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Mashups and Pervasive BI
by Tom Leoni,
LogiXML BIz Comm Editorial Staff
November 7, 2007
Page 3
Dashboards
Dashboards are a collection of panels bringing together different information on a single Web page. Depending on how they are set up, panels may contain key performance indicators, graphs and charts, Web sites navigable right from the dashboard, RSS feeds and basically most anything else that can be placed on the Web. This of course means that even an overlay mashup feature such as a GIS map can take the form of a dashboard panel.
Dashboards are becoming popular and increasingly common in the BI community because, like physical dashboards, they allow the user to get a single view of the information relevant for ‘driving’ the business. In other words, they do not require end users to access different reports—or even different Web pages—to see the information they need every day to run their business.
More sophisticated dashboards offer drill-down and drill-through capability, and make use of technologies such as Flash and AJAX to become interactive and dynamic.
For instance, end users may move the panels around—just like they would in a desktop application—without needing to refresh the whole Web browser page. Or, by mousing over the bars of a chart, underlying figures may be revealed even without a click. Users may also select and deselect the panels from a menu to weed out information that is not relevant to them and to only see what is most pertinent to their business. More sophisticated dashboards also give users the possibility to act on the information presented, for example, by enabling them to send a preset business alert to sales reps whose performance is below or above a certain critical level.
Even in the case of dashboards, users can enjoy the familiar feel and navigability of Web features that they use in their personal lives. For instance, pages like ‘My Yahoo’ are essentially dashboards, since they are a collection of different panels showing various kinds of information; and, like dashboard panels, these may be selected or deselected by users to give them a personalized experience. This capability is one of the bridged towards the concept of pervasive BI.
Next... Moving towards Pervasive BI
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