Case Study 1: Building pods from simple schemas and data
Calbro Services wants to use the Pod Builder to develop a custom dashboard that shows all of their critical business services, including in-context metrics and KPIs showing associated planning and financial metrics.
Calbro Pods and Metrics
Calbro has identified the need for four pods to build their dashboard:
- A pod that shows services provided by IT that are critical to the business
- A pod that shows all incidents for a selected business service
- A pod that shows the vendors and associated contracts for a selected business service
- A pod that shows the organizational impact of the business services (business units and projects).
Since BMC Dashboards for BSM already ships with the first two pods, Calbro has decided to use them in the Calbro BSM Dashboard. These are pictured below:
(Click the image to expand it.)
Calbro has also decided to build the last two pods using the Pod Builder. These are defined below:
A pod that shows the vendors and associated contracts for a selected business service
Pod Name & Description
Name: Vendor and Contract Details by Business Service
Description: This pod will show the vendors and their contracts for a selected business service along with budgetary information.
Behavior Definition: Calbro expects this pod to be updated when a business service is selected in the Business Services Summary pod. Hence, when an executive clicks on a business service in the Business Services Summary pod, this pod should retrieve the vendors that provide that business service. In addition, users should be allowed to select the vendors to be displayed in this pod.
UI Definition: This pod will contain two charts:
- A column chart showing vendors and their budgets. This chart will filter its data to show only vendors and vendor budgets for business services selected in the Business Service Summary pod.
- A pie chart showing the breakdown of the various contracts and their impact on the vendor budget. This chart will filter its data to show only contracts for the vendor selected in the bar chart.
This pod will utilize the two-column Side by Side layout in the Pod Builder.
Data Location and Definition: IT Business Analysts at Calbro publish an Excel spreadsheet that contains tables listing business services, associated vendors, vendor contracts and budgets, updated at a regular interval.A pod that shows the organizational impact of the business services (business units and projects).
Pod Name & Description
Name: Business Projects Impacted by Business Service
Description: This pod will show projects impacted by a selected business service, including projects details, associated budgets, and dependent business units.
Behavior Definition: Calbro expects this pod to be updated when a business service is selected in the Business Services Summary pod. Hence, when an executive clicks on a business service in the Business Services Summary pod, this pod should retrieve the projects related to that business service. In addition, users should be allowed to select the projects to be displayed in this pod.
UI Definition:This pod will contain three charts:
- A bar chart showing projects and project budgets. This chart will filter its data to show only projects related to the business services selected in the Business Service Summary pod.
- A pie chart showing the various business units that are contributing to the budget. This chart will filter its data to show only business units for the project selected in the bar chart.
- A grid chart showing various detailed project data. This chart will filter its data to show only projects for the business services selected in the Business Service Summary pod.
This pod will utilize the Two up, One down layout in the Pod Builder.
Data Location and Definition: IT Business Analysts at Calbro use a Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) application where information on projects, budgets, associated business unit, etc. is tracked. The schema is normalized for use within the PPM application and hence, is not directly usable for metrics extraction.
In the next two sections, Pod Builder will be utilized to build these two pods.