foreUP Business Intelligence - Interacting with Dashboards & Widgets

Prerequisites

foreUP Business Intelligence enabled

Overview

Each individual report displayed on the dashboard is also known as a “widget” and each dashboard is made up of one or more widgets. Most widgets are designed to be able to be read at a glance, but many also contain further functionality to expand the data and insights which can be gained from them. These functions can vary based on the report type, the data present, and the surrounding widgets. This article will cover the basics of widget use and interactions. Keep in mind that foreUP Business Intelligence is designed to reward curiosity, so when in doubt – click around and see what options are available!

Accessing the Tool

1. Sign in to the foreupsoftware.com portal as usual for daily operations.
2. Click on the navigational menu at the top-left of the page, Then select Business Intelligence.
3. Select a dashboard that you would like to view.

Dashboard Functionality

Most interactions with your dashboards will be with either widgets (detailed below) or filters (detailed in a separate article). However, there are a few dashboard-level functions that are important to know about:

1. PDF Report Settings:
   1. At the top of your dashboard, toward the right-hand side, there are two icons. The first is a small box with the letters “PDF” in it. Clicking this button will bring up the PDF Report Settings screen, from which you can configure the formatting of PDF reports for this dashboard. This screen also has a download button which allows you to download the PDF directly.
      
      
   2. Note: The PDF export settings configured are unique to each user, and to each dashboard. This allows you to configure the export settings to best suit each dashboard, and allows each user at your course to configure the settings the way that works best for them.
2. Ellipsis menu: Next to the PDF button is a three-dot menu, which will allow you to download the dashboard either as a PDF (using the saved settings from the PDF Report Settings menu) or as an image.
   

Interacting with Widgets

First, there are some common features shared by most widgets:

1. Drilldown indicator: An icon in the top-left corner of a widget will be present if the widget includes the ability to open up a new drill-down dashboard. This is typically done by clicking on a data point in the report – whether that is a bar in a graph, a slice of a pie chart, a bullet on a line chart, or for simpler widgets that display just a single large value, by clicking anywhere within the widget.
2. Widget title: Displays the title of the report in the widget.
3. “Analyze It”: For certain widgets, this button will display. Clicking on this button will bring up a popup window from which you can generate trendlines or, in some cases, custom AI-generated explanations of the data.
   
4. Widget Details: Displays some metadata for the widget, such as the last time the data model affecting the widget was synced. In some cases, there is a textual description of the widget as well.
5. Expand Button: Clicking this icon will expand the widget to take up the full screen, giving more room for analysis. From this expanded view, you can also view which, if any, of the Dashboard Filters the widget is excluded from. From the full-screen view, click the ‘Cancel’ button at the top of the widget to return to the standard dashboard view.
   
6. Ellipses menu: For all widgets, this allows you to download the report. Different report types have different format options for downloading, such as .csv files, .xls files, .pdf files, or as an image. Widgets that display only one or two values (known as Indicator widgets) also include the option to add the report to your Pulse tab from this menu.
7. Report content

Beyond the more universally-applicable options listed above, there are other ways to interact with widgets which differ based on the report type, data within the report, and other various dashboard configurations. Some of the more common methods of interaction are listed below:

1. For many charts, including bar, column, and pie charts, clicking on a bar or column will provide some utility. This can vary, but some of the common functions are:
   1. Filtering: For many reports, where the data point along the x-axis of the chart (or for pie charts, the data point by which all values are grouped) matches one of the existing dashboard filters, clicking on a value in the chart will adjust the dashboard filter for that data point to include the value indicated by the column/slice clicked. For example, in the chart below, clicking on the “60-69” range (the tallest green column) will adjust the dashboard filter titled “Age Bucket” to include the “60-69” value.
      
   2. Drill-down: For other reports, clicking on a data point will bring up a contextual menu as seen below: Selecting the ”Add to Pulse” option will add that data point to your Pulse tab, while selecting the ”Jump to (x)” option will open a popup window with a drilldown report based on the selected data point.
      
2. On many pie charts, there may be a “slice” on the chart labelled as “Others”, which will contain an aggregated value of all the smallest values (typically, those with less than 3% of the total value). Clicking on this “Others” slice will adjust the chart to display only those smaller values contained in that slice. To return to the main chart, click on the “back” button which appears while drilled into the “others” slice
3. Many charts - including bar, column, line, and pie charts - contain a legend which displays each series/category and identifies it with a color. Hovering over any item in a chart’s legend will highlight the series in the chart, making it easier to pick out. Conversely, clicking on an item in the legend will hide that series from the chart, and will re-scale the chart to better fit the resulting data set. This can be useful for filtering out a series that consistently displays much higher values than other series, as illustrated in the following two screenshots:
   1. Chart displaying 3 series: Players (green), No Shows (red), and No Show % (blue)
      
   2. The same chart, with the Players series hidden. Notice how the No Shows series (red) now uses much more of the available space in the chart, making it easier to determine differences in its data points compared to the initial chart.