Creating Dashboards in PeopleSoft

Dashboards are another additions to PeopleSoft innovation suite. PeopleSoft dashboards are container components to host multiple pagelets. These dashboards can be hooked up to a workcenter as a landing page or can be registered as a portal structure like other PeopleSoft components.

Dashboards act as a onestop place to display the key metrics/actionable items that a logged in user should be aware of. Usually a dashboard can comprise of multiple pagelets displaying variety of information. The contents of pagelets can vary in nature; it can be a Pivot Grid, Charts or PeopleSoft Components which collectively display meaningful data pertaining to the module and the role of the user.

Creating a PeopleSoft dashboard is a simple process if you already have your pagelets ready. For creating Pivot Grid or PeopleSoft component pagelets, refer my previous post on the topic. Click here for getting the steps to create a fresh workcenter.

Step 1: Navigate To: People Tools > Portal > Dashboard > Manage Dashboard Pages

Click on the link Create a new dashboard page. On the page, provide the details of the dashboard such as Name, Folder Navigation and Access and save the page.

Step 2: Once you save the page you will be taken back to the main page where you can see your dashboard listed among other dashboards. Now click on Pagelets button corresponding to your new dashboard. You can see a list of pagelets available to you under different folders corresponding to the functional areas. All you need to do is to check the pagelets that are required for your dashboard and click on the Save button located at the end of the page.

Step 3: By the step 2, you have completed the creation of the dashboard. All you need to do now is to configure it for each users. Go to the folder in the portal navigation where you have registered your dashboard in step 1. You can see that an empty page opens up. This is because you still have not configured the dashboard for a user.

To configure the dashboard, click on the Personalize Content hyperlink at the top right corner of the page. Now you will see the list of pagelets selected by you on the step 2. Check the pagelets required for this user and the hit the Save button.

Now your dashboard is completely configured for this user and you can drag and drop the pagelets to re-align the positions of each pagelets in the dashboard. If you are a developer and wants to set the same configuration for all your users, refer the backend table for the layout configuration and issue an sql insert command for mass update.

If you want to have a dashboard for your WorkCenter, you can follow pretty much the same steps with minor changes. The steps to be followed are.

Step 1: Navigate To : PeopleTools > Portal > WorkCenter > Manage WorkCenter Dashboards

Click on the Create new WorkCenter dashboard page located at the bottom of the page. Provide the details as done earlier for normal dashboards and save the page.

Step 2: On the main page, click on the Pagelets button corresponding to the new dashboard you have created. On the pagelets selection page, check the pagelets required for your dashboard and click on Save.

Step 3: Now to map the dashboard to your WorkCenter, Navigate To: Enterprise Components > WorkCenter/Dashboards > Configure Pagelets; and select your workcenter. Go to the links tab and add the new dashboard created as a link to the WorkCenter and save the page. Now for the changes to take effect, you need to click on the Activate Link Settings button.

Open your WorkCenter and you can see the link to dashboard under the Links pagelet. Again you need to personalize the dashboard for each user by clicking on Personalize Content link at the top right corner and then selecting the required pagelets for the dashboard.

Step 4: Do you want to make your dashboard as the landing page for your WorkCenter? Go to the Configure Pagelets page mentioned in step 3. Select the links tab and you can see a checkbox called Starting Page against the dashboard link. Check it and save the page. Click on Activate Link Settings. 

Now you WorkCenter will open with the dashboard as default page.