A control is a Grid/Graph, text field, shape, and so on. You can display different controls in a dashboard so that users can navigate them as if they were pages or subsets of the larger document. These “pages” or layers of data are called panels, and a group of panels is referred to as a panel stack. Panel stacks allow a designer to create several different views (panels) of data, with each view (panel) containing a logical grouping of controls that display data that is related in a meaningful way.
Panels are essential building blocks for interactive dashboards, which summarize key business indicators in easy-to-read interfaces. For an in-depth explanation of dashboards, see What is a dashboard?, page 24.
Use panel stacks to provide interactive data layering. You can create:
• Stacks of analytic layers on a single dashboard page by creating two panels, each containing a different Grid/Graph. In Interactive Mode, Editable Mode, and Flash Mode in MicroStrategy Web, a user can flip between the panels, quickly replacing one Grid/Graph with the other.
Using panels in this fashion permits many independent layers of data within a single dashboard page.
• Multiple layers of dashboards by adding multiple controls to each panel of a panel stack. This creates layers of complex dashboards.
• An Information Window, to display additional information about an attribute element. A user clicks an element in a grid or graph. The
Information Window pops up over the element, displaying an additional visualization, based on the element. Information Windows are displayed in Express Mode and Flash Mode in MicroStrategy Web, and in
documents displayed in MicroStrategy Mobile. For an example and instructions to create an Information Window, see Defining Information Windows, page 81.
• A panel of selectors, which allows users to filter targets and interact with the various filters (for an example and a more detailed description, see Filtering a dashboard: Filter panels, page 84).
The first two methods are described in the examples that follow, Example:
Layering Grid/Graphs on panels, page 63 and Example: Layering multiple dashboards in a single document, page 64.
© 2012 MicroStrategy, Inc. About panels and panel stacks 63 The rest of the chapter describes how to create and format panels and panel stacks:
• Defining the parts of a panel stack, page 66
• Inserting and defining panels, page 69
• Loading panels on demand in MicroStrategy Web, page 79
• Formatting panels and panel stacks, page 91
These procedures apply to panel stacks and to filter panels, with the following exceptions:• For instructions to create a filter panel, see Filtering a dashboard:
Filter panels, page 84.
• Filter panels have an additional setting that determines whether or not changes to the selectors on the filter panel are automatically submitted. For instructions to change this setting, see Controlling how data updates in a filter panel: Automatic apply, page 89.
Example: Layering Grid/Graphs on panels
For example, you can stack two panels, each containing a different Grid/
Graph. In Interactive Mode, Editable Mode, and Flash Mode in
MicroStrategy Web, a user can flip between the panels, quickly replacing one Grid/Graph with the other. In the following image, a Grid/Graph is
displayed on a panel. Notice the name of the panel, in the title bar at top of the panel: Employee Info by Region. Notice also that the Grid/Graph is the only control on the panel.
Above the Grid/Graph is a list box containing the names of the panels in the panel stack: Employee Info by Region and Category Sales Report. When you select the Category Sales Report, the other panel is displayed. Notice the
64 About panels and panel stacks © 2012 MicroStrategy, Inc.
name of the panel in the title bar: Category Sales Report. Also, notice that this panel includes a text field in addition to the Grid/Graph. The text field reads “Forecast based on 2002-2004 data.”
Using panels in this fashion allows many independent layers of data within a single dashboard page. You can also layer dashboards in a single document with the use of panels, as described in the next example.
The list box is a selector, a type of control which allows a user to interact with the panel stack. While selectors are discussed briefly throughout this section, more details on creating them and examples of their various options are provided in Chapter 4, ProvidingInteractivity to Users: Selectors.
Example: Layering multiple dashboards in a single document
The example above placed only one or two controls (Grid/Graphs and a text field) on each panel. However, you can add multiple controls to each panel of a panel stack, creating layers of complex dashboards. For example, the following dashboard contains a gauge for corporate revenue, a bubble graph for category analysis, a line graph for regional performance, and a grid report for subcategory analysis. A button bar labeled Select View is displayed at the
© 2012 MicroStrategy, Inc. About panels and panel stacks 65 top left of the dashboard, and the Corporate button is currently selected. This dashboard provides a company-wide view of revenue and performance.
If you click Regional in the Select View button bar, another dashboard is displayed. As shown below, this dashboard contains an area graph for daily revenue, a grid report for category analysis, and a bar graph for subcategory
66 Defining the parts of a panel stack © 2012 MicroStrategy, Inc.
revenue. This dashboard provides a more detailed view of information, at the regional and daily level.
Each of these dashboards is on a panel, and the Select View button bar is a selector that allows you to switch between the panels. Using panels to layer multiple dashboards in the same document can organize related information and provide increasing levels of detail on different dashboards.