Arrange Components

To select a single component on the Dashboard, click on the component with the mouse. This activates the component’s “move” handle and “resize” handles, which then allow you to position and size the component.

To simultaneously select multiple components on the Dashboard, use one of the following techniques.

For example, by dragging the mouse to create the selection region below, you can easily select all three components. You only need to include part of each component within the selection region.

Selecting multiple components allows you to move the components together, group the components, and set common properties (e.g., font).

When moving components on the Dashboard, you can choose to snap components to the grid or to other components. Press the ‘Snapping’ button in the toolbar and select ‘Snap to Grid’ or ‘Snap to Objects’, or both. You can adjust the grid snapping interval from the ‘Options’ dialog box. See Dashboard Options for more information.

When you need to position a set of components together, it is helpful to combine the components into a group. Grouped components are represented by a Container component. Components within a Container always retain their relative positions when the group is moved.

To create a group, follow these steps:

To undo a grouping, right-click the Container and select ‘Ungroup’ from the context menu.

You can align, distribute, and match sizes of multiple components on the Dashboard. To align multiple components, first select the desired components. (See Select Components.) Then press the ‘Arrange’ button on the toolbar and choose the desired alignment.

To distribute (equally space) multiple components, select the desired components and press the ‘Arrange’ button on the toolbar. Then choose the ‘Distribute Horizontally’ option or ‘Distribute Vertically’ option .

To match the sizes of multiple components, select the desired components and press the ‘Arrange’ button on the toolbar. Then choose the desired ‘Resize’ option.

A Selection Container can display a variety of filter components such as Selection Lists and Range Sliders in a single region of the Dashboard. This is an effective way to package Filter components to save space on the screen.

To add filter components to a Selection Container, follow the steps below:

To display a selection component in a Selection Container, press the ‘Show’ button in the selection component title bar. This expands the selection component and its toolbar. (See Use Filter Components for information on how to use these selection components.) To collapse a selection component in a Selection Container, press the ‘Hide’ button .

To clear the filters on all selection components in the Selection Container, press the ‘Unselect All’ button in the Selection Container title bar.

See Selection Container Properties for information about additional Selection Container features.

A Tabbed Interface allows you to stack components onto distinct pages that are accessed by tabs. Since only one tab is visible at a time, this allows you to comfortably display many components in the same space on the Dashboard.

To create a tabbed interface, follow the steps below.

Note that each component is placed in the top-left corner within its own tab. To display a component at a different location within its tab, first group the component together with a background (e.g., an Image or Shape component), and then use the group as the contents of the tab. See Group Components for information on how to create a group.

To apply a unique style to the active (currently selected) tab, click on a tab to make it active, and then apply the desired styling from the Format panel. (See Tabbed Interface Properties for additional information.)

In some cases, you may want display a component only when the user takes a specific action, and otherwise keep it hidden. There are several ways to do this:

To hide a Dashboard component, set the ‘Visible’ property on the General tab of the Properties dialog box to ‘Hide’. See General Tab for more details.

Use Form controls to allow the user to selectively hide and show various components on the Dashboard. For example, you can provide a Form component that lets the user choose whether to see data displayed in a Table or Chart (by dynamically controlling the ‘Visible’ property of a Table and Chart that occupy the same space on the Dashboard). See Dynamically Set Properties for more information.

Use Form controls to allow the user to modify the data displayed on data view components such as Charts or Crosstabs. For example, rather than adding several different Charts to the Dashboard, provide Form components that let the user choose from a set of dimensions and measures to display on a single Chart (by dynamically controlling the fields bound in the 'X' and 'Y' regions of the Chart Editor). See Dynamically Set Properties for more information.

Provide the user with access to the Chart Editor and Crosstab Editor so that the user can change the properties of a Chart or Crosstab to suit their own needs, thus eliminating the need for multiple Charts and Crosstabs. End-user access to these tools is enabled by default. See End-User Chart Control for more information.

By default, a Dashboard is displayed in the Portal at the same size that you designed it. However, this may not be convenient for a user whose screen or browser window is significantly smaller or larger than the Dashboard dimensions. To address these issues, set the Dashboard to automatically scale to the user’s browser window.

To enable Dashboard scaling, follow the steps below: