December 12th: Using Data Discovery to show status of dashboard

Your TARGIT portal might have some work-in-progress dashboards that haven't been through complete validation and quality check yet.

Still, you might show them to the end users to get their feedback, but you will need to let them know that the dashboard is still in test mode and hasn't been officially released yet.

Here's a trick that allows you to do this in a generic way using a very simple excel sheets as data source like this:

To implement this trick the best way, you should probably add it to your templates in TARGIT, so it's available in every dashboard, but let's look at how to use it.

1. Add the file to data discovery and create a cube based on it

2. Build a crosstable in TARGIT just holding the measure value

3. Choose a crosstab template that has completly transparent background (and transparent text as well) and set up 2 color-agents for value=0 means color red and value = 1 means color green 

4. Place the crosstab in a spot where it can be seen as a small indicator of the status of the dashbaord

Now you can filter on the "In Production" dimension and have a red or green area signifying if your dashboard is still in test mode or officially published.

Note - if you combine this trick with an earlier trick from this Christmas calendar -  https://community.targit.com/hc/en-us/articles/8130301074973-December-8th-Use-a-User-Dimension-to-replace-global-criteria-in-multiple-documents

- you will be able to promote a set of dashboards to production just by changing a shared user dimension.