Layering data in Report Services (RS) dashboards: Panels and panel stacks

A control is any selectable item in the Report Services (RS) dashboard's area. This can be a text field, line, rectangle, image, panel, panel stack, selector, or Grid/Graph object. When designing an RS dashboard, controls are organized together in small groups. These groups of controls are placed in a holder called a panel. Because the controls are grouped together on a panel, they can be presented to the RS dashboard user one group at a time. This lets the designer create several different views (or panels) of data, each view (panel) containing a logical grouping of controls that display data that is related in some meaningful way.

A panel stack is a collection of individual panels, stacked on top of each other. Only one panel can be displayed at a time. An analyst can flip from panel to panel within an RS dashboard's panel stack, displaying exactly the set of information he wants to see grouped together on the screen.

You can display different controls (that is, objects that can be placed on a document, such as Grid/Graphs, text fields, shapes, and so on) in an RS dashboard or document so that users can navigate them as if they were pages or subsets of the larger document. These "pages" or layers of data are called panels; and a group of panels is referred to as a panel stack. Panel stacks allows a designer to create several different views (panels) of data, each view (panel) containing a logical grouping of controls that display data that is related in a meaningful way.

Panels are essential building blocks for interactive RS dashboards, which summarize key business indicators in easy-to-read interfaces. For an in-depth explanation of RS dashboards, see What is a Report Services (RS) dashboard?.

Use panel stacks to provide interactive data layering. You can create:

Stacks of analytic layers on a single RS dashboard page by creating two panels, each containing a different Grid/Graph. In Interactive Mode, Editable Mode, and Flash Mode in MicroStrategy Web, a user can flip between the panels, quickly replacing one Grid/Graph with the other. Using panels in this fashion permits many independent layers of data within a single RS dashboard page.
Multiple layers of RS dashboards by adding multiple controls to each panel of a panel stack. This creates layers of complex RS dashboards.
An Information Window, to display additional information about an attribute element. A user clicks an element in a grid or graph. The Information Window pops up over the element, displaying an additional visualization, based on the element. Information Windows are displayed in Express Mode and Flash Mode in MicroStrategy Web, and in MicroStrategy Mobile. For an example and instructions to create an Information Window, see Defining Information Windows.

The first two methods are described in the examples in Panel stack examples.

For instructions to create and format panels and panel stacks, see:

Changing panels in a panel stack

If a panel stack contains more than one panel, a user needs a way to change panels. By default, a panel stack displays Previous and Next arrows that allow users to move through the panels in MicroStrategy Web and in Flash View in MicroStrategy Developer. These arrows are displayed in the title bar, so if the title bar is not displayed, the arrows are not available. (By default, panel stacks display title bars.) For instructions to disable the arrows, see Hiding panel selector arrows on the title bar. For instructions to hide the title bar, see Hiding title bars of panel stacks.

You can instead create a selector that targets the panel stack and allows users to change panels. For instructions, see Creating selectors for panel stacks.

Panel stacks and automatic target maintenance for selectors

Selectors allow a user to display different elements of attributes, custom groups, or consolidations in a panel stack (the target of the selector). Targets can be automatically maintained in a layout. This means that when you add a panel stack, the panel stack automatically becomes the target of all selectors in the same panel or document section as the panel stack. For more information about automatically maintaining targets for selectors, including instructions to enable and disable the functionality, see Automatically maintaining targets for selectors.

A selector can also allow a user to flip through the panels in a panel stack. Targets are not automatically maintained for this type of selector; you always manually define the targets for panel selectors. For instructions, see Creating selectors for panel stacks.