Contents of dashboard pages depend on whether it is an executive-oriented (i.e., designed to manage a broader business process) dashboard such as the Receivables Dashboard in the figure below or a more narrowly-focused, operation-oriented dashboard such as the Service Manager dashboard in the figure below.

Functional Area / Executive Dashboard

The executive-oriented dashboard can be divided into an Overview page and up to seven subordinate pages.
The Overview page should contain only the key Level 1 metrics that are high-level indicators of the business. These metrics and reports should be the key performance indicators that users typically want to review at the beginning of their business day.

Exception Page

In the dashboard for business processes that are managed by exception, include an exception page that drives the user to time-critical issues. Examples of exceptions are:

• Top 10 sales orders that have not been filled by the scheduled date
• Top 5 customers who are late paying their bills
• Top 10 manufacturing work orders that have not been completed

Operational-Oriented Dashboards

Operation-oriented dashboards are generally narrow in scope and focused tightly on an operational role. These dashboards can have no more than six pages, each centered on one aspect of operation, as shown in the preceding Service Manager dashboard example. Each of these pages contains Levels 1-4 metrics, enabling the user to perform complete analysis, from gaining insight to taking action, in each area, without navigating away from the page.

You can use guided navigation to help users easily navigate to typical paths of analysis that exist in another report, dashboard page, or dashboard. Guided navigation can take the form of a persistent conditional navigation or a simple embedded link.

The preceding figure shows the two types of navigation presented on reports. It also shows that a description is added to the report title when data is made drillable. The following screenshot shows that guided navigation can be made persistent by not referencing a source request. If the navigation is to be made conditional, a reference source request and the condition must be provided.

Plan detailed reports carefully to enable users to take action without having to process an excessive number of columns and dimensions. Also, create detailed reports to anticipate the context to be passed from the higher-level reports through a set of "is prompted." Therefore, these reports should have comprehensive prompt coverage.

1. Determine the Level 1 reports that will be rendered on the Overview page of the dashboard and the dimensionality of the reports. In general, use the same filtering conditions for all reports on this page for consistency. Also, report filter conditions "is prompted" will match the dashboard prompt or the prompt for the Overview page.
2. Determine the Level 2 and 3 reports that will be rendered on subordinate pages that are organized around themes. Remember that many of these reports will form analytic workflows to support a detection-to-action framework. Determine the filter conditions of these reports. A good practice is to keep all filter conditions of reports on a page the same so that "as prompted" conditions can be passed from page prompts. Normally, filter conditions of Levels 2 and 3 reports include all of the filter conditions of the parent Level 1 report.
3. Create and save Level 1 reports with the appropriate filters. Save and reuse the filters.
4. Create and save Levels 2 and 3 reports and the appropriate filters. Save and reuse the filters.
5. Create and save the dashboard and page prompts. Ensure that a combination of report filters and the prompt on the page on which the report will be rendered will not result in a NULL set. For example, if a report filter is Year = CURRENT_YEAR, selection of any year other than the current year will result in a NULL set and the system will throw an error.
6. Create dashboard pages and lay out the reports on the pages. Adjust report sizes to fit on the pages, following the guidelines provided elsewhere in this report.
7. Test to ensure the consistency between the prompts and filters for each report on each page.
8. Build appropriate links to create analytic workflows.
9. If necessary, fill blank space with instructive text boxes.