Dashes - the very simplest dashboard system possible.

by Rob Vincent ([email protected]) April 2011

For longer description, read my blog post at http://rjvincent.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/no-budget-project-1-dashboard/

Reads report files, called dashes, and displays each in a div-tag on a single web page. Dashes are written in JSON format with only a few standard fields: title, updated, headers, note, and data (which is an array of arrays).

Sample scripts for generating dashes are in the /reporters directory.

Besides displaying the dashes, the application also returns a list of the dash files (/list) and can either display (/view/) or retrieve specific dashes (/get/). This is for collecting dashes from other dashboard servers.

CONFIGURATION

• set application/page title and number of columns in lib/app_globals.py
• email to receive alerts in /production.ini
• number of columns in /

RUNNING

Dashes is a pylons application, so you have a choice for running it.

• use the built-in web server: paster serve production.ini

• use a python module for your favorite web server, such as mod_python with Apache

• use a wsgi server to communicate with your web server, such as uwsgi˝

IDEAS FOR IMPROVEMENTS

• add a level of security by assigning keys to each dashboard server
• add scripting (such as ERB) to make dashes more dynamic or allow mashing separate or distributed dashes
• graphs
• display changes in dash values
• sort by time or priority
• coding for links and alerts for dash values