Dashboards, Widgets, & Rich Internet Applications: Drawing Parallels & Differences

by Ryan Goodman

This week I wanted to focus on Dashboards, Widgets, and everything else that we put into a bucket called Rich Internet Applications.

There is significant overlap in all three with specific distinctions making each unique. Hopefully I can paint a picture that makes it a little easier to understand.

Consistencies Among all 3

• Generally designed to incorporate an aesthetically pleasing UI.
• Some or most data originates from a server side process or web service.
• Enables some level of configuration or customization
• Implies some type of security model
• Provides a user interface paradigm that is intuitive and simple to navigate
• Besides on the desktop outside of an internet browser which enables a user experience that requires no screen refresh.
• Incorporates Web 2.0 technologies like AJAX or Flash.

Differences

Dashboards:

• Primarily focused on presenting quantitative measures, metrics, and analytics.
• Used to visualize the most recent information available.
• Provide enough information to drive action.
• Is usually embedded or integrated into another application or portal.

Widgets

• Designed to present one or few elements on the screen at one time using minimal screen real estate
• Presents the most important or frequently monitored information or drive common tasks.
• Usually embedded or wrapped around a client side framework.

RIA

• Built to for use as a standalone client application.
• Leverages operating system specific functions in addition to server side communication and data access.
  
  

Xcelsius Salesforce.com Widgets in Business 2.0 Magazine

by Ryan Goodman

Before boarding a plane to head over to Europe, I purchased my usual Business 2.0 magazine (April 2007) and found an interesting article on widgets. This article reported recent advancements in desktop widgets in the enterprise space. To my delight, they had a great image of an Xcelsius generated revenue tracker widget designed for Salesforce.com. I sat back and asked myself one question... At what point will this desktop widget craze materialize into something valuable or just roll up into the next big thing: Rich Internet Applications on the desktop?

Desktop widgets were the first iteration of what Adobe and other industry players have coined rich internet applications. It was the combination of Yahoo widgets and Apple desktop that propelled this cool technology into a desktop widget craze, as seen in Business 2.0, Wall Street Journal, and other publications. The draw for end users is the demand for a streamlined, customized, and aesthetically pleasing mini application that exists outside of the browser. There were three descriptors missing in the previous sentence that in many cases still restrict widgets from really catching fire.

1. A strong security model- While existing frameworks are wonderful in displaying and rendering content, they are not designed to address security to satisfy enterprise requirements.
2. Customizable content- While the technology is cool, without an ability to view customized content, widgets will always be perceived as desktop “toys.”
3. A solid monetization strategy- It seems the path of least resistance is to make widgets free, and concentrate on using widgets as a value-add for existing software platforms, and applications.

The article in Business 2.0 indicates that enteprise software vendors are taking a stab at desktop widgets.

Widget Hardware: Ambient Orb

by Ryan Goodman

During a discussion last week I was commenting on my Ambient Orb and how it is one of the coolest devices in the market. This cool piece of hardware has served as a conversation piece for anyone who walks by my office, and is currently configured to display the health my entire investment portfolio. When I was looking to purchase a house last year, I linked it to the local market rates with an extremely tight tolerance and was able to have my mortgage guy execute on my loan application and in return I saved a small amount of money (more than enough to pay for the orb itself).



Today, anyone can leverage this technology to monitor any type of information. In my case I built a module that will allow you to plug this technology into any Xcelsius dashboard. There are a few basic steps to enable your dashboard to pass information to your ambient orb.

1. Once you purchase your orb, go to the Ambient Devices website and setup an account that allows you to add your own channel.

2. Obtain your orb ID located at the bottom of your orb, and enter it into the excel model.

3. Configure the tolerances in the model, based on the values you will receive from your connected source. One tolerance is for color and the second is for blink speed, which means you can visualize two values on the device.

4. Make sure the web service URL is configured to connect to ambient devices. (Data>XML Map Options…)

5. Connect your model to refresh with live data from any data source (BI, CRM, etc..)

6. Setup the refresh rate. *Note that depending where you live you can expect up to 20 minute transmitting latency for your orb to change color.

7. Generate your SWF file

8. Vuala! Your SWF will now dictate the color of your ambient orb.
Download the source files

So when Christmas rolls around next year you can be a hero: Give your VP an easy way to monitor their most important key performance indicator, and a cool looking glowing tech-toy for their office. You will be a hero going into the next year!

Widgets In the Workplace

by Ryan Goodman

The long existing concept of small, light-weight desktop widgets have recently propelled themselves back onto our desktops as the latest trend for delivering small but important bits of information. Apple, Yahoo, Google, and soon Microsoft are simultaneously trying to push their widgets to your desktop. You know your business better than anyone…So why not build your own widgets?

Desktop Widgets, Gadgets, Doohickeys…What are they?
A widget is a lightweight application that resides on your desktop (using minimal real estate) and provides valuable information in a simple and non distracting interface. The concept of a widget allows a user view up to date, filtered information from any pre-determined data source. Each individual viewer’s widget should provide a small volume but extremely valuable information customized to their preferences. There are an abundance of widgets and widget framework applications posted on the internet for free downloading (see Widget frameworks). The most common widgets floating around on the internet deliver weather, stock quotes, or news.

What does this have to do with me? The relevance of business widgetsMany widgets currently available for free download are well designed and serve a useful purpose in providing information…unless you are a business person looking for widgets to help you in the workplace. The reality is that there are not too many useful widgets designed for business use. So what if stock quotes and weather in your zip code don’t have any effect on the revenue impacting decisions that you make? There are endless possibilities for widgets that could assist us in the workplace that could make information significantly easier to access. Widgets can serve to provide the most important metrics, or key performance indicators (KPI) from any data source. Imagine having a widget on your desktop that automatically feeds the most important or most commonly utilized information that you use on a day to day basis. There are 2 reasons why you may want to deploy a widget:

1. Provide a quick and easy interface for performing common tasks
A good reason for designing a widget is to provide a quick and easy interface to complete common tasks. Though you may have a full blown application that you use to carry out your business processes, think of instances where you have to open a browser, login, and then navigate to a page, just to get 1 piece of information. Multiply that same 30 second process 5 times a day, 5 days a week, and 52 weeks a year. I am sure you would love those several hours of your life back to do something useful. A widget could save you the time to carry out the process but still serve as a quick interface to open up the full blown application within context to the information you need. You can then execute the more involved tasks once you have digested the basic information provided by the widget.

2. Stream important real time information
Another good reason for developing a widget would be to provide a visual interface for monitoring real time information. If there is a single or small group of KPIs that you monitor on a day to day basis, a widget is the perfect solution to have that information presented at all times, in an un-intrusive minimalist layout. This real-time widget concept could be used for monitoring high level metrics, then link to some type of supporting analytics or report, in case if a problem is identified.

What makes a good Widget: (Best Practices)
With these 2 primary drivers for developing widgets, you may be asking yourself? Why not just build a dashboard? In some cases it may be in your best interest to develop a full blown application or dashboard. We must remember that a widget is a minimalist approach to providing only what is most important. In designing a widget follow theses best practices to avoid overcomplicating or creating a useless widget.

1. Keep asking yourself during design and development (will this make my life easier?)
2. Remember to KEEP IT SIMPLE
3. Only provide information that is most important
4. Keep the physical appearance simple and unobtrusive
5. Only display graphics that are absolutely necessary
6. Use pop-up or expanding functionality
7. Make the widget configurable
8. Create an intuitive interface
9. Link the widget to the full blown application or additional information
   

Widgets gone wrong: What not to do

1. Leave you end user hanging with no where to get additional information
2. Pack too much information into a widget
3. Take up too much screen real estate
4. Make the file size too heavy
5. Create a complicated interface
6. Make the widgets distracting
7. Get lost in the visualization with too many options, labels, colors, etc.
8. Provide useless information
9. Forget to provide a help button

mProjector: http://www.screentime.com/software/mprojector/
Zinc: http://www.multidmedia.com/software/zinc/
Google Gadgets: http://desktop.google.com/?promo=mp-gds-v1-1
Microsoft Gadgets : http://microsoftgadgets.com/
Yahoo Konfabulator: : http://www.widgetgallery.com/ does not accept SWF files, but is extremely powerful for creating java based widgets.