Getting Started
In a typical Data Warehousing project, the data models for the warehouse would be created first and then populated with data. Users would specify Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) that make use of the data to create useful / actionable analytics displayed in reports and dashboards. so one of the main steps to take before embarking on dashboard development is the enumerate all of the data sources to be used. This would include the various servers, database instances, login credentials and other metadata about the nature of the data. For this tutorial, we assume this step has already been completed and we will rely on the SteelWheels data available in the Mondrian database that is built in to Pentaho BA server.
Run the Pentaho CE BA Server by navigating to the biserver-ce directory (in version 7.0 the folder is now named pentaho-server) and run the start-pentaho.bat script for Windows (or start-pentaho.sh for Linux or MacOSX). Note that it may take up to 5 minutes for the server to completely deploy. Be patient!
You may see some warning messages such as Loading validation.properties via file I/O failed.. These are generally OK to ignore. Once you see the line 11-Mar-2019 08:59:04.626 INFO [main] org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol.start Starting ProtocolHandler ["http-apr-8080"] then the BA Server should be ready to go.
With the Pentaho Business Analytics (BA) server running, open up a web browser and navigate to http://localhost:8080 which is the default BA Server URL where the Tomcat server with the BA server application is running.
Click on the Sign In As An Evaluator section and then select “Admin” by clicking the appropriate GO button
Note the above screen picture is from version 5.4. Newer versions look similar.
For most projects, the first thing to be done will be to set up any data sources by clicking on the Manage Data Sources icon. However for this demo we will use the SteelWheels data that comes with Pentaho BA server.
To create a new Dashboard, click on the Create New button and then CDE Dashboard
The new, empty dashboard will appear showing the Layout Panel
CDE uses three different views of the parts of a dashboard:
- Layout Panel (shown above) describes the layout for the dashboard including different panels (areas on the dashboard), headers, footers and other visual layout.
- Components Panel shows all of the content that is fed into the layout.
- Data Sources Panel displays the different data sources used to feed the components.
With a new dashboard, the first step will be to decide on a layout. The easiest way to do this is to use the Apply Template button on the button bar. Note that applying a new template will overwrite any existing layout you might have on the dashboard.
Click the Apply Template button to bring up a set of different templates:
Scroll through the different templates to see the different choices. For this example we will use the Three Column template. Click once on this template (as shown above) and then click the OK button. You will be prompted to overwrite the existing layout. Click the OK button.
After the template is applied, a new layout structure will be displayed on the left side of the screen. Click on the navigation triangles to open up each section. As can be seen, the template is made up of 5 rows consisting of a header, a spacer, a Body, a small spacer and then a footer. The header has one large column, the Body has three columns and the footer has two columns. Click on the Header row to view its properties as shown below:
Edit the title of the dashboard by clicking on the HTML title element on the left to display its properties:
Next click on the Edit button (three dots) to edit the HTML:
Overwrite the text between the h2 tags:
Then click the OK button to save this edit.
Exercise 1: Changing the Dashboard Footer
Exercise: Locate the footer text and change it from the default to include your name and a version number such as 1.0 if this is the first version of the dashboard. There may be some HTML codes with a link and an image (img tag). You may remove the image tag and replace that with your name.
Saving the Dashboard
At this point it would be helpful to save the dashboard. Click on the Save as… menu item and then navigate to the /home/admin folder:
Give the dashboard a file name (do not use spaces or punctuation other than underscore), a Title and a Description. Then click the OK button.
Previewing the Dashboard
Preview the dashboard by clicking on the Preview icon. 
Note that depending on your computer monitor’s resolution (or your device’s resolution) the three panels may appear side by side or may be stacked one below the other.
Click the black X in the upper right corner to close the preview.
If for some reason the preview will not display, try using a different web browser such as Mozilla Firefox.
