Dashboard

These very exciting enterprise dashboard screenshots are just in from a Dashboard Spy reader who is interested in using Microsoft Sharepoint for project management and team collaboration. He attended a presentation from Corasworks, a provider of advanced webparts used to extend native Sharepoint. He was shown a series of project management dashboards in Sharepoint and Corasworks that he found very interesting.

This first enterprise dashboard screenshot shows your task view. Note that the use of the Corasworks webparts allows this Sharepoint application to look not like sharepoint at all. Note the navigation bar on the top, the tabs in the middle and the navigation list at the left. The middle section shows your tasks rolled up from 2 projects (2 different sharepoint lists) and filtered by user (you).

Let’s take a look behind the scenes a little. Here is how to configure the navigation bar at the top. It’s all through web part configuration:

Editing this particular link brings you this interface:

Speaking of navigation, note the cascading nature of the tabs:

The native look and feel of Sharepoint out-of-the-box webparts can look totally different. Here is a list. Note that you can take action right from the dashboard view. You can hit Add Item or even launch custom actions.

If you want to act on a list item, you can do it right from the project dashboard with a popup utility such as this one for emailing a team member:

These webparts can also give you the ability to customize the look and feel with conditional visual indicators such as this list of projects grouped by status. This is powerful functionality without any custom coding. All this is done via configuration of sharepoint webparts from the webpart gallery.

Sharepoint 2007 has been released to Microsoft partners. It is significantly different from Sharepoint 2003. Take a look at these books on Sharepoint 2007.

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

Tags:

• Sharepoint 2007 Dashboard
• Sharepoint dashboards
• Corasworks Dashboards

Continuing with the series of enterprise dashboard screenshots that go along with the Dashboard Spy post “Meta Group Rating of Vendors for Enterprise Reporting and Enterprise Dashboards“, we look at some enterprise dashboard screenshots from Business Objects.

In the study, Business Objects, with their Crystal Enterprise product, tied for second place with a rating of 5.4, tying Actuate. As Meta Group stated in their vendor ranking study:

Business Objects XI Crystal Enterprise and Live Office

The Business Objects XI release of Crystal Enterprise and Live Office is the most widely deployed enterprise
reporting and dashboard product in the industry. With the XI release, the Crystal Enterprise product is now
integrated with the entire Business Objects product suite. Business Objects maintains a leading presence in
the market through a large OEM and partner ecosystem. Business Objects finishes tied for second in the
overall vendor ranking, within one-fifth of a point of the leader.

Strengths

• Best-in-class presence; one of two most often shortlisted products
• Best-in-class parameter processing, usability, and administration
• Above-average scores in distribution, scalability and performance, and pricing
• The BI Encyclopedia introduced in the XI release improves the metadata for end users

Limitations

• Connectivity to non-relational legacy data sources requires support through Data Direct at an additional
cost
• No real-time data access support or EII capability
• No check in/check out or versioning support for multiple developers

The exciting development at Business Objects since the release of the vendor study has been the acquisition of the flash-based Xcelsius product. We’ve featured quite a few Crystal Xcelsius enterprise dashboards here on the Dashboard Spy. The last enterprise dashboard screenshot below is an Xcelsius screen.

Tags: Enterprise Dashboard Vendor Ratings, Business Objects Enterprise Dashboards, Meta Group Evaluation of Enterprise Reporting and Dashboards

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog