Overview of SAS BI Dashboard

About SAS BI Dashboard

Dashboards provide a way to view data. Users can quickly view critical information in a compact, easy to interpret interface. Dashboards can display key performance indicators in one place to help users monitor information throughout an enterprise. By using the new dashboard designer and dashboard viewer, you can create a single dashboard that contains multiple indicators instead of creating a portal page with multiple dashboard portlets. Coordinating the look and feel of your dashboard and indicators is easier than ever.

A dashboard is a container that is nested within a portlet and that contains one or more indicators. An indicator is a composite of one or more related objects. Each indicator has a data source, one or more gauges, hyperlinks to additional information, and range settings for the gauges. Dashboards display critical information in such a way that the information can be interpreted and monitored at a glance. Dashboards can also contain links to other pertinent information, important summary and highlights, and personalized information such as weather, news, and stock news. Here is an example dashboard that contains three dashboards that use different data sources:

Example of the SAS BI Dashboard

The SAS BI Dashboard enables users to use dashboards to monitor key performance indicators that convey how well an organization is performing. As shown in the preceding display, dashboards include graphics, text, colors, and hyperlinks. The preceding dashboard shows multiple indicators, each with its own data model underneath. These indicators are driven by six different SQL queries, but the data models could be all information maps, all scorecards, or some combination of these types. This dashboard displays gauges, graphs, bar charts, line plots, and a map.

Dashboards are created, maintained, and viewed through an easy-to-use Web-based interface. All content is displayed in a role-based, secure, customizable, and extensible environment. Information consumers and performance analysts can customize how information appears on their personal dashboards.

SAS BI Dashboard enables users to create their own dashboards from a variety of data sources, including information maps and SAS data sets. Users can link dashboards to SAS business intelligence objects or to external URLs, and users can customize the visualization of the data in a number of ways. For more information about the SAS BI Dashboard, see the SAS BI Dashboard: User's Guide.

Log On to SAS BI Dashboard

The SAS BI Dashboard is accessed from within the SAS Information Delivery Portal. The current logon information from the portal is provided to the SAS BI Dashboard. Therefore, the SAS BI Dashboard appears immediately, without the need to log on. For more information, see the Help for SAS Information Delivery Portal.

To access SAS BI Dashboard, open the SAS Information Delivery Portal and log on. To do so, perform the following steps:

Open your Web browser and point it to the portal's URL address. To obtain the URL, contact your portal administrator.
To identify yourself to the portal, log on with your user name and password. If you do not have a user name and password, contact your system administrator to obtain them.

The logon procedure varies depending on how your organization has installed the portal. Use either the portal logon procedure or the Web server logon procedure, as appropriate.
If your organization uses the portal's logon feature, do the following:
1. Open your browser and point to the portal's URL.
  
  Note: To obtain the Web address, contact your portal administrator.
2. On the logon page, type your user name and password.
3. Click Log On. Your personal portal opens. Typically, most portal users see a page that contains a collection portlet (My Collection) and a bookmark portlet (Bookmarks).