MicroStrategy ONE

Placing the data and visualizations onto a Report Services (RS) dashboard

Best practices for placing data and visualizations onto a Report Services (RS) dashboard include:

  • Place reports into appropriate areas on the Report Services (RS) dashboard, and then resize them as needed to achieve your planned appearance. Placement should take into account the user workflow and granularity discussions above. Also, a user usually looks to the upper left first, and the bottom right last. Large graphics grab a user's attention, no matter where they are placed.

  • Keep the number of objects on the screen to a minimum, to achieve a clean look. Use graphical objects sparingly. Make use of abbreviated text in text fields as appropriate, to make the best use of space. You can add a tooltip (a mouseover) to explain any abbreviations that may not be clear to all users.

  • For any graph or widget, provide a tooltip (a mouseover) so that users who are interested in specific details can see the actual values behind the general trends displayed by graphic visualizations. This is an excellent way to support two sets of users who need widely differing levels of information on the same subjects.

  • Provide a quick switch capability for all graph reports, so users can switch with a single click between the graphical display of data and its corresponding grid report showing individual cells with specific values.

  • Provide a title bar on reports (Grid/Graphs) on the RS dashboard so users can maximize and minimize the individual reports. This ability to minimize and maximize reports provides users with a portal-like environment, with each report behaving like a portlet window. This allows users to control how space is used on their screens, and to focus on the data they are interested in.

  • If you have a panel stack on the RS dashboard, add a selector so users can flip between the panels on the panel stack.

  • Sliders are best used on graphs that specify a date range. Sliders can not only change the time frame of the data displayed in a report or set of reports, they can also change the span of time being analyzed.

  • If you have related reports on an RS dashboard layer, add a selector to one of the reports and connect it to the related report. When users choose to see a certain aspect of the first report, the second report automatically changes to display the related data. When the user clicks on one grid or graph, his selection serves as a filter for the related grid or graph. For example, in a Pie chart showing revenue for all products, a user clicks a slice of the Pie chart representing electronics revenue. The connected report below the Pie chart, displaying detailed sales numbers, automatically updates its data to reflect the user's selection, displaying sales numbers for various electronic products.

  • Add selectors to different parts of the RS dashboard so users can customize the data they see at many levels. For example, add a selector at the top of the RS dashboard itself, so users can switch between layers of the RS dashboard. Then add a selector at the top of an individual layer, so users can change metrics, for example, to change the focus of that layer of the RS dashboard. Finally, add a selector to each of the reports on that layer, so users can focus the details of their analysis on a specific area.

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