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Creating and Saving Dashboards

Creating a dashboard

Inserting components in a dashboard

Inserting library component references

Inserting report data components

Inserting analysis templates as components

Inserting a label/dashboard title

Inserting an image

Inserting a special field

Inserting a filter control

Inserting a third party gadget via URL

Inserting an HTML component

Saving a dashboard

Creating a dashboard

1. Do either of the following:
   • In the JReport Server Start Page, click Dashboard in the Create category.
   • In the JReport Server console, open the Resources page and click New > Dashboard on the task bar.

   A blank dashboard is created in JDashboard.

   

2. The upper section with the text "Dashboard Title" of the editing area is the dashboard header, where you can insert labels, images, and special fields. The dashboard body is the section below the header. In the body you can insert report components, library components, filtering tools, third-party objects, and HTML components.
3. When the mouse hovers on the header section, the header is outlined and you will see the border between the header and the body. You can resize the two sections by dragging the border line. The arrow button that appears at the bottom right of the header is used to hide the header.

   

After you have entered JDashboard, you may want to create more dashboards in the same web browser as explained here.

Inserting components in a dashboard

You can insert library components and report data components as well as labels, images, special fields, filtering tools, third-party objects, and HTML components into dashboards via the Resources panel. To access the panel, click the Show Resources button on the toolbar.

Inserting library component references

When inserting a library component from the component library into a dashboard, you are not copying it from the component library, but instead referencing it. In this sense, when a library component is edited in JReport Designer and republished to the component library, the changes will be reflected in all the dashboards that reference the library component, and any changes made to a library component in a dashboard will be saved into the dashboard only without affecting the source library component. However, if the same change in a library component is made both at design time in JReport Designer and at runtime in a dashboard, the runtime change has higher priority.

To reference a library component into the dashboard body:

1. Click Show Resources on the toolbar to display the Resources panel.
2. Expand the Component Library node, browse to find the library component you want to insert, then drag it to the destination in the dashboard body.

Inserting report data components

Data components such as tables, crosstabs, charts, KPIs, and geographic maps in reports can be directly inserted into dashboards after being converted into library components automatically.

For reports that use business views as data sources, all data components can be converted to library components successfully.

However, page reports may use queries as data sources other than business views. For a data component that is created using a query, only when there is a business view in the catalog created based on only the query, can the component be converted to a library component and used in dashboards.

Currently library components do not support some features of page report components, after the latter are inserted into dashboards, those features will be removed. This may result in that the data components in dashboards look different from when they are in page reports. For features that are not supported in JDashboard, they will either be ignored, removed, or applied with the default values.

The following table lists how JDashboard deals with the unsupported page report features:

To insert a report data component into the dashboard body:

1. Click Show Resources on the toolbar to display the Resources panel.
2. From the Reports node, expand the report that contains the desired data component and drag the component into the dashboard body.
3. If the report component uses parameters, the default values will be applied. You can change the parameter values via the configuration panel after the component is loaded.

The inserted report data component runs with the report's catalog so it will not be able to run if the catalog is removed or updated. The report data component is not controlled by the runtime filters.

Inserting analysis templates as components

Analysis templates after being saved into the server resource tree can be inserted into dashboards as components. This feature requires a license for Visual Analysis.

To insert an analysis template as component into the dashboard body:

1. Click Show Resources on the toolbar to display the Resources panel.
2. From the Reports node, browse to the target analysis template (.va) and you will find a VCTObject under it. Drag the VCTObject into the dashboard body.

The inserted analysis template will be wrapped into a runtime library component and its data presentation area and legend area without legend icons will be displayed, just for viewing. However if no field binds with any legend, the legend area will not be shown. The default title is the server resource name of the parent analysis template without the suffix .va.

The inserted analysis templates cannot be exported or printed, therefore when exporting or printing a dashboard, they will not be listed and the cells containing them will be left blank.

Inserting a label/dashboard title

Labels can be inserted in the dashboard header. A dashboard title is a special label.

1. Click Show Resources on the toolbar to display the Resources panel.
2. From the Toolbox node, drag Label/Dashboard Title to the destination in the dashboard header.
3. Double-click the label/title and edit the text.
4. Edit the properties of the label/title such as font, size, color, and so on if you want.

Inserting an image

Images can be inserted in the dashboard header.

1. Click Show Resources on the toolbar to display the Resources panel.
2. From the Toolbox node, drag Image to the destination in the dashboard header. The Insert Image dialog appears.

   

3. Specify the image you want to insert.
   • To use an image in the local file system, select Local File, then click Browse to find the image.
   • To use an image on a website, select Web URL, then input the image URL or paste the URL in the File URL text field.
   • To use an image in the image library of JDashboard, select Library, then select the image in the My Pictures box.
4. Click OK to insert the image.

Inserting a special field

Special fields can be inserted in the dashboard header.

1. Click Show Resources on the toolbar to display the Resources panel.
2. From the Toolbox node, drag Special Field to the destination in the dashboard header. The Insert Special Field dialog appears.

   

   You can insert these types of special fields in the dashboard header:

   • User Name
     The user name with which you log onto JReport Server.
   • Modified Date
     The date when the dashboard was last modified.
   • Modified Time
     The time when the dashboard was last modified.
   • Print Date
     The date to run the dashboard.
   • Print Time
     The time to run the dashboard.
3. Choose the desired special field and click OK to insert it into the header.
4. Edit the properties of the special field such as font, size, color, and so on if you want.

Inserting a filter control

Filter controls can be inserted in the dashboard body. They are used to filter component data. For details, see Filtering Component Data.

Inserting a third party gadget via URL

A web page can be inserted in the dashboard body. All you need to do is give its URL. Note that some websites such as http://www.google.com do not allow Gadgets to load them.

1. Click Show Resources on the toolbar to display the Resources panel.
2. From the Toolbox node, drag URL Frame into the dashboard body. The Insert URL Frame dialog appears.

   

3. In the Title text box, give a title for the frame that will display the contents of the web page.
4. In the URL text box, type in the URL of the web page. If needed, click the Add Parameter button to open the Select Parameter dialog to insert a parameter to the URL to compose a dynamic URL (if no data source is specified, the Select Data Source dialog will be displayed for you to select the data source that contains the parameter you want firstly).

   You should provide a complete URL address. A URL without "http://", for example www.jinfonet.com, will not be automatically added "http://" since it is regarded a relative path, which may lead to that the URL cannot be opened in some browsers.

5. If you would like the specified web page to refresh periodically, select Auto refresh, then specify the time interval at which to refresh it.
6. Click OK. The specified web page will be inserted into the dashboard. You can then view the web page from JDashboard. If parameters are used in the URL, you can click on the toolbar to specify the parameter values as you want, then you can get different web pages based on different parameter values.

To further edit the web page information, click on the component title bar and select Edit Setting from the drop-down menu. In the Edit URL Frame dialog, edit the URL of the web page and other settings as required.

Inserting an HTML component

An HTML component allows for typing text, comments, and messages using a simple-featured text editor. It can be inserted in the dashboard body.

1. Click Show Resources on the toolbar to display the Resources panel.
2. From the Toolbox node, drag HTML to the destination in the dashboard body. The Insert HTML dialog appears.

   

3. Specify a title for the HTML component.
4. In the text box, type text directly. You can make use of the buttons above the text box to format the text such as font face, size, style, color, and alignment, insert images into the HTML component and create hyperlinks on the text and images in the HTML component.
5. Click OK to insert the HTML component.

To further edit the HTML component, click on the component title bar and select Edit Setting from the drop-down menu. In the Edit HTML dialog, edit its title and contents as required.

Saving a dashboard

To save the changes you made to the current dashboard tab, click the Save button on the toolbar, or click the Options button and select Save from the option list. You can only save a single tab as a dashboard, you cannot save the entire JDashboard containing multiple tabs. Each tab must be saved separately as a different dashboard.

If the dashboard is newly created and has not yet been saved, the Save As dialog appears.

1. In the Save In section, browse to the folder in the server resource tree where you want to save the dashboard. You can use the button to return to the parent folder.

   The resource table shows the resources in the current directory. Click the column names to change the order of the report in the table list if required.

2. In the File Name box, enter the name of the dashboard or use the default name.
3. If you want to save the report together with the sort criteria, check Save Sort Criteria. With the criteria saved, JDashboard will automatically apply them to the dashboard the next time it is opened.
4. Click OK to save the dashboard.

To save a copy of a dashboard, click on the toolbar, select Save As from the option list to show the Save As dialog, and then do as above. If you are saving to an existing file, a Confirm dialog will be displayed asking whether you want to replace the file or save a new version into the file.

After saving your dashboard into the server resource tree, you can browse to its directory in the server resource tree in the server console and run it directly.

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