Pennsylvania State Data Center

Using the Dashboards

Viewing the Dashboards

The PaSDC dashboards are built using iDashboards, a business intelligence software solution. The dashboard charts are displayed in the browser using HTML5, which is a cross-browser technology allowing display of graphics without additional plugins (the iDashboards product formerly was built to use Adobe Flash Player to display charts. Adobe ended support for the Flash player plugin in December 2020, and iDashboards has also moved away from Flash to use HTML5 as it's display technology).

Rollover data

Moving the mouse over a chart will allow the user to view the data associated with that chart. Types of charts include:

  • Pie, Doughnut, Pyramid, and Funnel Charts: Hovering over the pie slice or segment will pop up the numbers associated with that segment.
  • Line, Bar, and Column Charts: Hovering over the bar or line point will pop up the numbers associated with it.
  • Maps: You can view the labels for the map item by moving the cursor over the item.

Note: in most cases the charts on the dashboard are linked to each other. Hovering over an item on one chart will automatically highlight data for another chart. Not all charts are linked automatically.

Dashboard Level Values

Dashboards may have a drop down control at the top right corner that will filter the data in the charts.

Clicking on Charts

Clicking on a chart will allow the user to drill into the data presented. Charts that allow the user to drill into another dashboard will have an asterisk (*) in the title. Clicking on an area in the chart will open a new dashboard with data filtered by the value of the selected area. Charts with a caret symbol (^) will drill into a detail chart for the data in that chart. When drilling into a chart, the user will see a set of drop down controls showing the filtering values. A return button () in the lower left corner of the chart area will appear, and when clicked will return to the parent chart.

Generating Reports, Data Exporting, and Printing

Dashboards are capable of producing reports in PDF (Adobe Acrobat) format. To generate a report for the entire dashboard, click on the menu button () at the upper left of the dashboard. Open the menu and click "View Dashboard as Report" to generate a PDF file of tabular report data. You can also select "Export All Dashboard Data" to download a .zip file containing the data for all the charts as .csv (Comma-Separated Values) files, which can be opened in an application such as Microsoft Access or Excel. Please note that report generation may take several seconds for an entire dashboard of data.

If a chart contains a menu button, you can generate a PDF Report or Export Data as .csv for that specific chart.