Reporting may only be the first step for you in terms of information delivery. When you have data that needs to be updated frequently or in real-time and delivered to a large number of people, static reports become cumbersome and bandwidth-intensive. In these situations, you may be better served by a Web portal that shows rich and interactive charts, graphs, and stoplight reporting dashboard elements. Pentaho offers a Dashboard Designer tool to create dashboards from existing content (charts, reports, Pentaho Analyzer reports, graphics, etc.) with a variety of interesting features, including:
To see some dashboards in action, click the plus sign next to Steel Wheels in the browser pane on the left to expand it. (If you don't see a browser pane, go to the View menu in the Pentaho User Console, then select Browser. The browser pane will appear on the left). A list of example files will appear in the lower left pane; in it, double-click on the Google Maps, Revenue Analysis, and Top 10 Customers items to see different interactive dashboard examples. These are similar in appearance and functionality to actual production dashboards used by Pentaho customers.
Pentaho offers a Dashboards Enterprise Edition support module that provides two service enhancements: A Dashboard Designer plugin for the Pentaho User Console, which makes simple dashboard creation capabilities available to business users; and Pentaho dashboard development consultative support and expertise available to your JSP developers.