The company I work for, ProClarity, has agreed to be purchased by Microsoft.

I was excited about this at first. The pendulum swings both ways though and I’m trying to keep things on the right side.

Now, as long as we can have fun, can see our great ideas come to life, and can stay in Boise, I’ll be perfectly happy to sign up. We have a lot of innovative ideas that I want to see happen. And Boise’s a great place to live and work. The challenge I like is “how can we change the world”, and I hear Microsoft at least attempts that… well let’s do it!*

(*I almost wrote “get er done” there. Has anyone heard that “get er done” radio commercial about road improvements yet? Way to annoy, Citizens Who Think Southern Idaho’s Roads Are So Bad, But Whom Are Misinformed Because Northern Idaho Roads Are Worse. Although, The Endless Construction On Highland, Which I Assume Is Evidence Of Not Getting Er Done, Is Admittedly Annoying.)

Here’s a definition for a Google personalized homepage section that allows basic embedding of a ProClarity Dashboard 6.1 view or group.

Figure 47: Add URL to the definition file under “Add Content”

The definition file goes on a publicly accessible webserver because Google retrieves it into a cache. Feel free to use http://www.waded.org/files/proclaritydashboard.xml if you want to experiment. Dashboard Server/PAS Server need only need be accessible to those who want to view dashboard views.

This definition needs work… it doesn’t provide any help for selecting a dashboard view/group. All dashboard elements have permalinks but you have to find it and paste it into the Google configuration manually. I’d think a simple thin interface for picking from the views/groups would be nice, but as far as I can tell it would be an out-of-body user experience, as Google only supports very primitive configuration properties. (The interface would have to be a popup window or not fit into Google’s model of having configuration on the “flip side” of the content item.)

Here’s the definition…

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ ?>
<Module>
<ModulePrefs
title=”ProClarity Dashboard” height=”200″
description=”Displays a view from ProClarity Dashboard 6.1″
author=”Wade Dorrell”
author_email=”wade@waded.org”
author_affiliation=”ProClarity”
author_location=”Boise, ID”
render_inline=”optional”
scrolling=”false”>
<MayRequire type=”browser” value=”ie” min_version=”6.0″/>
<MayRequire type=”platform” value=”windows”>This module uses ProClarity Dashboard Server to display OLAP views</MayRequire>
</ModulePrefs>
<UserPref name=”view”
display_name=”URL”
datatype=”string”
required=”true” />
<Content type=”html”>
<![CDATA[
<iframe src="__UP_view__" width="100%" height="100%"></iframe>
]]> </Content>
</Module>