Build a Dashboard from scratch

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Build a Dashboard from scratch

Written by Nilesh Jethwa

In this article, I will demonstrate how to create a dashboard on a blank slate using InfoCaptor: Rapid Dashboard Designer

Pre-requisites :

You should have already installed Dashboard Designer

We are going to use the Video5 sample data that comes along with Discoverer installation.

Here are the list of tables (Dimensions and Fact) that are going to be used in the exercise.

Product Dimension

Store Dimension

Time Dimension

Sales Fact

This Sales Fact table contains columns that are mapped to the Dimension table using their keys e.g Product_key, Store_key and Time_key.

The sales fact table contains all the transaction that take place at a very detail level. In order to get information out of this detailed fact table, there are a few summary tables which maintain a high level aggregation of the detailed transactions.

We will keep the summary tables out for now. Let us just go with the bare basics of a simple data-warehouse star schema (one fact surrounded by three dimensions)

In our dashboard there will be 3 parameters and one portlet showing the Fact information to begin with. The dimension tables will map to the parameters of the dashboard.

Here is a rought sketch of how our initial cut of the dashboard will look