There are 4 steps to building your first dashboard using NetCharts Performance Dashboards. The four steps are:

1. Choose your data sources
2. Choose your tables
3. Create Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Collections
4. Start building dashboards!

NetCharts Performance Dashboards has wizards that will walk you through the entire process. The Getting Started page links them all together, simplifies initial interaction with the system, and displays the progress status as each step is completed.
 

 

Step 1: Choose Your Data Source

The process begins by establishing a connection to your Data Source. NetCharts Performance Dashboards supports connections to multiple diverse data sources. Each data source type will require a name, unique and intuitive to you, and the necessary information for Net Charts Performance Dashboards to find and connect with the data source.
 
For example, a database will need the name of the machine the database resides, the port number, database instance name, user name and password. This information is common for connecting to a database and will be easily obtained from your database administrator, or other technical resources within your organization.
 
Alternatively, an Excel Spreadsheet simply needs the location of the file within your network.
 
We will configure NetCharts Performance Dashboards to communicate to a PostgreSQL database later in the tutorial.

Step 2: Choose Your Tables

Once connectivity to your data source has been configured we can begin choosing the tables, otherwise referred to as Data Entities. This process is minimally 1, but can be up to 4 steps, which are:

1. Choosing Tables: The database tables (or Excel Worksheets) where the data resides must be selected. At least one table or worksheet must be chosen, but you can select as many as you need.
2. Selecting Fields / Columns (optional): After selecting the tables or worksheets you can choose which fields/columns to expose. By default all the fields/columns from the database table or worksheet are available.
3. Defining Joins (optional): Joins define connections between tables in the database based on foreign key relationships. The fields chosen, in step 2 above, link the tables and thus the path from table to table (the join) affect the perspective from which NetCharts Performance Dashboards accesses data. This can be done automatically provided the joins exist within the database.
4. Defining Relationships (optional): Relationships define aliases for fields (column names) from the table or worksheet. Relationships are solely for dimension label substitutions (Dimensions will be fully described later).

Step 3: Create KPI Collections

The next step is to define Key Performance Indicators (KPI) Collections so you can view the information from the data. A KPI Collection defines the roles different columns assume. The roles are:

• Measures – these are the numeric values derived from calculations against columns in the database. These can be Sums, Averages, Counts, or Counts of unique values which will be represented by bars, groups of bars, pie slices or lines in the charts. They are the value,graphed. An example of a Measure is total revenue.
• Dimensions – groupings or buckets through which Measures are viewed. These are the labelson an axis to a chart or listed in a legend. An example Dimension is a sales person, and you may view the Measure “total revenue” by the Dimension “sales person“.
• Filters – used to limit the data displayed in the KPIs. Filters may restrict what Dimensions are displayed, or limit what rows in the database contribute to the calculations of a Measures. An example of a Filter would be date, so you could filter “total revenue by sales person” for a specific year.
• Drilldown Fields – the organization of data that populates the details table of a KPI. For example, when drilling down on a specific “sales person’s total revenue by year” the details table (drill down table) would display the fields for all transactions; such as order number, customer number, amount, etc.

Step 4: Start building dashboards

Using the data and configuration made in the previous steps, you will begin assembling the information into dashboards in this step.