Let's run the Desktop application for the first time by clicking on it:
From this moment we can start to build a new dashboard using one of the following options:
Let's try to build our first visualization using a Microsoft spreadsheet with data:
You can find all related files in an attachment to this book that you can download from the www.packtpub.com website.
Dataset1.xls
and click Finish. The data will be imported. Attributes and metrics will appear in the DASHBOARD DATASETS toolbar.Product Subcategory
attribute to the rows section and the Internet Order Quantity metric to the column section. Drag Product Category
to rows and Internet Order Quantity
to columns.As a result, we can build a small chart that shows us the top product subcategory:
We can customize this data visualization by going to the option of Visualization 1; we should click on the small arrow in the top-right corner. You have to keep your cursor over the visualization to make this arrow visible:
Moreover, we need to cover the main toolbar:
Finally, we can add more sheets to one dashboard. For example, if we want to create one dashboard covering different departments such as Sales, Marketing, and Inventory. We can create four sheets, one summary sheet, and another to detail information about every department.
Let's build a dashboard in order to see the main capabilities of MicroStrategy Desktop. Before we start to build our dashboard, we should design it. It is good practice to take a pencil and sheet of paper and draw a sketch. It can help us save time and be more productive. Another piece of advice - do not spend lot of time on sketches. Dashboard development is an iterative process. It means, we should start an early prototype dashboard and demonstrate it to our business clients.
This is a small dashboard that we will build in order to meet the functionality of MicroStrategy Desktop: