up as a custom  module that is loaded into the Meridix Studio main application. Each of these modules can have any number of reports with different combination of charts and columns defined.

The system consists of a web based user interface which is accessed by the user through their browsers and no additional plug-ins is required (e.g. Flash or Silverlight). The system is available both as a cloud service (through PAAS on Microsoft Windows Azure) or as an on-site installation where users access the system through their local area network. Read more about Meridix as a cloud service here.

The user interface is designed to give users a consistent way of creating reports for each of the platforms that the system has loaded, this basically means that once a user has learned to use one type of module in the system they can use all the other supported modules in the same way.
But since not all platforms delivers the same source data and some platforms have a more granular information level than others, each module is created specifically for that target platform data to be able to give as relevant information as possible. So even though the user interface remains consistent the reports and their content is built specifically for each platform to be able to give users as good information as possible for their specific platform.

Another feature is that the system allows a mixed set of modules in the same installation, this means that if a customer has multiple data sources that they want to create report for, perhaps a PBX and an external call center system, one single Meridix installation can collect data from both these sources and give the end users an integrated and consistent way of handling their reporting even though the source information comes from multiple platforms.

The system is also built around the principle that different users has different needs and knowledge and users are therefor divided into separate roles where a user with only basic reporting needs can use a simpler and stripped down version of the user interface and if needed later upgrade/change to the advanced mode where the full feature set of the system is available, this makes the system easy to get started with and users don`t have to be experts from day one to get good value from the reports.

And in addition to the on demand reporting capabilities the system has a report distribution system that lets users create and schedule reports that are then executed and sent automatically by the system based on a user defined schedules. This makes it easy to spread the information throughout the organization without forcing each receiver to learn a new system. The reports are sent in well know formats such as Excel and lets the users work in a familiar environment.

Multi tenant support (Multi customer support)

Meridix Studio has support for multiple customers in a single system where each customer can get its own part of the system and work in isolation even though they reside in an larger system with multiple customers. This allows a companies to have one single Meridix Studio installation where all their customers reside. This is used by for example carriers (operators) that have a platform that contains thousands of customers, in these cases a multi customer Meridix installation i set up. (A Meridix installation has support to scale both up and out to allow very large numbers of customers, read more about Meridix scaling possibilities here)

Support for new platforms

As mentioned in the previous section Meridix Studios available reports is built up by creating modules for the platforms that we want to support. To add support for reporting targeting a new platform we need to create a new module were the source data is handled and interpreted. Once this is done the newly created module can be hooked into the Meridix engine and all the functionality such as the many report grouping options, subscription reports and Excel exports etc will be handled by the Meridix Studio system. Therefor we can easily add support for new releases of existing platforms and add support for future platforms without needing to "reinvent the wheel" each time.
This makes Meridix Studio an ideal solution for companies that sells or works with multiple platforms since once they have learned to use Meridix Studio all the knowledge can be applied even if the target platform changes.

Language support

Meridix has support for multiple languages (English and Swedish at the time of writing Danish translations is being created) and can easily be translated to additional languages (more information about translations).