About dashboards and scorecards

Dashboards and scorecards are popular ways to display and distribute data from business intelligence projects. In MicroStrategy, dashboards and scorecards are Report Services documents.

A Report Services document is a set of data and formatting properties that, when executed, can produce an attractive presentation-quality report. For more information on Report Services documents, see About Report Services documents.

The information in this section is intended as a brief overview of dashboards and scorecards.

Scorecards

Scorecards provide you with a high-level summary of key performance indicators (KPIs) for a given analysis area. They accomplish this by displaying data of actual performance compared to planned targets and benchmarks.

Scorecards are made up of several combined base reports. Scorecards are a good starting point for the Analysis Module because scorecards comprise the most common or most important reports within a given analysis area. From the data returned on a scorecard, you can formulate ideas for more detailed exploration. See Accessing reports in this chapter for steps to open an HRAM scorecard.

Scorecards are laid out to help you with the information-gathering process. The most general information is found at the top left of the scorecard, and the reports get more detailed as you move from left to right, top to bottom. The scorecards that come with HRAM are described in HRAM Dashboards and Scorecards.

Dashboards

Dashboards, like scorecards, are made up of a group of reports and metrics that are tied together by business logic. Scorecards typically follow a specific methodology and focus on key metrics within a business area. Dashboards, on the other hand, also provide key metrics but tend to summarize business intelligence information more widely.

Dashboards allow you to display information customized to your audience. Audiences might include executives, managers, or particular groups within the company such as Marketing or Sales. In some cases, you may choose to provide information to partners or customers. Among other things, dashboards let you:

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Add interactivity to a document, so that analysts can select various options directly on the document to display the specific data they are interested in

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Choose a uniform coloring scheme or display information using your company's standard Web page style

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Add links wherever necessary

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Choose the appropriate graphs, images, and colors for better presentation and to highlight specific data, trends, and deviation from certain trends, as well as to provide visual cues

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Share the dashboard using Web or via e-mail using Narrowcast Server