Sas IMPLEMENTING DASHBOARD SAMPLES User Manual

Implementing Dashboard

Samples With SAS

The correct bibliographic citation for this manual is as follows: SAS Institute Inc. 2006.

Implementing Dashboard Samples with SAS

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Contents

Chapter 1

What are Dashboards? 1 Creating Dashboards with SAS/GRAPH Software Sample Dashboards Delivering Dashboards to Users References

Chapter 2

Downloading The Dashboard Samples Working With the Sample Code See Also

Chapter 3

Prerequisites for This Chapter How to Register a New Stored Process

Chapter 4

Prerequisites for This Chapter Overview: Displaying Dashboards in SAS Web Report Studio Display the Output of a Single Indicator Creating a Report That Displays the Output of One or More Indicators Display the Output of a Complete Dashboard from a Single Stored Process Refreshing the Data Printing Indicators and Dashboards

Introduction to SAS/GRAPH Dashboard Samples 1

Downloading and Modifying The Dashboard Samples 5

Registering a New Stored Process 9

Displaying Dashboards in SAS Web Report Studio 13

Chapter 5

Prerequisites for This Chapter Overview: Displaying Dashboards in the SAS Information Delivery Portal Display a Dashboard in a WebDAV Content Portlet

Chapter 6

Prerequisites for This Chapter Overview: Displaying Dashboards in the SAS Stored Processes Web Application Display a Dashboard or Indicator 36 Navigate the SAS Stored Process Web Application 37 Modify the Execution Options for a Stored Process 39 References 40

Displaying Dashboards in the SAS Information Delivery Portal 27

Displaying Dashboards in the SAS Stored Process Web Application 35

Index 41

CHAPTER

Introduction to SAS/GRAPH Dashboard Samples

What are Dashboards? Creating Dashboards with SAS/GRAPH Software Sample Dashboards Delivering Dashboards to Users References

What are Dashboards?

A dashboard is a data visualization application that consolidates important performance information and delivers it to decision-makers as a collection of concise indicators. Like the gauges and warning lights on an automobile dashboard, the following dashboard (Few 2006) enables the manager of a telephone sales organization to monitor the performance of the team at a glance:

2 Creating Dashboards with SAS/GRAPH Software

The display of an individual dashboard indicator can include both graphics and text.

The term indicator refers not only to the visual representation but also to the underlying data source, range information, target values, and so forth. A collection of indicators presented together comprises a dashboard.

Chapter 1

Creating Dashboards with SAS/GRAPH Software

The keys to creating effective dashboards are to have the appropriate performance

data available and to choose the appropriate indicators that convey each corresponding performance measure. SAS software is a powerful tool for designing and constructing dashboards because it provides tools for managing, analyzing, and summarizing data as well as for presenting the results.

SAS/GRAPH software provides the ﬂexibility to create virtually any type of chart or

plot required for a dashboard indicator. In addition to the graph types that can be generated with its built-in procedures, SAS/GRAPH software provides an Annotate facility that enables creative programmers to customize the standard graph types or to create entirely new graph types that are not provided by the built-in procedures. Once you have assembled the desired collection of indicators, you can use the GREPLAY procedure in SAS/GRAPH software to arrange the indicators in any layout that you desire.

Sample Dashboards

The SAS Customer Support Center Web site includes sample code that illustrates

some of the types of dashboard indicators and dashboards that you can create using SAS/GRAPH software in conjunction with other SAS software. You can ﬁnd these samples at

http://support.sas.com/rnd/datavisualization/dashboards.

Some of the dashboard samples are built from multiple instances of a single type of

indicator:

slider chart indicator

shows a key value as a pointer on a bar that shows qualitative ranges. The pointer

can be highlighted to indicate items that need immediate attention. The sample

dashboard with slider chart indicators shows various measures of the performance

of an information technology department compared against ranges that represent

expected performance standards. bullet graph indicator (Few 2006)

shows a key value as a bar against a background that shows qualitative ranges,

combined with a symbol that represents a target value. The sample dashboard

with bullet graph indicators shows various measures of the performance of a

business compared against ranges that represent expected performance standards

as well as against speciﬁc performance targets. dial gauge indicator

shows a key value as pointer on a circular scale that represents a qualitative

range. The sample dashboard with dial meter indicators illustrates some of the

types of measures that are appropriate for representation with this indicator, such

as temperature and revolutions per minute. bar chart indicator (with target marker)

Delivering Dashboards to Users 3

shows a related group of key values as bars, along with symbols that represent target values. The color of each bar represents a qualitative measure of the corresponding value. In addition, pointers on each bar represent the target value for the measure. The sample dashboard with bar chart indicators shows various measures of the sales performance of a wine distributor compared against ranges that represent expected performance standards as well as against speciﬁc performance targets.

Note: This sample won an award for best depiction of data in a dashboard in

the 2005 Data Visualization Contest sponsored by DM Review magazine.

In addition to the samples that feature speciﬁc indicators, the following samples are available that illustrate more complex dashboards that include multiple types of indicators:

Telesales performance

shows indicators that monitor the real-time performance of a telephone sales team or similar organization. The following measures are shown on the dashboard:

call wait time

call duration

abandoned calls

call volume

order volume

sales representative utilization

Note: This dashboard is an implementation of the example that originally

appeared on page 199 of Information Dashboard Design (Stephen Few 2006).

Web marketing analysis

shows indicators that support the analysis of customer data for an online merchant or similar organization. The following measures are shown on the dashboard:

number of visitors (daily, monthly, and yearly)

number of registered visitors

number of orders of top-selling products

number of times top-selling products were viewed

products purchased together but not displayed together

products displayed together but not purchased together

other Web sites that provided referrals

Note: This dashboard is an implementation of the example that originally

appeared on page 201 of Information Dashboard Design (Stephen Few 2006).

Delivering Dashboards to Users

In order to be useful, dashboards must be readily available to the decision-makers who rely on the information that they present. You have a wide variety of options for delivering the dashboard indicators or complete dashboards that you create with SAS/GRAPH software, including the following:

You can store the indicators and dashboards that you create with SAS/GRAPH programs in standard graphics ﬁle formats so that they can be consumed by other applications.

4 References

Chapter 1

You can use the Output Delivery System (ODS) features in SAS/GRAPH software

to package the dashboards into HTML pages that can be sent to a Web server and

viewed with a browser. ODS HTML output also supports adding chart tips and

drill-down links on individual bars and other graphic elements in the indicators.

All of the SAS/GRAPH dashboard samples on the SAS Customer Support Center

Web site are designed to generate ODS HTML output.

You can use SAS Web Report Studio software to deliver dashboards in the form of

Web-based reports. For information on using SAS Web Report Studio software to

create dashboards from the sample indicators or to display the sample dashboards,

see Chapter 4, “Displaying Dashboards in SAS Web Report Studio,” on page 13.

You can use SAS Information Delivery Portal software with Base SAS 9.1.3

Service Pack 4 or later to deliver dashboards as portlets within the framework of a

corporate Web portal. For information on using SAS Information Delivery Portal

software to display the sample dashboards, see Chapter 5, “Displaying Dashboards

in the SAS Information Delivery Portal,” on page 27.

You can use the SAS Stored Process Web Application with Base SAS 9.1.3 Service

Pack 4 or later to provide users with online access to dashboards that are

generated by SAS/GRAPH code in stored processes. For information about using

the SAS Stored Process Web Application to display the sample dashboards, see

Chapter 6, “Displaying Dashboards in the SAS Stored Process Web Application,”

on page 35.

References

Few, Stephen. 2006. Information Dashboard Design. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media,

Inc.

CHAPTER

Downloading and Modifying The Dashboard Samples

Downloading The Dashboard Samples Working With the Sample Code

Using Macro Variables to Customize Indicator and Dashboard Features Modifying the Data for Indicators Using the Annotate Facility to Add Information to Indicators Using the GREPLAY Procedure to Position Indicators on the Dashboard 6 Customizing Drill-down Information for Dashboard Indicators

See Also

Downloading The Dashboard Samples

There are two ways to obtain the SAS code for the dashboard samples from the Samples area of the SAS Customer Support Center Web site:

copy the code from the Full Code tab for the sample and paste it into the SAS Program Editor window or into a ﬁle.

download the text ﬁle containing the code from the Downloads tab for the sample.

Three different versions of each dashboard sample are available:

code that can be submitted as a SAS program in interactive or batch mode

code that can be executed as a SAS stored process

code that can be used in a webDAV content portlet in the SAS Information Delivery Portal.

The entire collection of dashboard samples, along with a copy of this document, can also be downloaded as a single archive ﬁle from which you can extract the desired sample ﬁles.

Note: In order to use the stored process or portlet versions of the samples, you must ﬁrst register metadata for each sample that you want to use. The registration process is covered in Chapter 3, “Registering a New Stored Process,” on page 9.

Working With the Sample Code

Using Macro Variables to Customize Indicator and Dashboard Features

In the samples, the values that control features of the dashboards and indicators that are most likely to be customized are assigned using SAS macro variables that are

6 Modifying the Data for Indicators

deﬁned at the beginning of each sample code. For example, in the slider chart indicator dashboard, the following macro variable deﬁnitions control the colors of the three segments of the slider bars:

%let light_red=cxFFC1C1;

%let light_yellow=cxFFFFAA;

%let light_green=cxB4EEB4;

You can change the colors of any of the segments on all the indicators in the dashboard by changing the value of the corresponding macro variable.

For details of the features that can be customized by changing macro variable values,

see the comments in the beginning section of the code for each sample.

Modifying the Data for Indicators

Most of the indicators in these samples use SAS data sets as data sources. You can

modify the supplied data or adapt the sample code to use your own data sets instead. Other data values are speciﬁed in macro calls that generate the indicators. For details of the structure of the data sets and macro calls used in the samples, see the comments in the sample code.

Chapter 2

Using the Annotate Facility to Add Information to Indicators

These indicator and dashboard samples rely heavily on the Annotate facility in

SAS/GRAPH software. The Annotate facility enables you to generate a special data set of graphics commands from which you can produce custom graphics output. This Annotate data set can be used to enhance graphs produced by other SAS/GRAPH procedures— for example, to draw lines on or add text or symbols to a bar chart—or to create entire graphs of types that the built-in SAS/GRAPH procedures cannot produce.

In order to change the appearance or behavior of the indicators in a sample, you

must understand how the Annotate facility works. To learn more about the customizations that can be achieved with annotations, see Part 3, “The Annotate Facility,” in

SAS/GRAPH Reference.

Using the GREPLAY Procedure to Position Indicators on the Dashboard

In these dashboard samples, individual indicators are not displayed as they are

created. Instead, they are stored in GRSEG catalog entries. The dashboards are created by loading the catalog entries for the indicators into templates that deﬁne how each entry is positioned. The GREPLAY procedure in SAS/GRAPH software is used both to create the templates and to load the entries into the templates.

In order to add indicators to a sample or change the placement of indicators in a

sample, you must understand how GREPLAY templates work. To learn more about GREPLAY templates and the GREPLAY procedure, see Chapter 43 , “The GREPLAY Procedure,” in SAS/GRAPH Reference.

Customizing Drill-down Information for Dashboard Indicators

Because dashboard indicators typically provide a summarized view of a performance

measure, it is common for them to support a drill-down feature to provide more details about the underlying data. In the sample dashboards, clicking on the bars and other graphic elements in indicators will, in most cases, open an HTML page that can be used

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