Embedded Dashboards Solutions for Application or SaaS Providers

InetSoft specializes in embeddable dashboard technology and has many application provider clients who have embedded dashboards based on InetSoft technology. This article discusses some of the integration methods for embedding reports and dashboards into other Web-based applications or portals.

The importance of dashboards and interactive reports has grown considerably over the past decade, evidenced by the ubiquity of web reporting in every department of an enterprise or an any application at all. A complete dashboard and reporting solution needs to provide the right mix of features and ease of use, but also must fit into the host application as seamlessly as possible.

This means that the dashboards and reports must be transparent to the end-user and must look and feel like a normal part of the host application - whether it is used by either internal users or external customers. InetSoft's reporting and dashboard software, Style Intelligence, is 100% open standards based and relies on these open standards such as JSP, SOAP, and portlets to ensure tight interface integration.

This article will examine some common problems that arise from attempting to integrate dashboards and reports in a Web application and how Style Intelligence solves those problems through the use of these open standards.

Style Intelligence Can Integrate with Any User Interface

JSP Tag Library Problem: My product or web application requires a single, unified user interface but most dashboard tools do not integrate seamlessly, and require a lot of additional work to provide even partial integration.

The Style Intelligence Solution

Style Intelligence provides a complete JSP tag library that can be used to integrate dashboards into any Web portal/interface that is using JSP technology. The source code for this JSP, showing both static HTML and dynamic dashboard content, follows:

<%@taglib uri="sree.tld" prefix="sree"%>
<sree:cache jspId="InventoryStatusCache"/>
<sree:create reportId="TotalInventory" name="Oasis/Total Inventory"
processPage="true" resourceUri="/oasis/resources">
</sree:create>
<sree:create reportId="ReturnSurvey" name="Oasis/Return Survey"
processPage="true" resourceUri="/oasis/resources">
</sree:create>
<html><head><title>Oasis Computing Inc. - Inventory Status</title>
<sree:header reportId="TotalInventory"/>
<sree:header reportId="ReturnSurvey"/>
</head>

<body> <table width="800" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="261" valign="top"> <div align="center">
<fieldset>
<legend class="textReportTitle">Total Inventory</legend>
<sree:body reportId="TotalInventory">

<p align="center">Please wait while the dashboard loads...</p> </sree:body> </fieldset>
</div>
</td>
<td width="43" rowspan="5"> </td>
<td width="300" rowspan="5" valign="top">

<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<div align="left">
<fieldset>
<legend class="textReportTitle">Return Survey</legend>
<sree:body reportId="ReturnSurvey">
<p align="left">Please wait while the dashboard loads...</p>
</sree:body>
</fieldset>
</div>

</td>
</tr>
<tr>

<td height="14" align="center" valign="top"> <div align="center"> <a href="/sreeportal/Examples?op=Replet&name=Oasis/Inventory%20and%20Sales%2 0Analysis&target=PARENT">
-Click to open the "Inventory and Sales Analysis" report -</a> </div> </td> </tr>
</table>
</td>
<td width="196" rowspan="5" valign="top"></td>

</tr> <tr>
<td height="13" valign="top"></td> </tr> <tr>
<td class="boxBlueText">
<div align="justify"> Oasis has begun an internal project aimed at reducing customer returns and overhead costs. These charts give information on inventory levels and return statistics that can be used to monitor this project's effectivness.
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>

The portions of the above, sample JSP that contain dashboard elements and static HTML content. The following steps are required to integrate any report into a JSP:

1. Include a “cache” tag - This tag caches the page content of the report so that requests sent to the JSP that do not affect the report will not load the page from the report server again.

2. Include a “create” tag for each dashboard element – This tag specifies the dashboard that will be embedded in the JSP. It also handles the generation of the dashboard and serves all the resources required by the dashboard.

3. Include a “header” tag – This will tell the dashboard engine which dashboard it should load into cache.

4. Include a “body” tag – This is the tag that will generate the chart and place it into the dashboard. Notice how HTML content can be included between the open and close tags. This is the content that will be displayed while the chart is loading.

Using this powerful JSP tag library, it is possible to integrate any chart or dashboard, in any location, into any Web application.

Configurable Dashboards Problem: I want to provide my end-users with configurable dashboards that display a snapshot of current business conditions. These dashboards need to be configurable and must allow the end-user to specify reports to show and their positioning.

The Style Intelligence Solution

Style Intelligence solves this problem by providing support for standard portlets. Developers need only create a set of charts and reports and deploy them as portlets. They can then be placed into any end-user’s dashboard. The user can then modify which portlets to use and where to place them inside of the dashboard. These reports are fully functional and interactive. Drilldown, interactive forms, export, and other report functions are all enabled on these dashboard portlets.

Embeddable Dashboard Summary

By offering tools and features that enable it to be embedded seamlessly within other Web applications, Style Intelligence has specialized in making its technology easily integrated into other application developers' solutions. Instead of being apart from other Web applications, Style Intelligence becomes a part of the process that end-users will become familiar with, just like any other internal or customer facing Web application.

More Resources:

		Flash Demo of InetSoft's Dashboard Software
		Download a Free Trial
		Ask a Question
		Style Intelligence Product Information