An enterprise-certified dashboard is a set of reports and visualizations that have been put together typically by developers or IT specialists in conjunction with business partners. The developing cycle usually passes through different phases such as building, testing, user acceptance test (UAT), and production deployment. These types of dashboards and reports are built to be consumed by multiple users company-wide. However, in some scenarios, there might be a requirement to create reporting applications for a smaller set or even an individual in a more agile way. In this situation, a self-service approach might be appropriate to satisfy such a need.

The following is a quick reference table for a MicroStrategy Dashboard:

In conjunction with the data-importing capabilities we have covered at the beginning of this chapter, MicroStrategy offers the creation of self-servicing solutions through Application objects called Dashboards (formerly named Visual Insight). It is important to understand the difference between the object called Document, which can generate enterprise-certified dashboards, and the object called Dashboard that is tied with MicroStrategy self-servicing capabilities.

The Dashboard object can only be created and edited using MicroStrategy Web. In Developer, it is only possible to see the object, rename, move, or delete it; Developer doesn't offer editing or creation capabilities for Dashboards.