What is a Gadget?

Overview

Gadgets are the small components in a dashboard that visually transmit the data. They are in charge of fetching the data from the source defined in its datasource (see Learn about Datasources), and turn it into useful information. The information is rendered in a variety of forms like plain text, different graphs, tables, images, etc.

Metrics and KPIs

Gadget are the means to track your metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs), so selecting the right ones is the first step to create useful dashboards that meet your goals. Dashboard Hub provides a growing catalog of ready to go gadgets with the main metrics and KPIs (See Dashboard Gadgets: KPIs and Metrics).

Choosing the right data visualization metaphor, in other words, how the gadget graphically represents the data, is paramount to easily transmit the information to you audience so: i) Identify your metrics, KPIs or problem to solve, ii) identify your audience, and iii) select the right gadgets for your dashboard.

See also