A tiled dashboard is similar to a dashboard but consists of two regions: tiles displaying an image and a value and a set of report related to the selected tile.

You typically run a tiled dashboard to view important information about your business. You may run a tiled dashboard at the start of the day and leave the dashboard window open all day, or open and close it as you see fit. The reports in the dashboard refresh themselves at an interval you specify (the default is every ten minutes) so the data is always current.

A tiled dashboard cycles through reports and optionally tiles:

• The reports for the first tile are displayed in the reports area (the selected tiles has a border around it so you can tell which one is currently be displayed).

• When the interval is reached, the reports for the second tile are displayed.

• If the total number of cells in the tiled area is less than the number of tiles, the tiles are cycled through in sets at the specified interval. For example, if you specify one rows and two columns, only two tiles can be displayed at a time, so if the dashboard contains four tiles, the first two are displayed, with the reports for the first tile displayed first, then the reports for the second, then the next two tiles are displayed, with the reports for the third tile first, then the reports for the fourth. The cycle then starts again with the first two tiles.

You can also make a tile current by clicking it.

To run a dashboard, double-click the shortcut on your desktop Stonefield Query created when you created the dashboard. Resizing the dashboard window resizes the reports within the window so you can make the window a convenient size. Each report in the dashboard displays with a title bar that changes color when your mouse pointer is over the chart. There are three controls in the upper-left corner of each report's title bar:

• : click this button to output the reports to a PDF file. You are asked for the name and location of the file to output to.

• : click this button, which only appears when there's more than one report in the dashboard, to zoom the report up to fill the dashboard and hide the other reports. Click it again to restore the size of the report.

• : click this button to refresh the report immediately without waiting for the refresh interval.

You can also run a dashboard by previewing it in Stonefield Query, either in the Reports Explorer or in the Tiled Dashboard Wizard. Note that the Print, Schedule Report, and Show SQL Statement functions are disabled, as are all pages in the Reports Explorer except the Information page, when a tiled dashboard is selected since those things don't apply to dashboards.

Note that reports such as quick or cross-tab reports only display the first page of the report and cannot be scrolled, since a dashboard is intended to show a quick display of information.

To create a tiled dashboard, follow the steps in the Creating a Report topic. The Dashboard Wizard shown below appears.

You can resize the Tiled Dashboard Wizard window by clicking the lower right corner of the window and dragging until the window is the desired size. Stonefield Query remembers the size and position of the Tiled Dashboard Wizard and restores it the next time you run it.

Note that the Preview button is disabled until all of the settings have been filled in for Step 3.