A dashboard is a set of chart reports that appears in its own window, outside of Stonefield Query. In fact, when a dashboard is run, the normal Stonefield Query user interface doesn't appear.

You typically run a dashboard to view important information about your business. You may run a 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 charts in the dashboard refresh themselves at an interval you specify (the default is every ten minutes) so the data is always current.

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 charts within the window so you can make the window a convenient size. Each chart in the dashboard displays with a title bar that changes color when your mouse pointer is over the chart. There are two controls in the upper-left corner of each chart's title bar:

• : click this button to output the charts 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 chart in the dashboard, to zoom the chart up to fill the dashboard and hide the other charts. Click it again to restore the size of the chart.

• : click this button to refresh the chart 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 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 dashboard is selected since those things don't apply to dashboards.

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

You can resize the 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 Dashboard Wizard and restores it the next time you run it.