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A typical BI user logs into the system to take a look at key performance indicators (KPIs) , do quick data analysis and make decisions based on the findings. A dashboard comes in handy for this purpose since it allows for grouping these KPIs together on a single (web) page. BIRT 360 already allows the users to create and manage (see how) many such dashboards and now you can even define default dashboard so that they can get started quickly and be productive from the first time they login. This enhancement is available in the latest release (Version 11 SP3) of BIRT iServer. Here is a video tutorial of how an administrator can setup a default dashboard for a new user.

This new release introduces more than 40 major enhancements including DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server support for encyclopedia metadata, the ability to publish content to BIRT OnDemand using BIRT Designer Professional and new mobile support options. You can download and play with free evaluation copies of BIRT Designer Pro and BIRT iServer here.

Are you still pulling your Salesforce data in Excel to do analysis? Now there is a more efficient way to visualize your SFDC data using rich interactive dashboards. Actuate's new Dashboard pack for Salesforce comes with prepackaged sales and pipeline dashboards along with several BIRT reports and gadgets.

The setup utility quickly uploads the necessary files to your on-premise BIRT iServer and you can start working with it right after. Here is a short video that goes over installation and gives a glimpse of what you can expect to see after you set it up.

These dashboards and gadgets are driven by a sample BIRT data object as a data source that could easily be replaced with your own data objects. This can be done by editing datadesign files to provide your SFDC credentials and making necessary SQL modifications to adapt the data set to your SFDC data model. These datadesign files can then be scheduled to generate BIRT Objects at regular intervals within your BIRT iServer environment. The datadesign files and reports can be edited using BIRT Designer Pro, which supports all the features of open source Eclipse BIRT Designer and is compatible with reports developed with it. You can download and install free evaluation copies of BIRT Designer Pro and BIRT iServer from here.

BIRT 360 works great to show data visualizations as interactive charts, graphs, tables as well as any BIRT content. But did you know that you can also use it to display your existing (non BIRT) content in a gadget? If your content is available through a URL link you could use it to display it in a HTML 360 gadget. The HTML gadget also allows for embedding HTML, CSS and Javascript content directly into it.
Here is a short video that demonstrates how you can display an e.Report in BIRT 360 dashboard gadget. It uses both URL and embedded HTML approaches to showcase the capability of the gadget. The following devshare article provides more details on how to formulate URL's for these approaches.

Like every other BIRT 360 gadget you can customize it for auto refresh, change dimensions, show/hide scroll bar, show/hide border and header. Furthermore, gadgets can link to each other so that information from one gadget can change the information displayed in another gadget (see my previous blog post). This brings interactive experience to an otherwise static content.
BIRT 360 is available as an option within BIRT iServer. Download your free evaluation copy of BIRT iServer and give it a try.

BIRT 360 lets you link up your gadgets in the dashboard, so any changes you make to one gadget would change information displayed in other gadgets. Dashboard gadgets are based on a publisher/subscriber model, so a data selector gadget publishes the data to its subscriber gadgets when a user changes a value on the gadget, such as country selection in a list would update the sales by region chart. See this live example
A data publisher gadget can also be a subscriber at the same time which means this concept could be easily extended to create a cascading effect. For example, selecting a country would change the list of states available in a different gadget and selecting a state there would update the list of cities in a third gadget, and all of these gadgets together can link to a regional sales report.
Data in these selector gadgets can either come from either a BIRT Data Object (see my earlier blog on BIRT data object) or it could be derived from a BIRT report. When a BIRT report is added to a dashboard, the system has built-in smarts to figure out if the report has parameters, and gives you the option to present those parameters as a part of the report gadget OR in a separate data selector gadget that you could reuse to link additional gadgets.

Linking gadgets is easy and involves matching the published data field from the data selection gadget to a data field in the data visualization gadget, see how.
Gadgets on a dashboard that link to the same data object are automatically linked when a user adds a new gadget to the dashboard. Other gadgets such as imported gadgets or HTML gadgets can also link to data selection gadgets. The dashboard designer must add Javascript to these gadgets to receive and process values and events that they receive.
BIRT 360 is available as a option within BIRT iServer. Download your free evaluation copy of BIRT iServer and give it a try.