About dashboards and gadgets
An Actuate BIRT dashboard is a self-contained business application that delivers business performance data in interactive charts, cross-tab tables, formatted text, and flash visualizations. Subscribing to shared dashboards or opening dashboard and gadget files, enables users to analyze and monitor business data. Users can build and share their own dashboards using browser-based tools.
Advanced users build analytic dashboards using a variety of gadgets for data analysis and selection. Analytic dashboards either query data sources on demand or use in-memory cached data for fast analysis.
Network content with a URL address, such as images, videos, text, web pages, and Google gadget files, can be included on dashboards. Advanced users link network content and business data together for enhanced analysis and selection of related information. Figure 3-1 shows a dashboard in Information Console.
This section describes how to view and subscribe to shared dashboard files. For information about building and sharing BIRT dashboard files, see Building and Using BIRT Dashboards.
