Dashboards, whether business intelligence dashboards, or software application dashboards, are best understood when experienced directly. It can be quite difficult to explain in words how certain dashboards work. That’s the challenge when writing and discussing enterprise dashboard software. Often, however, it’s not always possible for you to access the dashboards we study. That’s why The Dashboard Spy has become so popular. We’ll include detailed screenshots of the digital dashboards (as we do on Dashboards by Example), or sometimes, even video coverage of the business dashboard (see this Dashboard Spy Video).

A pet peeve of mine is when I come across literature from business intelligence vendors that discuss business dashboard technology and dashboards at length without including screenshots. I come across this quite a bit and it just irks me.

A couple of years ago, a Dashboard Spy reader pointed me to this Microsoft article about an Isreali Police Department dashboard case study and asked if I would please track down some screenshots of the dashboard.

Well, it took almost two years, but here are some screenshots of the performance dashboard used by the Isreali police to track over 100 KPIs for their 27,000 officers. The technology behind the performance dashboard is Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005.

Click on the examples to enlarge the screenshots. These digital dashboards are in Hebrew, so I can’t tell you exactly which metrics are shown on these screens.

Tags: Digital Dashboard Example, Isreali Police Dashboards

Here’s a quick Dashboard Design Tip from The Dashboard Spy.

Consider the use of mini tooltip dashboards.

Your business dashboard is for graphically showing the state of your business metrics in an easy-to-digest fashion, isn’t it? Well then, don’t forget to take advantage of every facet of your BI dashboard application to keep up that visual information theme. What do I mean?

Take tool tips for example. You can put data into hover-over tooltips like this of course.

A plain list like this:

Can turn into something informationally richer with tooltips such as this:

But how about going further and turning each tooltip into a little dashboard complete with red/yellow/green status indicators like this?

Let’s see these mini tooltip dashboards on your next business intelligence reporting project!

Tags: Dashboard Design, Tooltip Dashboards

Here at the Dashboard Spy, we have been keenly observing the development of the various RIA (Rich Internet Application) technologies and their applicability towards business intelligence dashboards. We’ve looked at plenty of AJAX, FLEX/Flash and mashup dashboards, but now let’s examine a Silverlight dashboard. Yes, Silverlight business dashboards are hard to come by, but Infragistics has produced quite a nice demo.

In terms of background, Silverlight is a Microsoft technology. It is a framework for providing rich applications to the web browser and is generally thought of as a competitor to Adobe’s Flash. Unlike Flash, however, Silverlight applications are delivered to a browser in a text-based markup language called XAML. This means that search engines can scan XAML (as opposed to not being able to look inside compiled Flash applications), giving Silverlight an edge in terms of search engine optimization.

Here are some screenshots of the Infragistics Silverlight demo. The interactive demo is called faceOut and can be found at http://labs.infragistics.com/silverlight/faceout/. You’ll need to have Silverlight 2 installed on your machine to view the demo. Hit the more link further down on this page and look for a video of the dashboard if you don’t wish to install Silverlight at this time.

Here are some screenshots.

Here is what you get if you don’t have Silverlight installed:

Here are some screenshots of the sales dashboard:

First, select a customer:

Then here is the Silverlight dashboard:

And here is the video I captured of the Infragistics Silverlight dashboard. Click on the image to visit the video.

Tags: Silverlight dashboard, customer dashboards

Should we build our business intelligence dashboards or buy our dashboards off the shelf? The Buy vs. Build decision has been a point of consideration for IT management since the dawn of MIS departments. Given the scarcity of off-the-shelf BI dashboard products “back-in-the-day”, we mostly built our own primitive (but functional) scorecards and dashboards. We developed a “build it ourselves” outlook that took many years for packaged software vendors to overcome.  Things do change, however. With the advent and subsequent ubiquity of enterprise reporting packages came the preference of many for using installed solutions to knock out quick dashboards.

The explosion of Web 2.0 websites and technologies has created an environment that now merges the choices of “Buy” and “Build” into “Leverage freely available new technologies and approaches”. What do I mean? One cannot click more than a couple of times in today’s web without stumbling across technology that can be leveraged for our business intelligence dashboard projects. APIs are available that offer services that were unheard of (at any price, much less at no cost!) back a few years ago.  I speak of web services from companies such as Google, Amazon, Ebay, etc that allow a “mash-up” of dashboard applications. See the post on a Mashup Dashboard on Dashboards by Example.

Getting to today’s Business Dashboard Example, let’s look at how someone is leveraging the iGoogle API to provide a dashboard geared towards Church management.

As you know, the Google Personalized Homepage has been around since 2005. There was a major change in April of 2007 with a rebranding as “iGoogle”. The service was expanded and the iGoogle API allowed anyone to create a module called a Google Gadget. Google also allows users to create gadgets online through a gadget interface.

Here is the dashboard screenshot:

Dashboard examples like this one and a thousand others can be found at Dashboards by Example, a Dashboard Spy project.

The Dashboard Spy has been posting at Dashboards by Example and The Dashboard Spy Blog for quite a while now, but many people searching for various business intelligence topics still find Dashboard Spy screenshots at this original address.

As a nod to the continuing power of this original Dashboard Spy Collection of Digital Dashboards, I thought I’d throw up a brand new post. It’s a sample of the type of content you’ll find at the new sites, so be sure to come over and join your fellow digital dashboard enthusiasts!

Dashboard Topic: The Risks and Rewards of a CIO Dashboard

In the upcoming issue of Information Week, there is a great article on CIO Dashboards called “Hunting the Elusive CIO Dashboard“. I’ll summarize some of the points in a moment, but take a look first at this great table showing pros and cons of CIO Dashboards:

As you see, there are both benefits and risks when it comes to a CIO Dashboard project. The main areas of challenge are selecting the appropriate KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and getting the data sources ready for consumption by the dashboard.

The benefits of the CIO Dashboard:

• CIO Dashboard enables visibility of apps, systems and projects
• Allows CIO to drive by KPI
• CIO Dashboard will help lead to a lean efficient IT organization

The risks involved include:

• CIO Dashboard will expose inefficient IT organization processes and data gaps
• Poorly defined KPIs may cause mismanagement
• Costly to implement

Here are 8 Steps to Prepare for the CIO Dashboard:

A great article with content valuable to the business intelligence dashboard community. Check it out.

Tags: CIO Dashboards, CIO Dashboard Benefits and Risks, Digital Dashboard

All Dashboard Spy readers should update their bookmarks and RSS feeds. The main Dashboard Spy site is located at http://dashboardspy.com. The Dashboards by Example Blog is located at http://www.enterprise-dashboard.com where you’ll find listings of the dashboard examples.

Here are some recent dashboard examples that you may have missed:

Oracle Portal Dashboards

Sparklines with Microsoft Business Scorecard Manager

Incident and Threat Management Dashboard

Tags: Recap of Dashboards at Dashboards By Example blog.

Update: The author of the blog post referenced below has updated the blog with an important post titled  SharePoint 2007 - Pointedly Unskinnable. It’s a big reversal of the original point that Sharepoint could be skinned with web standard templates. 

The author says, for example:

Well, it turns out SharePoint 2007 isn’t nearly as customizable as I (and others) were led to believe. Not even close in some cases. Given the amount of exposure my original article garnered, I feel obligated to share what I’ve learned since. 

Go check out the new post now. It’s a big deal.

Here is the original Dashboard Spy post about the first post on Skinning MS SharePoint with Standards.

>>>>>>

A Dashboard Spy reader contacted me with some questions about using MicroSoft SharePoint Server for dashboarding. I pointed her to several SharePoint Dashboard videos on the dashboard screenshot blog - Dashboards By Example.  After we jointly studied a couple more dashboards done in SharePoint, our discussion turned to how compliant Sharepoint was in terms of web standards.  Also, we covered the topic of how easy was it to customize the look and feel of Sharepoint. The lastest version has made ui customization much easier. I remember struggling with even simple tasks like putting in custom banners.

I shared a great resource on customizing the look of SharePoint with that Dashboard Spy reader and I’d like to share it with you as well.

Take a look at this post called Skinning MS SharePoint with Standards. It has a very nice list of resources concerning the topic of web standards and Microsoft SharePoint.

Here’s a quick peek at the before and after screenshots from the post.

This is the out-of-the-box styling:

 And this is the look that was achieved after customization.

Definitely check out the post as well as the blog. It’s got some great content.

Tags: Sharepoint Dashboards

Dashboard designers know how executives, project sponsors and business users love bells and whistles on their dashboards. In fact, much of our time is spent towards protecting over-excited design participants from themselves. Just look at how the information visualization crowd goes totally nuts when gradients appear in pie charts (or, for that matter, when pie charts are chosen instead of those teeny weeny sparklines!).

In the spirit of unnecessary multimedia elements in business dashboards, I proudly present a song about the business intelligence dashboard. What? Is there such a thing? Of course, it’s the Dashboard Spy theme song!

Have a listen and tell me what you think:

The Dashboard Spy Theme Song

Dashboard Spy readers can now have their dashboarding questions answered by the Dashboard Spy in video format. “Ask The Dashboard Spy” is a series of video tutorials that explore various business intelligence dashboard topics.

The first video is about “Coding Dashboard Portlets in HTML” and it explains a nifty trick on how to produce a live pie chart that displays your latest data. This dashboard tutorial is meant as an introduction to coding and will be of interest to dashboard project team members who have always wanted to get more technical.

Use the link above to view the dashboard video on the main Dashboard Spy site.

Here is a look at the portlet that you will see implemented. The HTML and CSS is straight-forward. The magic comes in how we code the pie chart. Using google docs spreadsheet web services, we can easily implement a live pie chart that is driven by values on a web-based spreadsheet.

Tags: Ask The Dashboard Spy Video Tutorial, Coding Dashboard Portlets in HTML, Dashboard Software

Dashboard examples continue to be added to the collection of dashboard screenshots over at the Dashboard Examples Volume 1 blog. In case, you’ve forgotten, that’s the new location of this blog about business intelligence dashboards. Be sure to check out the dashboards.

Here is a recap of recent dashboards featured over at new The Dashboard Spy blog:

A Dynamic Presentation of Data on a BBC Dashboard:

5 Rules for Dashboard Design by Avinash:

Hospital Bed Management Dashboard System with Excel Dashboard Download:

In-flight Project Status Dashboard done in Xcelsius:

Security Operations Center Dashboard (a look at an upcoming product):

Marketing Campaign Dashboard in SharePoint

Business Objects Crystal Xcelsius Dashboard:

So you’ve been assigned to manage an executive dashboard project. Or maybe you’re an information technology manager put in charge of managing a user experience team for the first time. Obviously, you need to quickly get up to speed in terms of the unique challenges of enterprise dashboard projects and people. How do you learn to manage a user interface design team when they seem so different from the folks you usually manage?

Topics like this and many more related to business intelligence dashboards, scorecards and data visualization interfaces are up for discussion over at the new URL for The Dashboard Spy site on dashboards and the enterprise-dashboard.com blog on dashboard examples.

Back to how to manage a good user experience team for your dashboard project. Here’s a great graphic that explains what characteristics you need to look for when hiring for user experience teams. Not just any old-school business analyst will do. Look for ability to make pretty deliverables, clear communicator, clear thinker, consulting experience, creativity, education, enthusiasm, fit with the team, information architecture, interaction design, strategy, personas, research, good listener, interest in learning new things, presentation skills, personal work style, personality, quick learner, software proficiency, talent, variety of work and years of experience. A person like that will certainly be invaluable on your dashboard team.

 Tags: Dashboard Design Team, Dashboard, Dashboards, Dashboard Project Management, Business Intelligence Dashboards

Most readers of The Dashboard Spy, a blog devoted to tracking the design of business intelligence interfaces such as executive dashboards, scorecards and enterprise reporting suites, realize that, for quite a while now, the Dashboard Spy web address has changed. The new material appears at The Dashboard Spy Website and The Enterprise Dashboard Screenshot Blog.

For readers who find this dashboarding material through search engines or for those with old links, I have occassionaly posted reminders such as this update. I try to include snippets of the content found at the new dashboard resource locations.

Today I include some random links to valuable business intelligence white papers and reports. On The Dashboard Spy, I sometimes include these “secret” pdf links. They go to resources on enterprise IT that are quite valuable, but commonly believed to be unavailable on the web. They are high-cost papers, survey results and findings documents that are sometimes made publicly available by the various companies that purchase them. The links are difficult to find, because they come and go, but, hey, that’s what the Dashboard Spy does best, doesn’t he?

Gartner 2007 IT Spending and Staffing Report for North America
This annual key publication by Gartner release survey results that summarize the state of IT Spending and Staffing levels. Always a must-read for the executive IT crowd.

Gartner 2006 Magic Quadrant for Offshore Application Services
The well-known “Magic Quadrant” is how Gartner evaluates the vendor landscape for IT products. Here they rank Offshore Application Services (outsourcing) vendors using criteria such as “ability to execute” and “completeness of vision”.

Gartner Top Predictions for 2006 and Beyond
Each year, Gartner releases to much acclaim their predictions for the IT industry. This report includes a very interesting section on the IT workforce in which Gartner discusses the “Rise of the IT Versatilists” - a breed of IT people with general business skills.

The Myth of Versatilists
- This is a good article that argues against the Gartner IT staffing outlook put forth in the previous pdf and examines the increasing need for IT specialists.

Enjoy this smattering of BI and IT subjects and come over to the new resources where we are having a lot of fun and learning a lot about business dashboards.

Regards, The Dashboard Spy

PS. We have also continued our tracking of good books of value to the dashboarding community. Have you looked at Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design or Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing,and Using Winning KPIs?

Tags: Dashboard, BI Links, Business Intelligence Resources, Dashboard White Paper, Dashbaord, Dashbaords

Dashboard Spy readers - for a while now, we’ve been using our new url of http://dashboardspy.com to post our enterprise dashboard screenshots and articles. While most of you have updated your booksmarks and have joined us at the new site, some are still finding their way to this location.

Here is a peek at the types of posts that you may have missed. For a quick rundown of the dashboard screenshot posts, refer to this enterprise dashboard example sitemap. For a taste of the recent Dashboard Spy posts, I will now post today’s example dashboard here.

General Electric’s View of the Future Includes Dashboards - The Kitchen Dashboard

Those of you involved with enterprise dashboard design for your company have a responsibility to design not just for today’s needs, but also to anticipate future usage and build in enough forward-thinking design so that your corporate dashboard does not seem outdated next year. We all know how long updating corporate applications can take, so it really is in everyone’s best interest if you put on a futurist hat and really think about the future of dashboards, both at your company and in the world at large.

As food for thought, let’s visit with the futurists at GE. They have been hard at work envisioning the future kitchen. It seems that their idea is that the main interface to your kitchen in the year 2035 will be through a large, interactive kitchen dashboard. There is a slick video of the kitchen dashboard concept that you should all see. Here is a screenshot of the dashboard:

I think you will all agree that it is slick and sexy. However, my own opinion is that the entire concept (and this extends to the design of all dashboards) is over-engineered. How many of you have been on an enterprise dashboard project where the stakeholders get overly excited about various bells and whistles that they have seen and the dashboard becomes one big flashing mess? Well, my thoughts about this kitchen of the future take that warning in mind.

What I think is going on here is that some interface designers came up with a really cool concept that they like and applied it to a kitchen because they thought it futuristic. Did you notice that the main user of the dashboard in the video was a young man? No doubt, that reflects the design team that came up with this sci-fi vision (Yes, I’m going out on a limb here.)

If the GE design team had used a team of homemakers and cooking enthusiasts for the conceptualization, I think you’d have something much different. And I rather think that a complex dashboard where you drag portlets around the kitchen would not have been the answer.

So, according to the Dashboard Spy, the moral of this story is not to over-engineer the dashboard. Think of it this way, would your CEO want a dashboard with 40 panels and 300 KPIs? Or would he rather have a real business intelligence dashboard that consumes all the right metrics and shows his a few simple green or red lights?

What do you think? Come over to the new Dashboard Spy site and let us know.

Regards, The Dashboard Spy

Tags: Dashboard, Dashboards

References (Dashboard Sitemap Pages 1-4):

1. Dashboard
2. Dashboard
3. Dashboard
4. Dashboard

Enterprise Dashboards have taken the business and IT worlds by storm. Every business user wants a dashboard and every IT staffer wants to be on an enterprise dashboard project. Call them what you want - enterprise dashboards, executive dashboards, scorecards, performance dashboards, business intelligence dashboards, corporate dashboards - these visual applications are becoming the defacto “face” of business intelligence. They provide at-a-glance summaries of business metrics and key performance indicators.

The collection of over 837 enterprise dashboard implementations is now located at http://www.enterprise-dashboard.com

Want to study a random digital dashboard example? You can get a different enterprise dashboard to study each time you click this link:  dashboards 

| View Show | Create Your Own

Tags: dashborad
dsahboard

If you haven’t noticed, this blog about enterprise dashboard screenshots has actually changed its URL to http://enterprise-dashboard.com

We’ve been posting great content such as this airline executive dashboard:

I’ve written before about the great executive dashboard design team at Dundas a provider of charts, maps and gauges for .net based digital dashboards. See their work at this executive dashboard gallery. Today’s enterprise dashboard screenshot review is based on their recent work on an airline executive management dashboard system. If it seems to you that everyone does an airline executive dashboard, you are right. There was a business intelligence dashboard competition a while back that asked entrants to design a dashboard for airline management - hence the proliferation of airline dashboards. So, here are some more airline management dashboards. I am a sucker for nice graphics, so I particularly like the approach of the following screenshots. The demo is available online so check out the summary screen, the sales dashboard, the operations dashboard and the finances dashboard for yourself.

Homework: The best way to make sure that your dashboard is a success is to really pay attention to the design phase of the project. Well worth studying is this lavishly illustrated book, Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s books on enterprise dashboards. His current favorite is Enterprise Dashboards: Design and Best Practices for IT, the only book on actually implementing executive dashboards.

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

Some of you enterprise dashboard project members have not yet moved with the Dashboard Spy to his new url at http://www.enterprise-dashboard.com/ so here is a clip of the types of enterprise dashboard posts that you’ve been missing. We’ve been covering dashboard issues such as sparklines and new excel 2007 cube functions.Excel Dashboard Update: This short video shows you MicroCharts for Excel and Microsoft BI in action.Dear Dashboard Spy: Here’s our latest dashboard using sparkline charts. We created an Excel 2007 based dashboard and a PivotTable for KPI Analysis. The first screenshot shows you a management dashboard for the Microsoft BI sample database Adventure Works. Bullet graphs and sparklines are created with MicroCharts formulas. The disjoint blocks of figures are done with the new Excel Cube formulas.The second screenshot shows you a Excel Pivot Table for KPI analysis. The sparklines and bullet graphs enrich the KPIs, allowing you to see trends and patterns. The small graphs are done with the MicroCharts server extension. MicroCharts are calculated as strings within SQL Server and rendered as high quality TrueType fonts with the PivotTable or Reporting Services.For the latest info on MicroCharts check out: http://www.microcharts.net/Tags: Sparklines, Excel 2007 Dashboard, Enterprise Dashboard, Executive Dashboards, Excel Dashboards

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

Hello Dashboard Spy readers. Just a reminder that the new enterprise dashboard design and screenshot blog is now located at http://enterprise-dashboard.com. One of the new features is the posting of informative articles found during research on executive dashboards. Hard-to-find reference material (from sources like lexis/nexis and factiva) will be clipped and posted to provide the dashboard community a leg up in their research efforts.

We start with a recent article on how human resource departments are making use of enterprise dashboards to track KPIs.

Exciting news for The Dashboard Spy blog readers: There’s a new URL for The Dashboard Spy blog. Please update your links:

Blog: http://enterprise-dashboard.com

Feed: http://enterprise-dashboard.com/feed/

Reason: The Dashboard Spy blog about business intelligence dashboards has grown beyond all expectations. It’s time for its own dedicated domain and web hosting arrangement. Plenty of readers have been asking for additional functionality and types of content. We aim to please, so keep an eye out for lots of new and exciting content related to executive dashboards, enterprise dashboards, balanced scorecards, performance metrics and more!

Also, dashboard service providers and tool vendors have asked for advertising opportunities, so if you are interested in reaching this tightly focused readership, drop an email to info at. enterprise-dashboard.com

Do join me at the new URL [ http://enterprise-dashboard.com ]. We start off with a very special dashboard used in operating rooms. We’ve got real pictures of an operation in progress so watch out for the blood and gore typical of enterprise dashboard implementations.

Your friend in dashboarding, The Dashboard Spy.

Tags: Business Intelligence Dashboards, Enterprise Dashboard Blog 

UPDATE FOR DASHBOARD SPY READERS: There aren’t many enterprise dashboard books out there, so when a new one comes out, it’s big news. Here’s something for you financial analyst types out there: Performance Dashboards and Analysis for Value Creation (Wiley Finance). I’ll be checking it out, but it looks like a real practioner’s read. The author proposes a methodology for increasing value called the Value Performance Framework. There is a companion CD with Excel models and sample performance dashboards.

See you at the new url.

What is valuable for us Dashboard Spies when we look at today’s award-winning enterprise dashboard example is not what airline industry KPIs are shown, the integration of a document viewer, or even the fact that an award was won, but that the implementation team created a nice document explaining their process. Although the project pdf is really a sales support document, it has great design and implementation value and we should all flip through the 28 pages. Several dashboards are shown as well as closeups of various tables. The dashboard is an SAP Analytics dashboard created by CubeServ AG at a show in 2005. Here I show a dashboard screenshot:

Assignment: Are you OK with the content in my blog? From excel dashboards and custom-built business scorecards, to xcelsius and flex-based visualizations, the dashboard screenshots are intended to educate by example both what to do and what not to do on the design of a business intelligence dashboard. It is intended that these hits and misses both enlighten and entertain. Technology-neutral, and always business-driven, the Dashboard Spy website is the place to go to learn about the latest enterprise dashboard packages. Check out the Dashboard Spy’s latest recommended book, Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.

Thanks to the astute Dashboard Spy reader who found a slight error in the documentation. See the comments of this post.

BAM!! Let’s kick up business dashboards a notch! No, this is not the Emeril show, it’s the Dashbaord Spy on BAM Dashboards. Traditionally, the “A” in BAM stands for “Activity”.  Gartner, who coined the term, says it stands for Business Activity Monitoring. I happen to like that definition best. However, there seem to be other variants out there including what the creator of these dashboards call “Business Analysis & Monitoring”.

Here is an interesting comparison between BI dashboards and BAM dashboards as written by someone on wikipedia:

The term refers to the aggregation, analysis, and presentation of real time information about activities inside organizations and involving customers and partners. Although BAM systems usually use a computer dashboard display to present data, BAM is distinct from the dashboards used by Business Intelligence (BI) in that it has three distinct characteristics not found in BI tools:

1. BAM systems are driven by business events, fed directly from integration software or from Business Process Management most software applications and do not query databases; some companies, like Syndera can read DB logs directly.
2. BAM systems are real time where data displayed is not dependent upon a user refreshing a query or a query scheduler;
3. BAM systems are process oriented.

The goals of Business Activity Monitoring are to provide real time information about the status and results of various operations, processes, and transactions so business decisions can be informed, quickly address problem areas, and re-position organizations to take full advantage of emerging opportunities.

Typically BAM software is capable of, for example, providing real time visibility into how business events such as orders, process queues, network failures, database overloads, etc.) affect the progress of business transactions, permitting real-time business decisions in response to system events – e.g., rescheduling business process instances that have stalled as a result of a credit reporting service slowdown, automate real-time notification of violation or pending violation of business-level policies, and provide statistics on business process performance.

Isn’t that a great piece of writing? Anyway, back to our BAM dashboard example. Below we look at a couple of dashboards from www.nrgglobal.com that show the status of the business systems powering various business functions. These screenshots show the challenge of how to roll up the various KPI levels. The first screenshot shows simply the CRM, HelpDesk, ECommerce, Email and Financials applications.

The next BAM dashboard screenshot drills down and reveals the KPIs of the constituent systems that make up the beforementioned applications. The big red/green/yellow indicator lights are kind of cute, but I think overwhelming. Too much real estate taken up for my tastes.

If you drill down into the applications, you get a display like this one for the HelpDesk application dashboard:

If you continue to drill down and produce a report, it looks like this dashboard screenshot:

There is another option that lets you view status by servers. This consolidated server panel makes much better use of real estate than the big light approach before that I didn’t like.

Homework: It is difficult to buy books about BAM. The closest way is to do what I did and have Amazon show me Books that contain the phrase Business Activity Monitoring.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books on business dashboards.

PS: If you find yourself part of an enterprise dashboard effort, you must study Enterprise Dashboards: Design and Best Practices for IT, the only book on actually implementing enterprise dashboards.