## JDashboard basic concepts

The following shows the main JDashboard concepts:

Library components

Library components are used to build dashboards. They are able to present data via intuitive components such as charts, crosstabs, tables, and geographic maps. Library components can be created and edited using JReport Designer, and then published to JReport Server for use in dashboards. Library components can also come from report components. JReport Designer provides a way to save a data component in a web report to a library component. Or when a dashboard user inserts a web report component into a dashboard, the report component will be converted to a library component and the user can save the library component. Library components use .lc as the file suffix.

Component library

Component library contains one Public Components folder and a My Components folder for each specific dashboard user.

Public Components and My Components are two built-in folders in the server resource tree root for storing library components. The Public Components folder contains public components available to everyone. The My Components folder holds personal components for each dashboard user.

Dashboard

A workspace window that can contain any number of library components.

- Components from library
  When inserting a library component from the component library into a dashboard, you are not copying the component from the library, but instead referencing it from the library, in this sense, the changes to the component in the library will be reflected in all of the dashboards referencing the component. The contents of library references in dashboards cannot be edited since they are referenced resources.
- Report components
  Data components such as tables, charts, crosstabs, and geographic maps in reports can be inserted into dashboards as library components.
- Objects from the Toolbox
  In addition to library components users can select objects from the Toolbox such as labels, images, special fields, sliders, filter controls, third-party objects, and HTML components.

Message

The information that one library component can send to another. The sending and receiving of messages between library components are defined in JReport Designer.