Filtering data into a smaller dataset is a very important feature to implement when building dashboards. The reason is that people want to have a large amount of data available to them, but they do not want to have to see all of it at once; otherwise, it will become overwhelming for the users. It will require the users to hunt for data, which is not the purpose of a dashboard.
In our example, we will be selecting from a list of regions that will populate a gauge value appropriately:
Have your data list ready. In our example, we will show a simple list of five elements with their corresponding values, as shown in the following screenshot:
- Select a List Box selector from the Selectors section of the Components window and drag it onto the canvas.
- In the general section of the List Box selector, bind the labels to A2:A6, source data to B2:B6, and destination to D2, as shown in the following screenshot. Select Row as the Insertion Type. The destination cell D2 will be the cell to which the gauge will be bound.
- Drag a gauge onto the canvas from the Single Value | Gauge section of the Components window. Bind the gauge data to cell D2.
- Click on Preview and test your result.
Selecting from a list of data using a selector is quite easy, as you have seen in this recipe. Basically, you'll need to have a set of labels to identify the list of items that you are selecting from. You will then need your source data which relates back to the list of items being selected from. In our example, we used a row one cell wide as the selected item type. If we wanted to, we could have even chosen a row that's 100 cells wide. Just try not to go over a width of 512 cells, otherwise you may start running into performance issues. Finally, the destination in our example is one row as that is what we selected as our Insertion Type.
We just showed you how to use the List Box selector. However, we could have used other selector components to accomplish the same task, such as a combobox dropdown, list view, label-based menu, spreadsheet table selector, and so on. It is important to choose the selectors that best fit your dashboard visually.
SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards provides great flexibility by offering many different methods for Insertion Type, such as filtered rows, by row, by column, by label, by position number, and so on.