Introduction

Dashboards provide a variety of ways to access, view, chart and filter the information that is captured in the models, master data and forms you have created in your library. Once the dashboard has been created you can then add it to the home page of users so that they have easy access to it. And different roles in the organization can have different dashboards.

In order to create a Dashboard, you first need to define where the data is going to come from, by creating a Data Source Model. Data Sources can be configured to retrieve data from models, master data and forms or if you would prefer you can also configure them to use SQL queries against the BusinessOptix database. Data Sources can be set-up once and used in multiple dashboards, charts and tables.

Once you have a Data Source Model you can then go ahead and create a Dashboard. Dashboards have the following key components:

• Top Page - The Top Page is the dashboard that is shown to users when they first enter the dashboard.
• Drill-Down Page - a Drill-down page is navigated to from the Top Page by clicking on a chart, table row or selecting from a menu
• Menu - menus can be set any page and allow the user to select another page to view
• Filter Menus - allow you or the dashboard user to see the same dashboard with a filter applied so that only some data is shown

Data Source Set-up

A data source gives Authors a way to define how data is retrieved from the BusinessOptix platform and then re-used across Dashboards. A data source can also be accessed via the BusinessOptix API allowing you to use alternate dashboard platforms for data visualization and access. 

Creating a New Data Source

In Author create a new Data Sources model. And then go to Components and create a new data source. A data source allows you to say what and where you want to retrieve the data from. This could be a model, form or via SQL. For each property from the data source, you require you will need to add a data field. 

Model and Form Data Sources

When you set-up a model or form data source you need to select the model (or form) type. And for models, you then also need to select the component type within the model that holds the properties you want to put on your dashboard. For example, this data source relates to Process Models

Data Fields

For each property, you want to use in your dashboard you need to define it as a Data Field.

The field type is used to define the type of data being shown. This includes:

Category - are typically used to show attributes from dropdown lists that either identify the data or are set by Master Data

User - used when the attribute is a user identifier

Date - for date or date and time attributes

Number - for both integers and real numbers

Duration - for a property that holds values in seconds unto years

Text - for a property that holds rich or plain text 

List - for attributes that have semi-colon delimited lists of Category or User Values

URL - for attributes that link to other pages

Checkbox - for attributes that are true or false

The Property field is used to select the specific property from the model/form and the Field Identifier is the internal name for the property.

For more information on creating Data Sources, see How to Configure a Data Source for Dashboards

Dashboard Set-up

Dashboards are used to display summary information based on data held within your BusinessOptix library. 

Creating a Page

There are two types of pages within a Dashboard, the top page and a drill-down page. The primary difference is that the top page is the one that is shown to users when they first open the dashboard. As an Author you do not have to define page types, BusinessOptix will use the first page listed in the Dashboard model as the top page. You can add pages by going to the Components tab in Author.

Creating a Panel

A panel is a functional grouping of charts on a dashboard page and is used to help you title parts of the Dashboard page.

Creating a Chart

Add a chart to the page and then you configure various aspects of it including: 

Type - select from a column, bar, bullet, line, scatter, bubble, radar line and area, pie and donut charts.

Data Source - select the data source for the chart

Color Scheme/Colors - select from a range of color schemes appropriate for the chart being displayed.  

Category axis - select a data field from the configured data source. If it’s a date field then you can also select the units to display. 

Value axis - decide how the data type should be represented. And for some chart types you can stack the values 

Drilldown - allows a user to click on the chart and be taken to another page and/or to filter the page based on either category or series values.

Data Source Inspection - when this is ticked the user of the Dashboard will be able to view the data source as a table of data. 

Adding a Data Series

As with all charts you need to add at least one data series. The options you get will vary depending on whether the data source category is a date or other data type and depending on the chart type.

For non-date based categories you just select which data field that stores the number you want to chart. For data based categories you can additionally aggregate numbers based on counts, average (mean), maximum, minimum and sum of values. The aggregated values are then grouped based on the category date units.

Creating Tables

When you create a table you need to configure the data source, define which columns will be used to order the table and optionally set a maximum number of rows to show. For each data field you want to include in the table you also need to add a column. 

Filter Menus

Filter Menus are used to only show a subset of data from the data source. Add a filter menu to a page and any data being shown on charts/tables on the page can be filtered based on the value in the filter. When you create a data filter you also need to add a filter item. Filter items are used to define the data source and column the filter value is applied to. As you can have more than one chart/table on a page and each could have a different data source then you can have multiple filter items for each data filter. 

As an example, you have set-up a chart on a page that when you click on it you want to show a table that only shows rows that match the category value. You can do this by creating a chart on the Top Page and creating the table on the Drilldown page. On the Drilldown page you also need to create a menu filter, let’s call it Filter1. On the chart configuration, you need to set the To Page to be the drill down page and the category filter will be Filter1. Then on the table you need to set-up the data source and on Filter1 you also need to create a filter item that references the same data source and select the column that the filter value should be applied to. 

Drilldown Menu

Drill down menus are used to enable a user to navigate to a different page and set a filter on the data being viewed. You need to set a data source for where the menu values will come from. And then configure which page and filter menu on the target page the data users selection should be passed to.  

Setting Up a Dashboard for Roles

You can configure the home page to show dashboards that are specific to a user’s functional role(s) or the type of BusinessOptix user they are.

Setting-Up a Dashboard by BusinessOptix User Type

1. Edit the Roles master data (found in Shared/Master Data/Roles.xbp)

2. Select the BusinessOptix role group and then select from the licence types of BusinessOptix Admin, BusinessOptix Author, BusinessOptix Participant or BusinessOptix Viewer.

3. When the role is selected you can then select a dashboard that is designed to support the role.

4. The next time a user with that role logins they will be shown the dashboard.

Setting-Up a Dashboard by Functional Role

The home page also supports the option of targeting dashboard contents at functional roles, e.g. business analyst, tester, operations supervisor. Functional roles are not pre-defined by BusinessOptix but are set-up in your library Roles Master Data file. Create a functional role and then add a dashboard in the same way as you do for the BusinessOptix User Types.

BusinessOptix then also needs to know the roles that an individual user is responsible for. In order to do this, you need to create an organization chart that includes the user name and details of the functional roles they are responsible for.  These are the same roles that are used for the My Activities tab also on the home page.