Creating a Dashboard

Users with Admin permission can create and edit interactive Dashboards in Orbit, configuring visualisations to suit desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile devices.

To create or edit a Dashboard you must use a screen with resolution greater than 1280px

To create meaningful views of your data, you should consider the following:

• Who is the intended user of the information?
• Why do they need the information?
• How do they want or need to access the data?
• What types of visualisation are most effective to communicate the required information?

The name you allocate to a Dashboard is the user’s immediate means of understanding its purpose and scope; clear definition will also help you to build an effective data display.

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You can copy an existing dashboard using the duplicate button.

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Create New

1. Click the menu icon in the top left of the Dashboards window

The dashboards selector pane opens

2. Click + Create New

• Enter your Dashboard title and any associated Dashboard description and click Create

A blank dashboard view displays in Edit mode

Filters

On the right of the display a Filters panel is visible. As Admin you can:

• Set the Resolve table for the Dashboard

• Define a subset of data to act as a filter for all the displayed results. You can achieve this using the Search data… option to search and select a specific item:

Searching or Browsing Data

• Click Include codes in search to show the defined codes

• or Browse data to access your FastStats System explorer folders and navigate and select the require variable and category:

• or Search for URNs or FastStats Selections

You can build your filter criteria using the nodes, as you would a FastStats selection.

When you Save, the defined criteria are presented as Dashboard Filters:

The Filters panel is not immediately visible when a Dashboard is displayed on a tablet or mobile device but can be accessed by clicking on the Filters button.

Adding Visualisations available

When creating an Orbit Dashboard you have several visualisation chart options:

See the Visualisations Library

Basic

Text tile

Add free text to provide context to the dashboard.
See Text tile

Number card

Display a single value either as a count or as a calculated aggregation.

See Number card tiles

Number Card Options

You can use the number card options to improve the display of large values, customise the number representation and gain more dashboard space.

• From the Tile Editor for a Number card Options section

Abbreviated Counts on Number Cards

You can abbreviate the count on a number card

• Select the Abbreviate count check-box to enable this feature

The following abbreviations will be applied

• 1 => 1

• 21 => 21

• 321 => 321

• 4321 => 4.3K

• 54321 => 54K

• 654321 => 654K

• 7654321 => 7.7M

• 87654321 => 88M

• 987654321 => 988M

• 1987654321 => 2B

 

Set the Maximum Number of Decimal Spaces

• Set the Apply maximum number of decimal spaces check-box

• Use the cell to enter a value or the Increase and Decrease arrows to adjust the number of decimal places.

This will also work when an abbreviation has been applied for example

• 28,400.99 will display as 28K when abbreviated

• Setting the number of decimal spaces to 3 will display 28,401K

Currencies display in the locales natural format (normally 2 decimal places).

Maps

• UK Postal Area Map - Display categorical data for each UK postal area with shades representing the category's values
• NL Provinces Map - Display categorical data for each NL Province with shades representing the category's values
• NL Municipalities Map - Display categorical data for each NL Municipality with shades representing the category's values.
• DE 2 Digit PostCode Map - Display categorical data for each DE PostCode with shades representing the category's values
• Switzerland 2 Digit PostCode Map -Display categorical data for each CH PostCode with shades representing the category's values
• Australian 2 Digit PostCode Map - Display categorical data for each AU PostCode with shades representing the category's valuesshades representing the category's values
• US States Map - Display categorical data for each US State with shades representing the category's values.

See Pareto Charts

Venn Diagram

A Venn The name comes from John Venn, a 19th-century British logician who devised the notion. diagram gives a colourful, graphical representation of how data interrelates. It is advantageous in segmenting the data, for example, when creating target groups for mailings. You can use the Venn to select and analyse your chosen dataset, and then filter a dashboard.

Click on a subset count to zoom in and see a tooltip with details.

Up to five sets can be used in a Venn diagram. A coloured ellipse representing each set is shown in a different colour. Five default colours are used, however, you can change the colour for each set.

You can add up to five sets

See Venn Diagrams

Adding a visualisation to your Dashboard

1. Click the plus Add Item icon to open the Tile Editor

You can move the Visualisations panel from right to left by clicking the icon.

2. Click and select a visualisation type:

3. Enter a Title

The fields in the panel will adjust to match the tile selected. For example, to display Total Bookings in the Teal Green Holidays demo system using a Number Card:

4. Click + Measure to access and then Search data… or Browse data

To identify the total number of records in a table, use the Search option and type the table name – for example, in our demo system, this might be Bookings…People…Communications. You cannot select table items using Browse

A Function drop-down automatically presents with any available options listed – in this case Count.

You are presented with Visualisation options according to the visualisation type. You must complete all required fields before you can Apply the settings

Visualisation Settings

With certain visualisation types you can optionally:

• Show underlying data grid - This will provide a link on the tile to view the underlying data
• Omit Unclassified - This will not represent Unclassified data on the visualisation

Legend

• Select the Show legend option to show the legend.

• Click the icon to position the legend

 

Select and complete the required Dimensions and Measures and use the buttons and sort options to set the behaviour and information to display

For more information on Multi Dimension charts see Creating Multi Dimension Charts

OPTIONS

Change tile to select via

A Dashboard creator can use this option to override the default counting table.

• Select the check-box to enable this option

The default counting table will be shown in brackets after the Auto option.

• Select a Table to force the tile to Count via that table

• Click Apply then Save the dashboard once you finish configuring it.

Visualisation Notes

You can also annotate a visualisation with a note which can be positioned at the top, right, bottom, or left of the tile, the body text can be aligned horizontally or vertically.

You can specify a different text box position for each of the responsive device types

See Text tile and visualisation annotations

Dimensions Dimensions are qualitative, for example, sales region, location, and dates. are used to partition the data in a visualisation and measures Measures represent numerical data that functions work on. For example: - Count - Sum - Mean - Minimum - Maximum - Median - Variance - Standard Deviation - Lower Quartile - Upper Quartile - Inter Quartile Range - Percentile - Count Distinct are numerical values that a mathematical function works on.

Dashboard Themes

Predefined themes can be added to dashboards, choose between Orbit Blue and Ultraviolet.

You can create Custom Themes if necessary and set one of those as the default theme.

See Dashboard Themes Editor

Dashboard Logo

A Dashboard Creator can specify a logo to use on a dashboard.

• To add a logo to a dashboard open the dashboard editor and turn the Use Logo button on

• Select a logo to use from the available logos

For more information about uploading logos to use on a dashboard see Dashboard Logos

For more information on applying logos to a theme see Theme Logo

Drilldown

It is possible to create levels of drilldown in a visualisation which allow the user to select categories within a tile and examine them in a subsequent and more granular visualisation. For example, moving from a visualisation of Booking Date Years 2014-2017 measuring the number of bookings to a drilldown into 2015 by quarter and Mean Profit:

1. Click on the Drilldown
2. Select your visualisation type and any required settings
3. Click Apply and Save

Any drill down in a visualisation can also have a note.

See Text tile and visualisation annotations

You can add up to 15 tiles on one dashboard

Dashboard Settings

The top panel of the Dashboard window provides a number of options including undo/redo, the ability to align the visualisations and to auto or manually adjust tiles in the Dashboard

You can configure the dashboard view for each device type

• Desktop
• Laptop
• Tablet
• Mobile

Once you have created your Dashboard, you can move and resize the visualisations to suit the target device using the tile drag handle: