What is a digital dashboard?

The digital dashboard is a way of streamlining your information processing

Most modern businesses are aware of the impact that Internet technologies can have on the flow of information in a company. Businesses use web sites to keep their customers up to date, and to attract new customers. Corporate intranets are the fastest growing area of Internet expansion. Using an intranet allows you to build teams that can communicate without having meetings - in which members can instantly share information with each other and make changes to this information without even needing to e-mail it back and forth.

The drawback to this new way of doing business is that team members can be overloaded with information. A user's desktop can become cluttered with e-mail packages, scheduling packages, shortcuts to web sites, and other information-gathering tools. It becomes difficult for the user to keep track of all the information they receive, and some information may get lost along the way.

Microsoft's solution to this situation is the digital dashboard. This is not a single software or hardware package - rather it's a means of streamlining your information processing by customizing your desktop. By integrating tools from Microsoft?Office 2000, Microsoft?Exchange 2000, and Microsoft SQL Server? 7.0, the digital dashboard aims to provide an environment where the user has easy access to any information they need, and the tools to process that information effectively.

The Exchange Web Store

Exchange's Web Store combines the data retrieval capabilities of SQL Server with the accessibility of a web site

Originally intended to provide greater interactivity between Microsoft? Exchange Server and the workflow tools provided by Microsoft Outlook?, the digital dashboard has been expanded for Exchange 2000. Possibly the most useful tool the dashboard offers is Exchange's Web Store, a database that combines the data retrieval capabilities of SQL Server with the accessibility of a web site. The range of clients that can access the Web Store - formerly the Information Store in Exchange Server 5.5 - has been dramatically increased in Exchange 2000. As well as the usual range of POP3, NNTP, SMTP, and IMAP4 clients, the Web Store now fully supports HTTP and URL access, WebDAV, and HTML and dynamic ASP content. Team members can both save data to the Web Store and retrieve it easily using any one of a number of applications, including Microsoft?Word, Access or PowerPoint?. They can also use a browser or even the command line.

The Web Store can be maintained as a single store of information, or you can split it into separate stores, depending on the company's structure and team requirements. The information that's stored can be updated quickly and easily by team members with the necessary access. In addition, full-text search capabilities have also been added to the Web Store, so users can perform advanced searches for documents and attachments based on properties, or a combination of properties, such as the author or department name. Since the Web Store can be accessed in a number of ways, either locally or remotely, information can also be made available directly to customers as well as to employees. Security is provided by Exchange's built-in security features.

Other dashboard tools

Your digital dashboard can include quick access to a number of applications within Office 2000, including

• Microsoft NetMeeting?
• Microsoft PivotTable?
• Microsoft Windows? Media Player

Including these features in your digital dashboard makes it easier to build virtual teams and can save travel time and expenses.

Outlook 2000

The Web Store, and any other features of the dashboard, are hosted using Outlook 2000, which acts as a framing device as opposed to an interface. For example, you can call up Access records, Microsoft? Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and Word documents from the Web Store through Outlook. You can also use Outlook to view web pages from short cuts within your dashboard. While, initially, this might be confusing for users who are not familiar with Outlook's controls, it offers quick access to important information without launching a new application.

The desktop

With the digital dashboard, a user desktop can view all their important information at a glance

The digital dashboard allows you to customize a user's desktop so that they can view all their important information, and only their important information, at a glance. All the tools your team needs should be no more than a click away. The desktop view can also include dynamic or personalized elements, called "information nuggets", such as news feeds, stock reports, traffic information from web cams, or weather reports, depending on the results of the initial usability studies. The whole aim of the digital dashboard is to improve productivity by improving the flow of information, so it's important to be sure that the users get the most efficient dashboard possible.
Typically, a company's dashboard includes Microsoft's Outlook e-mail client and scheduler, shortcuts to project-related web sites, and discussion forums.

To see an example of the kind of interface your digital dashboard can have, take a look at this Microsoft demonstration.

Implementing the dashboard

The digital dashboard starter kit, which contains samples, tutorials, white papers, and other information for developers, is available to order or download from Microsoft at this location.

Links

• Digital dashboard demo (http://www.microsoft.com/DigitalNervousSystem/km/DDdemo.htm)
• Digital dashboard starter kit download (http://www.microsoft.com/DigitalNervousSystem/km/DDSK.htm)