Tips, Tricks, and General Info on the Msft BI Platform : Dashboard

Demo files Used In My BI Conference Session...

jbasilico — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:42:00 GMT

For those that attended my session (Designing Effective Dashboards with Msft BI Platform) at the 2nd annual Msft BI Conference in Seattle, and had asked for the demo files/projects, you can download my demo files here. The zip file contains the SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services project file, SQL Server 2008 Report Builder file for the combined sparkline and bullet graph, PerformancePoint workspace file, and the "minimum" masterpage for MOSS. Keep in mind that you'll need to alter the location of your Reporting Services installation, the Analysis Services AdventureWorks database, as well as the PPS service site on MOSS. Enjoy!

Microsoft BI Conference a Week Away...Come To My Session

jbasilico — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:28:00 GMT

Just a friendly reminder that the 2nd Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference is only a week away, starting on October 6th. The conference is being held in Seattle. Come visit my session "Designing Effective Dashboards with the Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform" (session code "DBP201"), being held on Monday, Oct 6th @ 11:15am in Room 6C.

Here's the session abstract:

What makes a good BI dashboard? What makes a great BI dashboard? Its all about user interface design techniques. Attend this session to learn about common mistakes in dashboard design, using visual perception to your advantage, and design dashbaords for maximum usabiilty. We'll cover some design examples, and then some designs. Finally, the session will approach how to apply components within SQL Server Reporting Services, Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server to build the visually appealing and effective dashboard.

See you there!

Effective Dashboard Design Practices

jbasilico — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:35:00 GMT

Through conversations with many customers, I’ve been asked either directly or indirectly what makes a dashboard good in terms of design. Put it another way…what are some design best practices to make a dashboard more effective at conveying the “data” message.

Well…here’s the list of dashboard design best practices that I try to follow. How many do you follow already?

1. Keep the dashboard to a single web page that viewable in a single screen. If additional detail is needed, have that detail (or related data) be navigation to different pages on the dashboard.

2. Make sure there is context to all data elements presented on the page…meaning if presenting a number (let’s say sales revenue by quarter to quarter comparison), is the latest number good or poor.

3. Keep “like” data grouped (arranged) within the dashboard.

4. Keep precision and detail of data to a minimum. For example, to conserve space on a page, instead of showing $3,000,000 show $3m. Think of “detail data” in the same light…does it really make sense to show all that detail if it is better served on a subsequent dashboard page.

5. Don’t use pie charts or radar charts on a dashboard.

6. Use a uniform color scheme and object rendering as appropriate –put in other words, don’t just use a cool image/representation of data “just because”.

7. Don’t use bright colors in charts/graphs…use either light colors or even grayscale. Use the bright colors for highlighting important information, like yellow or red KPI status.

8. Keep most important data (aka data your want the user to see first) in the upper left, least important data in lower right. Also keep in mind relative size to one another…for example; a large colorful graph in the lower right may overpower the important data in the upper left.

9. Don’t over complicate the dashboard page(s) with design elements…aka, fancy gauges, images, etc. Not only do these designs waste space, but they draw the user’s attention away from the important data.

10. Reduce non data pixels as much as possible…meaning do away with borders, gradient fill colors, grid lines, extra images, etc. The simpler the better.

11. Use “sparkline” and “bullet” graphs to represent data. Both can be achieved within Reporting Services 2005/2008 (as seen below).

Implementation of Sparkline Type Reports within Reporting Services

jbasilico — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:55:00 GMT

As with any dashboard implementation, an intuitive user interface design is desired, thus leveraging the latest concepts in dashboard user interfaces. One of those concepts is to display Sparkline type charts. A “Sparkline” is a word coined by Edward Tufte to describe “small, high-resolution graphics embedded in a context of words, numbers, and images.” Sparklines are “word-sized graphics” which can be used to add context to data in a sentence. More than that, though, Sparklines are word like graphics that can be used almost as words.

To implement Sparklines within Reporting Services is rather easy…in fact, the charting object within Reporting Services can be shrunk within a table object, thus producing the Sparkline image.

Do note though that placing many inline Reporting Services charts within a table will put more processing burden on the Reporting Services server, since each chart needs to be determined and rendered.

Other than leveraging the chart object within Reporting Services, there are a few third party solutions that “plug into” the Microsoft BI Platform to allow Sparkline and other visualization techniques. One such offering is from BonaVista Systems – through a product called MicroCharts. For more information visit this link: http://www.bonavistasystems.com/Products_SparkLinerforMicrosoftBI.html.