Dashboards are graphical representations of reports that you create in your org and visually illustrate the key metrics and performance indicators that matter to the business. They display multiple reports at once to give you a snapshot of the data of business importance and you can analyze in a quick glance where you stand and whether or not there are any concrete action items if you notice any slippage against your goals. They allow the top management to make well-informed strategic decisions to improve the overall health of your business by analyzing data trends. They can be configured to be displayed on the home page so that user can review them as soon as he/she logs in to the system.
Dashboards are collections of the dashboard components, which could further be configured to display data from reports or Visualforce pages. Components from reports can be displayed as gauges, charts (horizontal and vertical bar, line, pie, donut, funnel), tables, or metrics. Each dashboard can...