A self-service dashboard is a tool that puts the power into the hands of the end users and allows them to bring data, which is most important for their business needs, into one centralized location. To fully understand what a self-service dashboard is, we need to start with the understanding of what a dashboard is.
A standard dashboard is a collection of graphical and numeric information all brought together on one screen or page. With IBM Cognos Business Intelligence, the idea has always been that it needs to be interactive data, or otherwise a dashboard loses some of its power. You may be asking yourself, how to interact with data? There are a few typically used ways of making a dashboard interactive. Drill-down, drill-through, links to the metrics, links to the other systems, hover-over, or comment capabilities are a few of the most commonly used techniques. The following is a brief overview of each: