Before we begin discussing dashboard designer tools, it is best to clarify that only Pentaho EE has a preconfigured package to create a dashboard using an easy and user-friendly wizard with predefined templates and official support. Fortunately, there is an open source equivalent available—CTools. CTools is an additional plugin from Webdetails. Pentaho acquired Webdetails in 2013.
The following components are the parts of CTools that we will use:
CDF: This is a development framework for building a user-friendly dashboard layout and design
Community Data Access (CDA): This is a data connector to various data sources, and has a caching mechanism
CDE: This is a web editor plugin that simplifies the process of creating dashboards based on CTools components
Community Chart Components (CCC): This is a JavaScript charting library that acts as a visualization toolkit
CDE has the ability to create static or highly interactive chart components based on a layout...