Need some help with choosing a solution for implementing a dashboard

Question

I would like to implement a dashboard with dashlets/portlets that offer the following functionality:

1. A dashboard which shows the overall state of various services (Net Banking, Mail, Core Banking, Intranet,Sharepoint etc). First level can show the service name and a status showing Green, Amber, or Red. If the user clicks on the service name, he/she should see a brief description of the service, Comments – where the support personnel can highlight reason for any service deterioration, Contact person details etc..

2. All these status changes should be stored and we should be able to view a report on the service availability for the month, quarter, or a specified date range (max upto 1 year).

3. A calendar which shows the scheduled downtimes in a monthly view. It should have a Title (to be displayed on the calendar), Location (where the activity will be performed), Description, Start Time and End time.

4. We should be able to pull a report of all activities performed on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis.
5. User management - should be integrated with AD for the initial login and further the application should be able to track user rights (configurable) to ensure who can see what services and who can make changes, Creation of dashlets should also be controlled using application level access rights.

Can someone please suggest a good tool to implement the above ?. Im open to using either Java or PHP or any other language too . Can the above be done with Liferay or Pentaho, or is there some other tool better suited for creating the dashboard ?

Please help Thank You.

Answer 1

I had a similar requirement in a recent project, here is what I did:

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- create private user page(s) and add all the portlets you need
- export the page(s) via "Manage Pages -> Export"
- copy the exported LAR-File to your liferay installation (into the liferay home folder, where your portal-ext.properties file is located)
- adjust portal-ext.properties
    - rename the private user page to "Dashboard" by adding "default.user.private.layout.name=Dashboard"
    - make the private pages read-only by setting "layout.user.private.layouts.modifiable=false"
    - use the exported LAR-File to generate private pages for all (new) users by adding "default.user.private.layouts.lar=/path/to/the/lar/file.lar"
    - restart the portal

When everything went fine you now have fixed user private page(s).

Answer 2

Just like iGoogle? Maybe GWT, but it seems a lot of work to do.