WebFOCUS Newsletter July 2003 - Intro to the BI Dashboard

The WebFOCUS Business Intelligence Dashboard, otherwise known as the Dashboard, is a thin-client front end that gives you the ability to control and organize how reports are delivered to the desktop.

Dashboard access is through Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. The Dashboard also supports the Netscape 7 browser, but on a limited basis. Dashboard users are Managed Reporting users and have the same properties and privileges in both tools. The Dashboard puts a new face on reports and data available in the Managed Reporting Repository.

If you have MRE releases 4.3.6 or 5.2x installed in your machine, you also have the Dashboard. There are additional configuration steps for Release 4.3.6, but in more recent releases the Dashboard is available with every WebFOCUS Managed Reporting installation. If you have Managed Reporting Release 5.2x installed, use the URL http://localhost/ibi_apps/bid to get to the Dashboard index page. From the index page, administrators can access the View Builder and users can display Dashboard views.

The administrator builds Dashboard views for various groups of users. The view can be based on the Managed Reporting group through Group Views, or any group of users through Public Views. The administrator controls the look of the Dashboard for all views. Each view the administrator builds can have different looks and report access levels.

The Dashboard is administered using a point-and-click tool called View Builder. The administrator selects the logo, colors, composition and reports to be shown in a Dashboard view. The Dashboard front end depends on you; it has no particular look because you have total control over what appears in each view.

You can use your own corporate logo and colors to customize the Dashboard and make it look like your own product. You may also create departmental sites using different colors, logos and reports. Since many different Dashboard views are available, only one WebFOCUS installation is needed to deliver multiple views at one site.

Authenticated users can build content pages that organize how reports are delivered to their own Dashboard view. In addition, authenticated users can put reports into a list of favorites that may appear on a banner link or be displayed right in the Dashboard main page.

This list can transcend domains, so if you regularly run reports from more than one domain, “favorites” lists can make getting to those reports a whole lot easier by making it possible for you to group the reports together. In addition, authenticated users have all the functionality currently available to them in Managed Reporting.

With the Dashboard, Information Builders has also introduced the concept of a “public” user. The public user does not enter a user ID and password in a login page, but instead goes directly into the Dashboard Public View for limited access to reports.

Public user access is carefully controlled through the Dashboard and Managed Reporting. The administrator decides what the public user can see and how he or she sees it. A kiosk application is a typical use for a public view.

Looking for more information? Check out the Managed Reporting Administrator’s Manual and its companion end user manual. Both are available at http://www.informationbuilders.com/support/index.html.