Dashboards
Overview
The Dashboards feature extends Visualization Suite with the Pentaho-powered business intelligence. It offers basic visualizations and analysis reports of your data. Organizations that wish to explore data beyond the basic reports can take advantage of Hitachi Visualization Suite Custom Dashboards, an add-on that provides administrators with the Pentaho business intelligence tools to use for creating their own reports and dashboards.
Features and infrastructure requirements depend on your environment, including whether you:
- have the cloud or on-premises version of Visualization Suite
- have the Custom Dashboards add-on
The following tables describe the differences of the reporting feature provided for cloud and on-premises systems:
Cloud | On-Premises | |
Feature summary |
Enhanced live visualizations for historical event and crime data (powered by Pentaho). Learn more about the basic reporting for a cloud system: Cloud systems |
Historical event and crime statistics (same as Visualization Suite release 5.x.x). Learn more about the basic reporting for an on-premises system: On-premises systems |
License | Included in the base license | Included in the base license |
Export | PDF and Excel | Not supported |
Update frequency | Reports are updated every 2 minutes | Does not automatically refresh. For the current date, manually refresh the browser. |
Report customization | Not supported | Not supported |
Installation | Not required | Not required |
Cloud | On-Premises | |
Feature summary |
Custom reporting capability with an administrator access to the Custom Dashboards server running Pentaho See Cloud systems for more information. |
Custom reporting capability with an administrator access to the Custom Dashboards server running Pentaho See On-premises systems for more information. |
License |
Required. See Visualization Suite Custom Dashboard license for more information. |
Required. See Visualization Suite Custom Dashboard license for more information. |
Export | PDF and Excel | PDF and Excel |
Update frequency | Every 2 minutes (can be customizied) | Every 2 minutes (can be customized) |
Report customization | Supported | Supported |
Installation | Not required |
OVF deployment required. See Setting up custom dashboards for more information. |
Basic reporting
Cloud systems
Visualization Suite integrates with Pentaho to provide the enhanced visualizations for event and crime data. These basic reports include a trend chart showing crime distributions which can provide critical insights that help cities, businesses, and organizations gain insights that help them improve efficiencies, make smarter business decisions, and improve public safety.
These event and crime statistics are helpful when:
- Predicting hot spots
- Deciding where to place cameras and other assets
- Predicting where and when you may need additional assets
- Using your assets where and when they are most valuable and cost-effective
Note that all crime and event data in a domain is included in the statistics. The basic reporting does not filter data by user permissions. A user can, for instance, see a data visualization related to gunshot events even if the user is not granted view access to the gunshot data.
These reports are accessed by selecting
.
On-premises systems
Customers running Visualization Suite locally can continue enjoying the same crime and event statistics that were available in release 5.4.2 or earlier.
These reports are accessed by selecting CRIME STATISTICS.
orVisualization Suite Custom Dashboard
With the Custom Dashboards module, you can create your own visualizations and analysis reports using the Pentaho analytics tools and import them to Visualization Suite. You can access, integrate, manipulate, visualize, and analyze all event data from your domain to help you gain deeper situational awareness and operational insights.
If Visualization Suite is run on-premises, the Custom Dashboards module needs to be deployed and configured to send data to the Custom Dashboards server through Pentaho Data Integration (PDI). For the cloud version, your system will be upgraded to allow access to the Custom Dashboards server for report creation. To learn more about how to obtain a trial or production license, see Visualization Suite Custom Dashboard license.
The following figure provides an example of custom reports you can generate.

Pentaho Custom Dashboard
For on-premises installations, Visualization Suite can display customer owned Pentaho dashboards and reports within the Visualization Suite Dashboards menu. As such, the dashboard data source can vary and may not relate to Visualization Suite data.
- For information about enabling a customer owned dashboard menu, see Administering Domains.
- For information about configuring Visualization Suite Single sign-on (SSO) on the customer owned Pentaho server, see Setting up Single Sign On (SSO) with Pentaho Business Analytics Server.
Related topics
To learn more about the Custom Dashboards module:
To view and export reports: