Creating Reusable Dashboards in Dashboard Design 4
There are two approaches of developing dashboards using Xcelsius or Dashboard Design (Version 4 and on-wards). These approaches are listed as follows:
- Build all your components in one Xcelsius file. Linking and drilling is done within the same scope of single xcelsius or dashboard design file
- Build all your components in one or more Xcelsius file. Linking can be done across XLF files and so is drilling. Use of openanalytics command maybe required or use of Load SWF component.
- Design your components with inputs and outpus in xcelsius and export them to BO platform. Use Dashboard Builder to paint the layout and do the linking using content linking available in dashboard builder
It is essential to make this design decision on development approach before development phase is started. Some of the factors to consider are:
- How many different layouts/views required by the client. Different views maybe required to faciliate various stakeholders across various departments. In this case creating a super set of xcelsius graph components and then building views using dashboard builder is a smarter way forward
- Whether customer requires a lot of filter parameters on components.
- Understand requirement on drilling. Does it require changing of complete layout. For instance, initially a dashboard may have two graphs. One with region and the other one on day. When drilled, customer may require both the graphs to change based on selected region and day.
These are only few considerations and you are the better judge on the approach as you have to meet the timelines and also to keep dashboards scale-able. Every dashboard requires re-finishing/final touch-ups due to the reason when it goes to customers they always have some feedback. Therefore, your design should be able to accommodate such ad-hoc requests which results in either changing the layout or changing the characteristics of graph linking, filters and drilling.
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