Recipe overview

This Business Intelligence (BI) recipe provides step-by-step instructions on building a dashboard that features key metrics based on a SQL data source – one of nearly limitless use cases for transforming raw data into meaningful and useful information for business analysis purposes. This recipe utilizes the following items:

• The Run Self-Service Reports for Confluence add-on to provide a form through which the user can choose selection criteria for the data to be presented in the dashboard.
• The Chart macro, which comes natively with Confluence, to produce the pie chart.
• The SQL for Confluence add-on, which comes in both Express and Pro editions, to query a SQL database to retrieve the data to be presented in the dashboard.
• The Macro Security for Confluence add-on to safeguard the page and the database it uses by ensuring that only Administrators can use the SQL Query and Run macros.
• The Cache for Confluence add-on to improve the dashboard's rendering speed through the use of its Cache and Future macros.

It will take you approximately 20-22 minutes to complete this recipe if you have already completed the How to Create a Self-Service Report From SQL Data recipe or 35-41 minutes if you have not completed that recipe. Jump to Step 13 to see a preview of the final result!

See our other related BI recipes:

• How to create a chart from SQL data (Basic)
• How to create a self-service report from SQL data (Intermediate)

Recipe level

Ingredients

Preparation

• Install MySQL to prepare for building a sample database that will be used in the SQL queries.

• Install the sample Examplegear database, including defining the examplegeardb data source profile.
• Complete the How to Create a Self-Service Report From SQL Data recipe, to create the Monthly Sales by Product page that will be used to get part of the content for the page that this recipe will create.

Steps