DevExpress Dashboard Roadmap 2019 – Your Vote Counts

In this blog post, we'll summarize our 2019 roadmap for DevExpress Business Intelligent Dashboard (plans we've developed based on existing user feedback).

Cross-platform Features (Desktop and Web)

Our goal this year is to focus on the following data analysis capabilities for both our Windows and web-based Dashboard:

• DateFilter aka Compact Range Filter: The DevExpress Dashboard ships with a built-in, fully customizable Range Filter. In 2019, we'll add a compact version of the control as an alternative way to filter dates.
• Conditional Formatting in both Chart Item & Cards Item: In our recent customer satisfaction survey, some of you commented on our Dashboard's conditional formatting support. One user said that the Dashboard's "conditional formatting functionality" was "the best I've seen." The good news is that in 2019, we will add conditional formatting support to both our Chart and Card Items.
• Parallel Periods: To analyze performance in one time period against another (for instance, how you've performed this year vs a previous year), you can use the example outlined in the following sample. For more complex usage scenarios (when you need to compare the same data between different date periods), we hope to introduce a new Missing Values data preparation feature.
• Search in every list (Parameter's Values, Coloring Entries etc.): While we handle big data calculations quite well, certain use cases (involving large lists) are hard to manage within the Designer's UI. We expect to enhance our UX to better manage large lists.
• Chart Item - Constant Lines: End users will be able to quickly add constant lines to a Chart Item (at present, API methods are required).
• Chart Item - Trend Lines: We want use our calculation engine to create different types of pre-configured trend lines. While you can use Window Calculations for this purpose, we want to help you create trend lines in a more straightforward and configurable manner.
• Maps - Support for Cartesian coordinates: You will be able to add Points of Interest to your MapItems (Pie Map, Geo Point Map and Bubble Map) using Cartesian coordinates - without the need to manually convert them to geo coordinates.
• Pie Item - Shared Legend
• Pivot Item as Master Filter: While Pivot Item is designed for multi-dimensional data analysis, some of you have asked to use it as a Master Filter for other items.

Data Analysis and Processing Features

We will continue to extend the analytics capabilities of the Dashboard and will introduce analytical tools designed for improved data preparation and data processing - both visual and non-visual.

• Data Federation: We will research the ways to allow end-users combine data from different data sources in-memory. This will let you to combine data on the fly, without the need for an intermediate data warehouse, and to display this combined data in the same Dashboard Item (currently, you can display data from different Data Sources on the same Dashboard bound to different Dashboard Items, and can filter data between different data sources).
• Simpler Data Transformation with Calculated Fields: We have a feature-rich, fast and reliable data processing engine that is powerful enough to modify raw data prior to display. Our engine can aggregate data and calculate aggregated numbers for a set of rows. We've found that a lack of UI hints and helpers hinders wide adoption. We want to facilitate the use of this engine by end users and improve usability in 2019.
• OLAP enhancements: While we support OLAP (particularly, Microsoft SSAS), there are a few features we have yet to offer for other data sources. We hope to address these issues in the coming year.
• Performance Monitor: We are consider a method to measure the time spent on different data processing stages.
• Data Explorer: We want to introduce the necessary UI to view the raw data which was used to build our widgets (both data from data source and calculated fields).

DevExpress Web Dashboard

In addition to the cross-platform features listed above, the following web-specific capabilities are under consideration:

In 2018, we enhanced and polished Dashboard integration support. We made certain that our Dashboard works as expected on classic web platforms (ASP.NET WebForms / ASP.NET MVC) and on ASP.NET Core. In addition, we refactored our client WebDashboard Control TypeScript codebase so you can transparently integrate DevExpress Web Dashboard in any modern Frontend app (Angular/React/Vue).

In 2019, we will work on the appearance characteristics of our Dashboard so that it looks and feels like a native part of your app. We will focus our energies on visual theme support (color schemes, general style customizability etc.), enhanced error message UI, localization and internalization.

Though it's now possible to customize our Web Dashboard using a workaround (with custom CSS), we want to introduce a simpler way to customize your Dashboard's UI (using color schemes). We also want to be certain that the DevExpress Dashboard matches existing DevExtreme / Reporting color scheme sets and give you the ability to customize colors to match "brand" colors using exising DevExpress tooling (UI or CLI Theme Builder).

Several users have asked that we display Dashboard error message using a custom UI (and vice versa, to display app notifications using the Dashboard's UI style). We want to enhance our API and allow you to replace or extend our error reporting subsystem on the client side.

WinForms Dashboard

We remain fully committed to the WinForms platform and are considering the following in 2019.

• Asynchronous data processing and rendering: This feature will better decouple UI and data processing. A downside is that we expect that some of our lifecycle events can change order and meaning, which means a potential breaking change. So, our plan is to add this feature with maximum care – and with a feature toggle.
• State Management: This feature is currently available for both the Web and WPF platforms. To add it to WinForms, we plan to refactor our internal data processing engine. Our current implementation (first introduced in 2012) contains restrictions which must be addressed without introducing breaking changes.

WPF Dashboard Viewer

We plan to support every new cross-platform feature in our WPF Viewer. There is no WPF Dashboard Designer in our current Roadmap. If you need a WPF Dashboard Designer, please detail your needs and tell us some of the reasons you are unable to use our WinForms Designer within your WPF project.

Before We Let You Go

To better address your needs, we've prepared a comprehensive usage survey on DevExpress Dashboard. Please take a moment to answer the following questions - your assistance will help us fine-tune our long term product vision.

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