Creating a Visual Insight dashboard

A Visual Insight (VI) dashboard is an interactive display that you can create to showcase and explore business data. You can add simple visual representations of the data (called visualizations) to the VI dashboard to make the data easier to interpret, perform manipulations on the data to customize which information to display, organize data into multiple layout tabs (or "pages") to provide a logical flow to your dashboard, and so on. You can quickly and easily create a polished VI dashboard without requiring a lot of design time using visualizations and pre-defined, presentation-quality formatting.

You can add data to a VI dashboard in the following ways:

By importing the data from a file, database, or report. For an overview of importing data, see About importing data.
Based on an existing report, including Intelligent Cube reports. For background information and steps to create a report, see Creating a report.
Based on an existing Intelligent Cube, including imported data saved as an Intelligent Cube.

VI dashboards open by default in Visual Insight Mode, where you can easily drag and drop attributes and metrics to display data, create filters, group data, and more. You can also maximize the amount of space available for data display by viewing VI dashboards on an iPad with XBR Ingenium Mobile. You can share a VI dashboard through email, by linking to the VI dashboard.

Prerequisites

You must have document designer privileges.
You must have the Edit Dashboard, Create Dashboard, and Run Dashboard privileges.
To create a VI dashboard by importing data, you must have access to the file (Excel spreadsheet, text, or CSV file), or database information that you want to import. For best practices information for importing data, see Best practices: Importing data.
To create a VI dashboard from existing data, you must first create the report or Intelligent Cube to use to create the VI dashboard. For steps to create a report, see Creating a report. For steps to Import data into XBRi and publish it as an Intelligent Cube, see About Importing Data.

To create a VI dashboard:

On the home page or any folder page, click the New Dashboard icon . The Select Dataset dialog box opens.
Do one of the following:

To create your VI dashboard by importing new data, under New, click Import Data. Select the appropriate options to import and publish your data, then click Create Dashboard. For detailed steps to import data, see the appropriate link below:
1. 1. Importing data from a file
    
    Importing data from a database
To create your VI dashboard using an existing report or Intelligent Cube, under Use Existing, browse to and select the report or Intelligent Cube, then click Next.

Your dashboard is created and displayed, containing a single blank visualization. To add data to display in the visualization, choose from the following:

To select the visualization's type from a list and have the application automatically select data to add to the visualization to optimize your display, in the empty visualization, click Select a Visualization. The Select a Visualization dialog box opens, with an icon displayed next to the visualization that is recommended based on the data in your VI dashboard. Click the icon of the visualization to use to display your data.

Note: Depending on the type of visualization you select, different visualization subtypes may be available. For example, if you want to represent your data as a bar graph, you can choose to display it as a vertical bar graph or a horizontal bar graph. Click the icon for the subtype to use to display your data. The visualization is automatically created and added using data in your VI dashboard.

To manually select the data to add to the visualization, from the Dataset Objects panel to the left, double-click the names of the attributes and metrics to add.

Add content to the dashboard

You can add additional visualizations to the VI dashboard. For steps to add a specific type of visualization, see the related links below:

Creating a Density Map visualization

Creating an ESRI Map visualization

Creating a Grid visualization

Creating a Graph visualization

Creating a Heat Map visualization

Creating an Image Layout visualization

Creating a Map visualization

Creating a Network visualization

Once you have created a VI dashboard, you can add filters, text, and additional data to the dashboard, format the display of your data, organize your content into multiple panels and layout tabs, and so on. For background information and steps to perform a specific task, see the appropriate link below.

Adding filters to a Visual Insight dashboard

Adding derived metrics to a Visual Insight dashboard

Adding, editing, and removing text in a Visual Insight dashboard

Adding, modifying, duplicating, and deleting panels from a Visual Insight dashboard

Adding, duplicating, renaming, and deleting layouts in a Visual Insight dashboard

Adding and removing datasets from a Visual Insight dashboard

Formatting and working with Visual Insight dashboards

To save the dashboard

Click the Save icon . The Save As dialog box is displayed.
Navigate to the location in which you want to save the VI dashboard, then type a name and description for the VI dashboard in the Name and Description fields.
Click OK. The VI dashboard is saved.