Empowering Analytics with Pinboard Embedding

As organizations navigate their seas of data, the need for centralized data insights becomes increasingly important. Bold BI, a powerful business intelligence platform, offers a solution with its pinboard feature. A pinboard allows users to consolidate reports, visualizations, and analytics into a single, interactive dashboard, enabling a holistic view of data. In this blog, we delve into the concept of centralizing data insights through pinboards in Bold BI and discuss how they empower businesses to unlock valuable information.

What is a pinboard?

A pinboard is a collection of widgets from various dashboards.  A pinboard typically consists of a grid on which users can add and arrange various components such as charts, graphs, tables, images, and text boxes. Embedding a pinboard refers to the process of integrating or inserting a pinboard, typically created within a business intelligence (BI) tool, into another application or website. It allows users to display and interact with the pinboard’s content within a different context or system.

Benefits of using pinboards in business

Pinboards offer several benefits, including:

• Centralized data insights: Embedding pinboards allows you to consolidate data insights from different sources, providing a centralized view of critical information.
• Interactive visualizations: Pinboards are interactive, enabling users to explore and interact with data visualizations and empowering them to gain deeper insight and make data-driven decisions.
• Customized reporting: By using pinboards, you can create customized reports and visualizations tailored to the specific needs of your users or target audience.
• Streamlined user experience: Embedding pinboards within applications or webpages ensures a seamless user experience by integrating data insights directly into existing workflows or interfaces.
• Collaboration and sharing: Pinboards facilitate easy collaboration and sharing of data insights with stakeholders, team members, and customers, enhancing communication and driving collective understanding.

Let’s look at how we can create a pinboard in Bold BI and embed it.

How to create a pinboard in Bold BI

After identifying the widgets within a dashboard category or under the same domain that you want to collect in a pinboard, start the process of creating a pinboards as follows:

1. Click the pin button in the upper-right corner of the widget you want to add to your pinboard.

   

2. Select the New option next to Pinboard and then provide a name for the pinboard in the text box. Click Pin to finish pinning the widget to the pinboard.

   

3. Choose another widget you want to add to the new pinboard from your dashboard. Click the pin icon of the widget, and this time, select the Existing option next to Pinboard and select the pinboard you just created from the dropdown.

   

4. Repeat the previous step to add all the widgets you want to your pinboard. The following image shows a completed pinboard:

   

How to view pinboards in Bold BI

To view the created pinboards in Bold BI, follow these steps:

1. Click the Pinboards button on the left pane of the Bold BI application home page.

   

2. The Pinboards page will open to the default pinboard. You can select another pinboard to view from the dropdown at the top of the page. In the following image, the default pinboard is a performance tracking pinboard while the other pinboards are listed in the dropdown.

   

Managing pinboards

In Bold BI, handling pinboards involves designing, customizing, and arranging visual data displays for seamless access and evaluation. Users can rename, duplicate, delete, and set pinboards as default to keep them organized and always just a click or tap away. Users can also remove widgets from pinboards and edit pinboard layouts. Pinboards provide a customized perspective on crucial visualizations, allowing users to keep an eye on KPIs and efficiently supervise the organization. To learn more about managing pinboards, check out this documentation.

How to embed a pinboard in your application

Bold BI’s pinboard feature is further enhanced with support to embed pinboards into external applications or websites. This feature enables seamless integration of data analytics and visualizations within custom applications or portals.

Follow these steps to embed a pinboard in a JavaScript application:

1. Insert the embed SDK URL within the head tag of your .html page.

   

2. In the body tag, add a div element with a unique id of your choice. This element will serve as the container for embedding the pinboard. It should look something like the following figure:

   

3. Within the body tag, incorporate the function that establishes a Bold BI instance with the specified properties and invoke this function using the onload attribute. Additionally, call the loadPinboard() function. This is all demonstrated in the following image:

   

4. Implement an authorization endpoint in your application. Provide the user name or user email in the authorization server to act as a bridge between your application and the Bold BI server and be sure to update the security details.
5. In the authorization endpoint, pass the dashboard parameter and URL filter parameter dynamically as explained in this documentation.

After following the previous steps, the embedded pinboard will be rendered as shown:

Now let’s discuss some tips for designing pinboards and some industry use cases of real-time pinboards.

Tips for effective pinboard design

When designing pinboards in Bold BI, consider the following to create effective and impactful data visualizations:

• Define the purpose and target audience of the pinboard to guide design decisions.
• Keep the design clean and focused, avoiding information overload.
• Choose appropriate visualizations that represent the data effectively.
• Use consistent and meaningful color schemes to enhance visual appeal and convey messages.
• Provide context and annotations to help viewers understand the data.
• Pay attention to data formatting for clarity and accuracy.
• Enable interactivity to engage viewers and allow them to explore the data.

Real-time use cases of pinboards

Retail performance insights

A retailer can use pinboards to track and analyze sales performance across multiple stores in real-time. A single, centralized pinboard collects visualizations of key sales metrics such as total sales, top-selling products, and regional sales trends. The pinboard is embedded into the organization’s retail management system, allowing managers and executives to monitor sales data in real time and make informed decisions regarding inventory management, pricing, and promotions.

Education progress tracker

Educational institutions need to monitor overall school and student performance and provide real-time insight into that information to teachers and administrators. To this end, a pinboard can be used to display student assessment scores, attendance records, and progress over time all in one place. With the pinboard embedded into an institution’s learning management system, teachers can track student performance, identify struggling students, and intervene with personalized support.

Workforce performance insights for human resources

HR departments can use pinboards to track and analyze workforce data in real time to optimize resource allocation and improve operational efficiency. They create a pinboard in their BI tool that visualizes key HR metrics, such as headcount, employee demographics, and workforce productivity. The pinboard is then embedded into their workforce management system, enabling HR managers and executives to monitor workforce trends, identify potential bottlenecks, and make data-driven decisions regarding workforce planning and talent management.

Wrapping up

I hope you now have a clear understanding of how embedding pinboards from Bold BI into external applications or webpages opens new possibilities for centralizing data insights. With features like real-time updates, interactivity, and seamless integration, organizations can empower users across departments to access and analyze data in a central place, leading to more informed and impactful decision-making.