SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards offers three component types to display single values: gauges, progress bars, and value components. A gauge and progress bar shows data on a scale, while the value component only shows a value in numbers. The gauge is the only component of these three types that has the ability to show more than one value. There are a number of different gauge versions available, where the progress bar has only a horizontal and vertical version. All these components are ideally used in combination with Alerts. Alerts will be discussed in Chapter 5, Using Alerts.

This recipe will show you how to set up a gauge. The other two component types work in the same way.