Chapter 15. Building pages and dashboards

In the previous chapter, I showed you how to build Web Parts that you can connect so that they can exchange information. Users can combine various Web Parts and connect them to build dashboards and pages. For instance, a user might build a customer relationship management (CRM) dashboard by connecting a SharePoint list of customers, Web Parts that read information from a backend system, and filter Web Parts. But not all users can or want to build their own Web Part pages with Web Parts and connections. In many cases, it’s better to build ready-to-go dashboard pages and then allow users to fine-tune them. Building deployable dashboard solutions is a good idea if you plan to reuse the pages or dashboards multiple times.

In this chapter, we’ll take an in-depth look at Web Part pages and zones. You’ll learn how to add and configure pages with Web Part zones and package them into solutions. Then we’ll look at the control that orchestrates the Web Part pages: the Web Part Manager. Finally, I’ll show you ways to package and deploy dashboards.

15.1. Working with pages

15.2. Deploying dashboards

15.3. Summary