Depending on how you’ve configured a dashboard within Dashboard Designer, end-users will be able to drill down into data sets, filter, add comments to items within published dashboards, and export dashboard data to Excel and Microsoft Office PowerPoint.

Figure 19-51 shows a dashboard that includes a Sales Scorecard, an analysis chart report (Trailing 8 Quarter Sales By Product), a Top 20 Products Chart Report, and a Sales By Country report.

Figure 19-51. Dashboard shown within a SharePoint site

Items within dashboards can be filtered and connected. In other words, when you choose to filter by North America, all items included in the dashboard will update to reflect data specifically relating to North America. Figure 19-52 shows the available filtering options for both the All Product and All Geography filters.

Figure 19-52. Filtering options within dashboards

A major strength of published dashboards is the ability to drill down into data sets. Figure 19-53 shows the available drill options available in one of the report items within a dashboard. In this case, the data is being pulled from an Analysis Services cube that includes the dimensions Geography, Product, SalesRep, and Time. In the current selection, Geography, each quarter can also be expanded to reveal quarter-specific data.

Figure 19-53. Drill down into dashboard items

Another valuable feature of dashboard items is the ability to add comments to individual cells within scorecards (for example, querying a specific sales figure). Figure 19-54 shows the Comments dialog box.

Figure 19-54. Adding a comment to an individual cell within a scorecard