Collaborative Workflow Step 2: KPI Definitions

Recommended role: Business analyst (BA)
Purpose: To define the KPIs for use in the Dundas Dashboard Designer

KPIs are the fundamental building blocks of a dashboard and Dundas Dashboard provides the necessary tools to define them. Dundas Dashboard KPIs use virtual tables as the data source and these KPIs are usually composed of the following elements (known as KPI elements):

One or more measurable values (e.g., sales revenue, number of downloads, units sold)
One or more contextual values to compare against (e.g., sales goal, number of expected downloads, units produced)
One or more dimensions (e.g., time, product type, country)

Dundas Dashboard facilitates the KPI definition process with these key features:

KPI Setup Wizard provides a wizard-driven setup that guides the BA through a series of steps to create the KPI elements; this ensures that the KPI elements are defined and decreases the need to redesign the KPI.

KPI Preview allows the BA to preview the data associated with the KPI to help with the validation prior to exposing the KPI to the dashboard designer.

Data Visualization Hint enables the BA to assist the dashboard designer by recommending a default visualization element for each KPI; this helps to expedite the dashboard-design process by reducing the time required for the dashboard designer to choose the right visualizations.

KPI Units give the dashboard designer an idea of what type of units (currency, distance, energy, etc.) the measure is in; this is important when describing what units the Y axis represents in a chart.

KPI States allow for various visualizations to give more context to the state of a KPI. For example, the following is a list of potential states:

State	Range
Good	80-100
Acceptable	60-80
Bad	0-60

Each data visualization type would add this context in a specific form, for example:

Chart – show different colored regions with respect to the Y axis
Gauge – show different ranges with respect to the scale
State Indicator – show a different color based on the state

KPI Filtering allows the KPI to be manipulated to show only a subset of the underlying data based on pre-defined and user-defined settings. For example, if the KPI is “sales by country,” the BA can apply a “continent” filter that restricts the KPI to countries within a particular continent. In addition, a filter can be exposed to the dashboard designer by the BA. This allows the dashboard designer to create an end-user-selectable filter on the dashboard. Note that KPI filtering can be applied to both a KPI's measure element and its dimension element.

Before going onto the next and final step, we need to explain a few details about Dundas Dashboard dimensions.

Dundas Dashboard Dimension

Dundas Dashboard dimensions provide some additional advanced functionality to KPIs and the dashboard user experience; they offer the BA the ability to put KPIs into perspective. Specifically, dimensions facilitate grouping, filtering and labeling of a KPI. The main advantages of defining a dimension are global filters, better management of filters, advanced-time grouping and drill-down functionality.

Global Filters

Global filters allow the same filter to be applied across multiple dashboards during the dashboard design step. This reduces the amount of work a dashboard designer would have to perform to apply this functionality to a dashboard. Basically, there is no need to define individual filters for visualizations on every dashboard.

Better Management Of Filters

Defining dimensions in Dundas Dashboard makes it easier for the BA to identify the filters to expose to the dashboard designer. Consider having filters defined specifically for each KPI; the process of deciding what filters to use without looking specifically at each individual KPI would be a demanding task. As the number of KPIs increases, this undertaking would become progressively more difficult to manage.

Advanced-Time Grouping

Advanced-time grouping provides an easy way for dashboard designers to include filters that group KPIs by a range of time. For example, consider having a KPI that shows daily sales. A BA could use this built-in time functionality to allow the user to also display this same KPI over the period of a month or a year.

Drill Down