Can I build a Dashboard in Sharepoint Online?

Question

I would like to create a dashboard in Sharepoint Online http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/sharepoint-online-online-collaboration-software-FX103789366.aspx.

I have seen references to a Dashboard Designer http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff806339.aspx, but have not found a way to install it. I think it might be available from a link in the on-premise SharePoint online.

I also installed the "Office Developer Tools for VisualStudio 2012". When I try to create a "SharePoint 2013 - Visual Web Part", it says "The required version of SharePoint Foundation 2013 ... is not installed on this system". This leads me to think I have to install VisualStudio on our server, which I can't do (SharePoint is online).

I would like my dashboard to retrieve data from an external data source (an Azure database), so I don't just want to publish a spreadsheet. I've already created an external list to retrieve the data, I now want to put it into a webpart.

Is it possible to build Dashboards in SharePoint online?

Answer 1

Short answer is: no, not at this time.

The Dashboard Designer for business intelligence reports is part of the PerformancePoint Services feature of SharePoint 2013 Enterprise.

PerformancePoint is not available for any of Office365 or SharePoint Online as of today. Take a look at this TechNet article, SharePoint Online Service Description (Office365), it shows where SharePoint features are available for each of Office365, SharePoint Online, and SharePoint on-premises, article date Feb 3, 2014.

If SharePoint Online is a hard requirement suggest you reconsider your decision to not use a spreadsheet to achieve your dashboard. You can achieve some nice results using an Excel Services dashboard with external data as described in this TechNet article, Create an Excel Services dashboard using an OData data feed.

Excel Services are available in the higher end versions of Office365 (E/A/G 3 & 4) and SharePoint Online (Plan 2).

The online versions of SharePoint are regularly updated and enhanced, far more often than the on-premises version (via cumulative updates, service packs and full product releases). So Microsoft may make PerformancePoint services available online sooner or later, but they won't reveal that until it is official. Check from time to time.

In case you are looking for the Dashboard Designer in SharePoint on-premises, here is how to find it:

1. Create a site collection using the "Business Intelligence Center" site template (under the Enterprise tab when selecting a site template)
2. In the root site, in the ribbon bar, select the Performance Point tab
3. Select the Dashboard Designer item

If the Performance Point tab is not visible, ensure that you on/in the Dashboards, Data Connections or PerformancePoint Content library/list using the left navigation.

Answer 2

Only half an answer as I'm also looking for Dashboard Designer (see my comment).

To develop a solution (app) for SharePoint Online 2013, you need to create a hosted app. It is probably worth starting with Microsoft's experimental "Napa" tool that you can get from the SharePoint app store since this walks you through the process.

Your app doesn't actually run on the SharePoint infrastructure, it runs in a special Azure workspace.

The reason for the error you are seeing is that you are trying to create an app for an on-premise installation of SharePoint and you need local access to all of the libraries. I'm not a Visual Studio expert (as yet) but there are different project templates for building SharePoint Online 2013 hosted apps and this is what you want.

Without access to dashboard designer, you can use the new Excel tools, notably PowerQuery. Use this to query your Azure data and build the dashboard using PowerPivot and Excel charting tools. Then store the spreadsheet on SharePoint and use the Excel web part to publish the relavent bits to a page.