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For creating and displaying dashboards, SAP provides the Dashboard Builder as standard in SAP Solution Manager 7.2. The Dashboard Builder is a Browser-based tool that enables you to quickly create tile-based dashboards in order to visualize data for analysis. In this blog I want to describe the features from an end user perspective.
In the following video you get a high-level overview of the Dashboard Builder:
Dashboard Overview
The following picture shows an example of a dashboard in the area of Application Operations:
Within the dashboard you can filter on the systems you are interested in as well as on the time frame. The filters can be accessed via the filter icon in the header.
You can also enlarge the charts by clicking on the magnifier-icon in the upper right corner of the tiles:
Detail page
If you want to analyze further, you can click on a tile to get to the detail page. You can also click on a bar within the chart area in order to analyze a specific system that you are interested in:
Within the detail view you can add or remove fields and key figures and also change the visualization. It's also possible to export the result to MS Excel and to save user-specific variants.
You can also define another layout for the detail page called Drill-Down views. This page includes associated KPI's (optional) that are displayed in the header and one or multiple drill-down views that can be displayed as chart or as table:
Within the Drill-Down views you can also export the data to MS Excel.
Data sources
It is possible to select predefined KPI's from the KPI Catalog or to choose custom-specific data sources in order to create visualizations in the Dashboard Builder. The following data source types are available in the configuration mode:
BW Query
BAdI
Function Module
Business Process Monitoring
Business Process Analytics
The following picture shows the selection of a KPI from the KPI Catalog:
Dashboard Best Practices with SAP Solution Manager 7.2
In the blog from xavier.dupeyrat you can find some information about the 2 solutions SAP offers to create and display powerful dashboards for the IT and the business: Dashboard Builder and Focused Insights for SAP Solution Manager.
Prerequisites
The following steps in the SAP Solution Manager setup need to be executed in order to be able to use the Dashboard Builder in SAP Solution Manager 7.2
SAP BW needs to be setup (under Cross Scenario Configuration -> Mandatory Configuration -> Infrastructure Preparation – 3. Set up SAP BW)
SAP Gateway services need to be activated (under Cross Scenario Configuration -> Mandatory Configuration -> Infrastructure Preparation -> 7. Enable Gateway Services -> Cross Scenario Configuration)
BW Content needs to be activated (under Cross Scenario Configuration -> Mandatory Configuration -> Basic Configuration -> Automatic activities -> Activate BW Content for RCA)