Published: July 1999

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Introduction

Digital dashboards are customized Office 2000 solutions that deliver critical, tailored information directly to a knowledge worker's desktop by integrating personal, team, corporate, and external data in a single familiar environment accessible in the office or on the road. A digital dashboard also makes it easier for people to reach out and get to the information they need, while at the same time filtering out the information "noise" so that they can be more effective and productive. The result is that knowledge workers can better focus on their key business priorities and make more informed decisions.

A digital dashboard dynamically integrating personal, team, corporate and external information

This document outlines the samples included on the Digital Dashboard Starter Kit. It contains basic information on how they were built and how they might be adapted to run in your organization.

Skill Requirements

Building a digital dashboard is actually quite simple. If you are just getting started, The Digital Dashboard Starter Kit includes a step-by-step document called Building Your First Dashboard that is a good place to start.

This document assumes a basic understanding of HTML, DHTML, ActiveX and Office programming. With this in mind, it is not written as a step-by-step guide, but as a guide for how to combine these technologies in new and powerful ways. The guide uses the samples that are included in the Digital Dashboard Starter Kit to illustrate some of the ways that these components can be used to deliver targeted, relevant business information.

Building Digital Dashboards

Overview of a Digital Dashboard

In its simplest form, a digital dashboard is nothing more than a very dynamic web page that is running within Microsoft Outlook. There are a number of decisions that need to be made, however, about what information to include on the page, how users will interact with the information offline and what level of customization will be available to users. It is highly recommended that development start off with a single web page hosting a limited amount of information before richer solutions are undertaken. The Digital Dashboard Starter Kit includes a number of samples of varying complexity that can serve as a starting point.

Introducing the Information Nugget

We will use the term information nugget or nugget quite a few times throughout this document. The term is not meant to introduce a new architecture, API or component model for development. Quite to the contrary, you will see that information nuggets are a conceptual way of thinking about information rather than a standard of any kind.

The term information nugget is used to describe the filtered, rich and dynamic information that is displayed in a digital dashboard. The technical way in which that information is rendered can be an ActiveX control, an ASP page or an XML data feed. The important elements of a nugget is that it presents information in a concise fashion, focusing on what the user needs, and that it be dynamic, so that the user can drill down into greater detail.

These nuggets can come from a wide variety of sources – personal information from Microsoft Outlook« 2000 or sales data from a Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 data Warehouse. This document shows how to build and integrate these nuggets into a digital dashboard customized for you and your company.

The Nugget Window

The samples in The Digital Dashboard Starter Kit use the same graphical interface treatment around each information nugget. The effect is that of a small window that rolls up. This was done in order to fit more information on the screen as real estate is at a premium on a digital dashboard.

The nugget "window"

Each nugget has its own unique identifier (we used the naming standard nug_nuggetname_1 to avoid overlapping names, feel free to use a standard you are comfortable with). The nugget then has a body which is identified by an HTML class called "content." When a user clicks on the show/hide button in the bar, it called a script called hideNugget that shows and hides the main content section of the nugget.

It is a simple, yet modular design that is designed to allow you to reuse nuggets in a fairly easy manner. Each sample contains a significant amount of code that you may want to reuse. You can copy entire nuggets and move them into digital dashboards of your own creation.

One additional behavior of the nugget window is that the title is a hyperlink to more detailed information on the application that the nugget is representing on the dashboard. This allows users the ability to drill in to the nugget to get more detail, perform data entry tasks or check a warning sign.

Storing a Nugget's Hide/Show State

In the Digital Dashboard Starter Kit, the registry is used to store the last state of each nugget based on whether the content of the nugget was shown or not. This can be quite simple to do. When a user clicks on a particular nugget, the new state is captured and written to the registry using the following Outlook method:

window.external.Setpref( <strStringValueName>, <strStringValueData> )

The nugget's unique identifier is concatenated with the title of the digital dashboard resides on as the string key in the registry, and the value of the string is either hide or show. The registry entries consequently look like:

When the page loads, the state is retrieved using the Getpref method and applied to each nugget.

Microsoft FrontPage as the Digital Dashboard Editor

All the digital dashboard samples on the Digital Dashboard Starter Kit were created using FrontPage. We chose FrontPage because it is a part of Microsoft Office Premium and offers tremendous integration with all the components you will work with to create digital dashboards.

Using the Com Add-Ins

To aid in the development of digital dashboards the Digital Dashboard Starter Kit contains two COM add-ins that will greatly simplify your development process.

• The first adds a menu item to the Outlook Tools menu that allows you to easily change the Outlook Today Page. This is very handy when you are working on a number of different digital dashboards.

  

• The second add-in enables you to easily add the Outlook Today databinding control to a web page from within FrontPage

Working with the Samples in the Digital Dashboard Starter Kit

Moving Nuggets between Samples

It is quite easy to move nuggets between samples. We have built every nugget to be a self-contained unit, so that any scripts related to the nugget are embedded within the begin nugget and end nugget comment tags. In this way they can just be copied and pasted. In addition, in the multi-page samples, you can move entire pages between samples.

Creating Multi-Page Digital Dashboards With FrontPage 2000

Once you feel comfortable with building simple Outlook Today and Folder Home Pages and viewing them inside Outlook 2000. Now you're ready to take the next step and start building full-blown digital dashboards that incorporate information from through your organization.

As we learned in the previous lesson, an Outlook Today Page or Folder Home page is at it's heart, just like any other Web page. It can include graphics, script, ActiveX controls or anything else. Just like there are many ways to build Web pages, there are many ways to build a Digital Dashboard. In this section we will show you how we made the sample digital dashboards that are included in this kit, using FrontPage 2000.

In this section we described how we built the sales force digital dashboard that is included in this kit and ways that you can customize it. The sales dashboard integrates the information that a sales person uses throughout the day into one centralized view, giving them into access to customer information, sales presentations, news, projects, competitive info, Web links and there personal, "Outlook Today" type information like calendar, tasks, messages, contacts and their local weather.

We had several requirements for the sales force digital dashboard kit.

• We needed make a framework that would be easily customizable by the users of the kit.
• We wanted to have a consistent navigation across every page.
• We wanted to take advantage of the security model offered in Outlook Today and Folder Home Pages that would allow us to Access the Outlook Object Model and Outlook Today Controls.
• We wanted to users to be able to take their Digital Dashboards offline

The sales force dashboard that we created is structured like a mini Web site, it's actually a disk-based FrontPage Web. By creating our pages in FrontPage we were able to meet our first objective and make a framework that is easily customizable by the end user. Each area of the dashboard (news, customers and so on) is a separate Web page, which the user can open in FrontPage and easily edit.

Our second requirement was to create a consistent navigation model across all the pages. And if we need to add a new page to the navigation, we want to be able to make that change it one place and update all pages at once. Since the security model of Outlook does not allow you to access the Outlook Object model from inside of a frames page, we needed another way to create a common navigation bar. Our solution was to use the Shared Borders feature of FrontPage 2000. Shared borders are a quick and easy way to give your pages a consistent look and feel. With shared borders we where able to add a navigation bar to multiple pages in one step, rather than editing each page. Whenever we wanted to add a new link to the navigation bar, we were able to make the change to one page and it would automatically be replicated to every page. To add a shared border to your page from inside FrontPage 2000:

1. In Page view, on the Format menu, click Shared Borders.
2. Click Current page.
3. Specify the borders that you want on this page. In our example we chose Top.

Now that we established our shared border, we're ready to link to our content. We have created separate Web pages for each section as well as a corresponding Outlook folder. The directory structure of our FrontPage Web mirrors the directory structure of our Outlook folder. Each of our Web pages becomes the Folder Home Page for the corresponding Outlook folder. For example the Web page \sales\News\default.htm is the Folder home page for the outlook folder \\Digital Dashboard\Sales\news\

By associate associated each page with a corresponding Folder Home page we are able to take advantage of the Outlook Object Model from within our pages and build rich collaborative applications. Associating the page with a folder home page also allows you to take it offline, satisfying our fourth requirement.

In order for your Pages to take advantage of the Outlook security model, you must link to them through the outlook protocol, as opposed to linking to the file directly. For that reason in our navigation bar we link to the outlook folder and we are automatically taken to the folder home page. For example, to get to the news page, we to it in the following way:

<a href=outlook://Digital Dashboard/Sales/News/>

By going through this extra step we are able access the rich Outlook object model and take our content offline.

By creating our Digital Dashboard in FrontPage 2000 we where able take easily customizable Web pages that took advantage of shared borders, making it easy to update and maintain our links. By associating each page with a Folder Home Page we were able to take advantage of the Outlook Security Model and take our pages offline. Spend some time going through our samples and get your own ideas on the types of applications you can include in your solution.

Setting up the Samples on an Exchange Server

To move the samples onto a production or test exchange server the following steps must be followed:

1. Copy the digital dashboard's folders into your exchange hierarchy. This can be done with a simple drag and drop.
2. You will want to copy the HTML files related to the dashboard onto a web server.
3. Go to each public folder, and re-map the public folder home pages to the new location where you will be

   Note This process can be automated. The folder home page path is a property of the folder and can be changed programmatically through the folder object.

4. Now you need to re-point the top shared border so the links point at the new folder location on the Exchange Server. At this point you will need to make a design decision. If you wish to support offline usage, you will want to point the pages \\public folders\favorites\your digital dashboard folders here, as opposed to the public folders themselves. In this way, the user always have the folders they need (and the content) offline.
5. The setup page included with every dashboard allows users to easily add items to public folder favorites and set up their dashboards.

A Description of Each Sample

For nuggets and pages that are simple, we will not provide a detailed description.

First Dashboard

The first dashboard is designed to help people understand the basics of linking personal, web and collaborative information into a digital dashboard. It also provides a set of pre-built information nuggets that can easily be added to the page without any coding at all. It is a companion to the Building your First Dashboard white paper. The key thing to note with this sample are the sample information nuggets that are available to be inserted. Open the dashboard in FrontPage and place the cursor where you would like to place a new nugget. Select the Insert | FileU menu item. Then browse to the nuggets directory and choose a nugget from the folder. This process is thoroughly described in the document Building your First Digital Dashboard.

Healthcare Dashboard

• Patients

  The patients application is a contacts based folder that allows doctors to see patient histories as well a set reminder flags for follow ups, and track their checkup history. An interesting note is that the form contains the patient medical history (PMR) in an XML document. This document can be fed out of a SQL database.

• Booking of rooms and resources

  This application is an example of how the Office Web Components can be used to provide alerts things taking place in public folder applications. In the healthcare industry, full utilization of resources and investments such as X-Rays and Rooms is extremely important. This application gives immediate visual feedback as to how the different resources are being used. When a new appointment is booked in a room and the HTML page is refreshed, the chart shows what % of the resource is being utilized. Utilization is based on an 8 hour workday.

• Finances

  The Finances application is based on an offline OLAP cube. It is considered offline because it is not connected to the live SQL data warehouse. The web components in the page have all the same interactivity that a connected cube would, but can be taken on the road.

• Advances

  The advances library has a number of presentations and papers in a public folder. The presentations are categorized in the document's OLE properties (under file | properties | custom in PowerPoint). The properties are then synchronized with the public folder automatically.

• News

  The News application simply contains a custom Outlook form that is filtered based on a variety of different keywords.

• Links

  The links page contains two different types of links. Links to Public Folders and Links to HTML pages. The public folder links will open a public folder, so users do not have to surf the public folder hierarchy.

Manufacturing Dashboard

• Service Calls

  The core application in the manufacturing dashboard is the service calls application. The service calls application allows the tracking of calls made into the service center. Using a calculated field the application tracks the amount of time between when a call is opened and when it is closed. An Office Web Component provides feedback as to how long it is taking to resolve complaints. The complaints can then be sorted, grouped and viewed in various ways.

• Finances

  The Finances application is based on an offline OLAP cube. It is considered offline because it is not connected to the live SQL data warehouse. The web components in the page have all the same interactivity that a connected cube would, but can be taken on the road.

• Best Practices

  The Best Practices library has a number of presentations and papers in a public folder. The presentations are categorized in the document's OLE properties (under file | properties | custom in PowerPoint). The properties are then synchronized with the public folder automatically.

• News

  The News application simply contains a custom Outlook form that is filtered based on a variety of different keywords.

• Links

  The links page contains two different types of links. Links to Public Folders and Links to HTML pages. The public folder links will open a public folder, so users do not have to surf the public folder hierarchy.

Insurance Dashboard

• Policies

  The policies application gives feedback on how clients are purchasing multiple policies. Because cross-selling is so important, this graph is generated automatically on the customer base and allows a salesperson or manager to understand how they are doing against their goals.

• Manuals

  The manuals library has a number of presentations and papers in a public folder. The presentations are categorized in the document's OLE properties (under file | properties | custom in PowerPoint). The properties are then synchronized with the public folder automatically.

• Portfolio

  The portfolio application is an Office Spreadsheet component bound to the Microsoft Investor stock ticker control. This allows the user to see interest rates, stock quotes etcU live within the application

Salesperson Dashboard

• Customers

  As would be expected the customer application is the critical application for a salesperson. In this case, the customers application gives a unified view of all a customer's information from a variety of sources. Sales information is stored in a database. Contact and discussion information is stored in Exchange Folders. A drop-down list, which is populated from the contacts list, allows the salesperson to choose a customer and see contact information, sales histories and discussion items all in one window.

• Inventory

  The inventory application allows the salesperson to check howlong it will take to get a specific item from a given warehouse. The application is based on an offline OLAP cube. It is considered offline because it is not connected to the live SQL data warehouse. The web components in the page have all the same interactivity that a connected cube would, but can be taken on the road.

• Projects

  The project application allows salespeople to collaborate on projects, events and activities. The project workspaces were created with the Team Folders wizard. The Application provides rollup information on the projects – informing you of new tasks and documents for projects you are involved in. There is also the ability to search across projects and launch the Team Folders Wizard to create new projects folders.

Finance Dashboard

• Warnings

  The home page includes a warnings component that displays the results of a database query for sales that are under budget.

• Investments

  The investments application uses the Microsoft Excel Web query capabilities to get stock quotes from the Internet and load them into a spreadsheet. This enables you to get up to date data for performing sophisticated calculations right within Excel.

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.

This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS DOCUMENT.

⌐ 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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