Understanding the Digital Dashboard

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This content is no longer actively maintained. It is provided as is, for anyone who may still be using these technologies, with no warranties or claims of accuracy with regard to the most recent product version or service release.

A Digital Dashboard is an Active Server Page (ASP) that references one or more Web Parts. Each Web Part is a self-contained module of Extensible Markup Language (XML), HTML, or script (Microsoft® JScript® or Microsoft® Visual Basic® Scripting Edition (VBScript)) and is designed to retrieve and render the information you want to include in the dashboard. When the user loads the dashboard, the dashboard retrieves the Web Parts that it is configured to display.

If you set the appropriate permissions while creating a Digital Dashboard, you can design it so users can exercise considerable control over the dashboard's content. For example, you can set dashboard properties that make it possible for your user to add, remove, or configure Web Parts at run time.

The Web Parts that make up a Digital Dashboard are easy to build. Your users can create relatively simple Web Parts. You can create more complex Web Parts using the development environment.

In This Section

  • Why Digital Dashboards?
    By providing a consolidated view of the specific information you require, a Digital Dashboard addresses the information overload that the advent of the World Wide Web and easy access to large volumes of data has caused.
  • Creating a Digital Dashboard Project
    You can use the Microsoft® Office XP Developer environment to create Digital Dashboard projects. When you do, Office Developer creates a Digital Dashboard project and adds a default HTML Web Part to the project.
  • Security
    When deploying Digital Dashboards, one of the most common issues that administrators face is how to configure dashboards to supply information tailored to the roles of various users in the organization.
  • Deploying an Exchange Server Dashboard
    The Exchange Server Digital Dashboard provides a scalable platform for deploying Digital Dashboards.
  • Developing a Digital Dashboard using Web Parts
    A Digital Dashboard is a container that provides a customized display of information consolidated from various information sources. Every Digital Dashboard is a web page containing one or more Web Parts, which are individual objects that contain data or script that presents information to the user.
  • Web Parts
    To make a dashboard functional, you must add Web Parts. A Web Part is a self-contained script or Web page. You can use Microsoft® Office XP Developer to add new Web Parts, or you can import pre-existing Web Parts from a catalog.