Designing processes - EMC Community Network

Monitoring Business Activity
Leveraging the Preconfigured Dashboards
The Preconfigured Dashboards, and the reports on which they are based, are an excellent source of
learning and should be leveraged whenever possible. The simplest approach is to use the Preconfigured
Dashboard reports to learn about data source creation and report design. In this way, users can reverse
engineer the reports to learn how they were designed. Another way to leverage the Preconfigured
Dashboard reports is to open them for editing in PRS, and add and/or remove data as appropriate. For
instance, add SDT or package attribute data to the List of Process Instance report, since business data
is not included in any of the Preconfigured Dashboard reports.
CAUTION: If you modify any of the Preconfigured Dashboard reports, you must understand
how to reformat the chart data. Adding and subtracting data disturbs the X-axis and Y-axis
settings.
Another approach to leveraging the Preconfigured Dashboards is to design a report and replace one
of the dashlets in either of the three dashboards. With this approach you do not need to design a
dashboard from scratch, you are simply replacing the contents of a dashboard that already exists.
You are not required to create a dashboard tab, or assign the tab to roles, as is typically required
when you design a dashboard. Keep in mind, though, that editing a dashboard changes the contents
for users that are viewing it.
Dashboard refresh intervals
BAM dashboards can be configured to refresh after a certain interval of time. While there is no
absolute best practice regarding refresh intervals, it is recommended that you determine how often you
need to see updated data. If you have low volumes of long running processes, then a refresh interval of
every few days may suffice. If you have high volumes of processes and your data changes frequently,
then more regularly scheduled refresh periods is more appropriate. Refresh intervals are scheduled in
minutes. Since refreshing a dashboard is somewhat demanding on the BAM system, it is important
that you balance your needs with the frequency with which the data changes.
Designing drill-down reports
Single and multi-drill-down reports are configured with a source report and a target report. It is best
practice to design the target report first, so that it is available on picklists when the source report is
designed.
Formatting reports to be more readable
There are a few methods for making BAM dashboard reports more readable:
• Entering a report title and subtitle in the Chart Properties window is not necessary since the name of
the report appears in the title bar of the dashlet.
EMC Documentum xCelerated Composition Platform Version 1.6 Best Practices Guide 93