What this book covers

Chapter 1, Staying in Control, presents you with best practices for using the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards spreadsheet, the data model, and connections with the components on the canvas.

Chapter 2, Data Visualization, presents you with recipes on how to use different components such as charts, tables, and graphs to visualize data on the dashboard.

Chapter 3, From a Static to an Interactive Dashboard, shows you how to add interactivity to your dashboards by adding selectors, maps, buttons, drilldowns, and so on.

Chapter 4, Dynamic Visibility, shows you how to make components visible/invisible and provides scenarios where dynamic visibility becomes useful.

Chapter 5, Using Alerts, contains examples of different ways of showing alerts on a dashboard.

Chapter 6, Advanced Components, provides recipes on SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards' more advanced components.

Chapter 7, Dashboard Look and Feel, teaches you how to tweak the visuals and user experience of the dashboard by customizing the look of components.

Chapter 8, Dashboard Data Connectivity, talks about the various options to connect a dashboard to external data sources.

Chapter 9, Exporting and Publishing, contains recipes on how to export SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards into different environments.

Chapter 10, Top Third-party Add-ons, contains an introduction to some of the most useful third-party add-ons for SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards.

Chapter 11, Performance Tuning, teaches you how to improve the performance of your dashboards by tweaking the spreadsheet and optimizing the data sources' connection setup.

Chapter 12, Increasing Productivity, discusses various development best practices and tips to save precious development time.

Appendix A, Real-world Dashboard Case Studies, demonstrates how to implement various techniques covered in this book by creating two applications: a calculator that displays monthly payments of a mortgage and a sales/profit dashboard that displays the sales or profit of each state on a map.

Appendix B, Additional Resources – Supported Excel Functions and System/Software Requirements, lists some helpful online resources for further reference and some useful Microsoft Excel functions supported by SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards.

Appendix C, The Future of Dashboarding with SAP Design Studio, introduces you to a new SAP tool: Design Studio. A comparison with SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards is made and the future roadmap for this tool is shared.