Programming for Dashboards

[Cooperdam]

Let us first define what goes on a dashboard. For example, the CEO might want to know:

- The revenue and/or profitability for the day/month/year - these two could be presented as charts or as just numbers.
- Collections summary, may be just totals broken out as 0-30, 30-30, 60-90 and over 90 days or
- A list of accounts that are over 90.
- cash flow alerts if any - maybe one number - $x due in y days or an aging of pending payments
- status of various projects - completion rates costs/cost overruns

A Hospital administrator may want to know
- Cost vs budget by department - dollars used vs left
- daily/monthly/annual cost of operations by department (or key departments)
- inventory status - mostly alerts on supplies needed

Now we can discuss how that information is presented- Whether it is a chart/graph, a line of text, a tabular list or gauge.
To me, gauges are the worst. Do we really need that big circular speedometer and RPM meter that is common in a car?
Wouldn't a simple, digital display of the number be just as good, leaving room for something else?

Sometime it is possible to present more than of unit of information in the same area. For example, you could have a table of costs by department.
Numbers with a green background would be below budget (and the shading could indicate % used), while a red background would indicate at or over budget.

Most of this can be presented with the tools we have today. The Pivot grid for example is great for showing a pivoted summary of a large amount of data. The user, if s/he is so inclined, could add/remove fields to drill down for more information.

Then there is the issue of which tool/technology to use. Should it be a server/browser based solution like Dundas Dashboards? A windows application?
An SSRS report?

I work with some clients who get all their reports on paper; their assistants use the tools.

 

[RiverGuy]

What exactly is the question? Are you asking if it is appropriate or feasible to create a dashboard in SSRS?

 

[Cooperdam]

Sorry I left out soome facts.

For VS 2008, there are no dashboards components that come with standard edition. So, the questions really, is it worth spending the money to get some kind of add on product or not.

 

[RiverGuy]

I wasn't aware there was a difference as far as the components are concerned between standard and enterprise. For SSRS, we are using standard. That being said, in my opinion, creating a dashboard in SSRS has less to do with the actual components and more to do with how the application is presented and the available functionality. Here are some cons to using SSRS for dashboards:

1. If you are using SSAS as a datasource, SSRS does not do well with anything but a two-dimensional resultset.

2. You are limited to pretty much a two zone paradigm--your parameters appear at the top (or the side if you are using SharePoint Integrated mode) and your tables and charts appear below or to the side.

3. The standard drop-downs for the parameters are not really easy on the eye. Again, if you are using SSAS, you don't get a nice treeview to select different levels of your hierarchies as you do in Excel 2007 for example.

4. There is really no functionality to allow you to click on a row or cell in a table and have other tables or charts filtered by your click action.

5. You need to hand-code all of your drilldowns.

6. The bottom line is that in SSRS, you are responsible for writing all of the queries.

But the word "dashboard" means different things to different people. You might create a small sample and explore the functionality, do a demo and see if it will meet your company's needs.