The Dashboard Site

With SharePoint Portal Server, you can add additional dashboards to the default dashboard site to customize your dashboard site. In addition, you can enable users to create their own personalized dashboards for collaboration. By using Office XP, you can add Web Parts to any dashboard quickly and easily to provide information to all users. The following figure illustrates how to save an Excel spreadsheet as a Web Part.

Office XP users can save Web Parts by using the Save As feature. Office XP users can also create personal dashboards directly from Office XP. Personal dashboards provide customized views of content for sharing across teams.

When a user saves an Office XP document as a Web Part in a personal dashboard folder, SharePoint Portal Server prompts the user to name and describe the Web Part and to indicate the position on the layout of the dashboard. Figure 18.2 shows the Web Part Settings page.

Personal dashboards are dashboards that consist of one or more Web Parts chosen by the creator. By using the Personal Dashboard Web Part that is included with SharePoint Portal Server, users can create customized dashboards to organize and present Web content that is specific to their needs.

For example, a user may want to create a dashboard with information about a specific topic or project, such as a quarterly sales report. Alternatively, a user may want to create a Web site with multiple types of information, such as marketing reports on competitors, competitor product information, and stock market information, that they want to share with others.

Figure 18.1. Saving an Office XP document as a Web Part

Figure 18.2. Saving a document as a Web Part

The following figure shows a personal dashboard with an Excel spreadsheet that is saved as a Web Part.

Figure 18.3. Displaying a spreadsheet as a Web Part on a personal dashboard

After you modify the workspace and dashboard site that comes with SharePoint Portal Server, you further customize your portal by adding additional dashboards and Web Parts, such as those available from the Microsoft Web Part Gallery. The example in the preceding figure includes a Microsoft MSN^® Encarta^® Reference Web Part. In addition, you may choose to allow users to create personal dashboards to publish their own project information. Customization can include:

• Adding custom dashboards to the main dashboard site.
• Creating, importing, or removing Web Parts from dashboards.
• Deciding whether to implement the Personal Dashboards feature of SharePoint Portal Server.
• Organizing and modifying content on the dashboard site as you develop it by using Office XP.

Office XP adds value to SharePoint Portal Server by giving you tools that transform Office XP documents into Web-ready content without the need to reformat and re-create information.