Baking with the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards cookbook part 3

A few weeks ago the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 cookbook David Lai and I wrote was released by Packt Publishing. To give you an idea how the book is setup I am publishing some example recipes of this cookbook in a short series of posts here on this blog.

Part 1 contained two recipes from Chapter 2: Data Visualization, discussing Using the OHLC chart and candlestick chart and Sorting series.

Part 2 took a look at Chapter 6: Advanced Components, with the recipes Using the grid component and Creating a slide show.

Part 3 is the final post in this introduction series and gives some examples from Chapter &: Dashboard Look and Feel with the recipes Using color schemes and Sharing a color scheme.

You can find more information on the book here and order it at Packt Publishing (no shipping costs and also eBook version available) or at Amazon.com.

Using color schemes

Dashboard Design conveniently has a set of built-in color themes that developers can use to instantly change the look of their dashboard. Using color themes helps provide consistent coloring among your objects and allows you to change the colors for multiple objects at a time without having to go into the properties of each object to make the necessary changes.

GETTING READY

Have your set of objects that you want to change the colors for ready on the canvas. In this example we have the sales by region chart, a pie chart, and a set of underlying backgrounds that we want colors modified.

HOW TO DO IT…

1. Click on the colors icon and make sure that Current Theme Colors is selected. The backgrounds will be grey and the charts bluish.
   
2. Click on the colors icon and select the Concourse color scheme.
   

HOW IT WORKS…

As you can see, the default color scheme initially looked kind of bland and the coloring for each series in the pie chart is very similar, making it tough to decipher between each of the series. Changing it to theConcourse color scheme lightens up the background considerably with a light bluish background which is easy on the eyes. In addition, the series on the pie chart are more easily distinguishable; however the blues in our opinion are still too similar.

We can fix that by modifying the color scheme, which will be explained in the next recipe.

THERE IS MORE…

Using a good coloring scheme requires a lot of trial and error and there are many best practices that need to be accounted for. For example, different series on a chart should be colored differently so that users don’t have to spend a lot of time figuring out which bar belongs to which series.

We also want colors that are soothing for the eyes. Colors that are too bright or too dark may cause strain to the eyes, thus making it more difficult to find information.

When going through color schemes, it is best to demo to the end users who will be using the dashboard and go with a coloring scheme that is most comfortable to their eyes, as it will allow them to find information more easily

Sharing a color scheme

Developers may want to customize a dashboard’s charts and objects to follow a company’s coloring guidelines. Most likely, the company’s coloring guidelines will not match any of the built-in coloring schemes, so we’ll need a way to create a coloring scheme that we can re-use every time a new dashboard is built for the same company.

GETTING READY

You must be able to view hidden files and folders in the c:\Documents and Settings\your_user_id folder. If you are a Windows Vista or Windows 7 user, you will need to be able to view hidden files and folders inc:\Users\your_user_id.

HOW TO DO IT

1. Click on the colors icon and select the Create New Color Scheme at the bottom of the list.
   
2. Change the background color to whatever color you want by clicking on the colored square.
   
3. Click on the Charts tab and change the Series color to something other than the default color.
   
4. Click the Save button when you are finished.
5. Your color scheme has now been saved and you can now transfer it to other computers. Copy the XML files of the theme that you want to share from the following two folders to the exact same directory in the destination computer. The XML filenames will have the same names as the files that you saved at the following location: c:\Documents and Settings\your_user_id\Application Data\XcelsiuscustomThemes and c:\Documents and Settings\your_user_id\Application Data\XcelsiuscustomThemesAutoInfo.
6. For Windows Vista and Windows 7, the directory path before Xcelsius will be:c:\Users\your_user_id\AppData\Roaming\.

HOW IT WORKS…

Every time you save a custom coloring scheme, it will create two XML files in the directories mentioned earlier. From there, you can easily share the coloring scheme with other developers or other machines that have Dashboard Design installed.

As you can see, once you have the coloring scheme XML files in place, you will be able to select them from the Color Scheme Toolbar.

You can find more information on the book here and order it at Packt Publishing (no shipping costs and also eBook version available) or at Amazon.com.

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