With SharePoint Portal Server you can decide your own level of customization for the dashboard site. The default dashboard site lets you quickly deploy an out-of-the-box total portal solution that facilitates finding, creating, and sharing all of your mission-critical data.
You can access the Management page on the dashboard site only if you are a coordinator on the Portal folder in the workspace. By using this page, you can manage other users' subscriptions, manage discussions on the workspace, and flush the application cache for the dashboard site.
In addition, you must be a coordinator on the Portal folder in the workspace to customize the dashboard site and the Web Parts that make up the content of the individual dashboard pages. The Content, Layout, and Settings management pages, accessed through links at the top right of the dashboard site, provide the tools for dashboard customization. In order to customize a personal dashboard, you must be a coordinator for the individual dashboard folder.
You can customize the appearance of the dashboard site for your organization by modifying the following elements:
Coordinators at the workspace level have access to three management pages on the dashboard site to update the content and appearance. You can change the style settings (colors and fonts on the dashboard) by using the Settings management page. You can view and modify the layout of Web Parts on a dashboard by using the Layout management page. To add new Web parts, use the Content management page.
To edit the settings for a particular dashboard, on the navigation bar of the home page, click the link for that dashboard. To open the Settings management page for that dashboard, click Settings. Use the controls on the Settings management page to edit the following settings for the dashboard:
For more information about dashboard settings, see Appendix B.
SharePoint Portal Server creates a dashboard from a customizable assortment of Web Parts, which are discrete units that contain specific sets of information. You can view and modify how these Web Parts appear by using the Layout management page.
SharePoint Portal Server arranges the dashboard in a framework that consists of five different sections. This framework and the sections that it contains appear in an outline on the Layout management page. Each section can contain several Web Parts. If a section is empty or does not contain any Web Parts, that section does not appear on the dashboard.
Although you can configure the dashboard to support a framework with any number of sections, a given dashboard implementation can support only a single framework at a time. You can change the basic default framework only by rewriting the dashboard implementation. Only a developer familiar with the Microsoft Digital Dashboard architecture should perform this task. Consider the following points when configuring the layout of a dashboard:
The position and order in which SharePoint Portal Server displays the Web Parts contributes to the effectiveness and usability of your dashboard. Experiment with different Web Part arrangements to make the best use of your dashboard space.
You cannot add new Web Parts to the dashboard from the Layout management page. To add new Web Parts, go to the Content management page.
You must use Internet Explorer 5 or later to access the link to the Layout management page. For Internet Explorer 4 and for Netscape Navigator, SharePoint Portal Server does not display the Layout link because these browsers do not fully support required actions on the Layout management page.
To configure Web Parts for a particular dashboard, on the navigation bar of the home page, click the link for that dashboard. To open the Content page for that dashboard, click Content.
For more information about customizing dashboard content, see Appendix B.
The coordinator configures the links to the content that appears in the default Web Parts by adding documents to the News, Announcements, or Quick Links subfolders in the Dashboard Site folder in the workspace.
If you associate the Link property with an item, SharePoint Portal Server renders the hyperlink for that item as a hyperlink to the link target rather than a hyperlink to the item itself. SharePoint Portal Server crawls the Link target and makes the content of the Link target available for full-text searching.
Use the Content page to choose the Web Parts that appear on the dashboard. To configure Web Parts for a particular dashboard, click the link for that dashboard on the navigation bar of the home page. To open the Content management page for that dashboard, click Content. Use the controls to select the Web Parts that appear on the dashboard.
There are three ways to add Web Parts to a dashboard. Choose from among the following:
Add Web content to your dashboard by using Web Parts from a pre-existing catalog of Web Parts.
Depending on whether a coordinator has customized the dashboard site, there may be other catalogs available as well.
If necessary, you can change the layout and settings for these parts on your dashboard from the Layout and Settings links. You can also change dashboard content at any time by clicking Content on the dashboard title bar.
Office XP documents that you save to a dashboard folder automatically become Web Parts for that dashboard.
To save a Web Part to an existing dashboard, choose the Portal folder and then the appropriate subfolder. By default, the Portal folder is hidden. You must be assigned to the coordinator role at the workspace level to add or modify content in the Portal folder. To save a Web Part to a personal dashboard, choose the Dashboards folder and then the appropriate subfolder. You must be assigned to the coordinator or author role to add or modify content in the Dashboards folder.
SharePoint Portal Server displays a form to specify a title and a description for the Web Part along with the position on the page in which it should appear on the dashboard.
The new Web Part appears on the dashboard.
If necessary, you can change the layout and settings for these parts on your dashboard from the Layout and Settings links. You can also change dashboard content at any time by clicking Content on the dashboard title bar.
You can create your own Web Parts in many different ways. One of the easiest ways is to create one from existing Web content by using a URL. You can also create a Web Part that uses embedded Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) or JavaScript to generate the content to display on your dashboard.
Only the original creator of the dashboard or a coordinator on the folder for the personal dashboard can access the Content link.
You can create your own custom dashboards using the Personal Dashboard Web Part. For example, you can use the Personal Dashboard Web Part to create a dashboard for a specific project, team, or collection of data.
Personal dashboards are dashboards created by users that consist of one or more Web Parts chosen by the creator. You can import Web Parts from a catalog, create Web Parts by saving content from Office XP as a Web Part, or create custom Web Parts directly from SharePoint Portal Server.
Personal dashboards are stored as folders in the Dashboards folder at the root of the workspace (http://server/workspace/Dashboards). All Web Parts that appear on the personal dashboard are stored as items in the personal dashboard folder.
If you are a coordinator at the workspace level, you can allow users who are authors on the Dashboards folder in the workspace to create their own personal dashboard from the home page of the dashboard site. To do this, you can either create the personal dashboard for each user or add the Personal Dashboards Web Part to the page on the dashboard site from where you want to allow users to create their own dashboards.
If you allow users to create their own dashboards, those users can also create their own Web Parts that run script on the server. Since the server is a shared resource and the Web Part code can affect the server function (though only the user's security limitations), you should examine server resources and security policy before implementing this feature.
SharePoint Portal Server saves the Web Part as a .DWP file on your hard drive.
The Web Part appears on the page you selected.
Users who are Authors or Coordinators on the Dashboards folder can create personal dashboards from the Personal Dashboards Web Part on the dashboard site.
To disable personal dashboard creation for a single user, change the user's role from Author to Reader on the Dashboards folder.
To disable personal dashboard creation for all users, remove the Personal Dashboards Web Part from the dashboard site, and change the appropriate users from Authors to Readers on the Dashboards folder.
There are other advanced settings where you can specify things such as the style sheet to use for the dashboard, or the name of a Help file.
Users can also create additional sub-dashboards from a personal dashboard. This allows a user to create multiple dashboards under one single navigation structure.
Once they are created, you can view personal dashboards by using a Web browser by typing the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that corresponds to the specific personal dashboard in the Dashboards folder. For example, if you create a personal dashboard called "Production" in the Manufacturing workspace on the server called "Adventure," you would use http://Adventure/Manufacturing/Dashboards/Production as the URL in your Web browser to display the Production dashboard.
Users assigned to the Reader role for the folder containing the personal dashboard can view the dashboard from their Web browser. If you want to restrict access to your personal dashboard, you must manually change the roles assigned to specific users or groups for the folder that contains the dashboard.
You can only delete personal dashboards from the Web folder for the workspace in which they are stored. You cannot delete them from the dashboard site of the workspace.
You can access the Management page on the dashboard site only if you are a coordinator on the Portal folder in the workspace. By using this page, you can manage other users' subscriptions, manage Web discussions, flush the application cache for the dashboard site, and create personal dashboards.
For more information about implementing Web discussions, see Chapter 10, Planning Web Discussions.