Infragistics Solutions for Visualizing Data in Sharepoint

Are you looking to build rich dashboards in Sharepoint? If so, there are two ways that you can leverage Infragistics offerings. In this post, I present an overview of the two solutions to kickstart your evaluation.

Sharepoint Web Parts

The first solution is Infragistics NetAdvantage for SharePoint which is a set of user-customizable web parts. Using these web parts, users can easily build dashboards in SharePoint using charts, gauges, maps and timelines without writing any code. For example, a user can add a Chart web part to any page, specify the data to be used and customize the chart type, colors, and other parameters. In addition to SharePoint lists, data can come from SQL Server or Excel.

The Healthcare Portal is an example of charts rendered using Sharepoint data:

Please see a walkthrough of how this chart was created using an intuitive interface within SharePoint.

Fore more information on Infragistics NetAdvantage for Sharepoint, please see:

• Overview
• Samples
• Documentation

 

Silverlight Data Visualization Controls

The second solution is NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization, which are controls that give developers the power to create rich, interactive dashboards and visualizations in Silverlight. The resulting Silverlight application can easily be add to a SharePoint page as a Silverlight web part. 

The IG Auto Sales Dashboard, WorldStats dashboard and the Stocks Dashboard will give you an idea of the kind of immersive dashboards you can create using NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization controls.

 

 

There are several techniques for consuming Sharepoint data in Silverlight applications. Some popular ones are:

 

Using the Silverlight Client Object Model

 

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728647.aspx

 

Using WCF Data Services to consume data in a REST-ful manner via the OData protocol

 

• http://www.silverlight.net/learn/data-networking/odata-and-data-services/consuming-odata-feeds-(silverlight-quickstart)
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh148142.aspx

 

Using Sharepoint Web Services

 

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms479390(v=office.12).aspx

 

 

Once the data is in Silverlight collections, it can be bound to the Infragistics NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization controls as normal.

Fore more information on Infragistics Data Visualization for Silverlight, please see:

• Overview
• Samples
• Documentation

 

Tradeoffs

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each solution? The tradeoffs are summarized in the following table:

	NetAdvantage for SharePoint	NetAdvantage for Sillverlight Data Visualization
Solution for building rich dashboards in SharePoint	User-customizable web-parts using an intuitive UI in SharePoint	Silverlight application built using controls and deployed to SharePoint as a Silverlight web part.
Customizability, flexibility and range of controls	Low to medium	Very high
Implementation method	Point and click	Coding in Silverlight
Technical skills required	None	Silverlight development and basic understanding of SharePoint
Cost and effort	Low	Medium

The most appropriate solution will also depend on your architectural considerations. For example, SharePoint Online does not allow custom web parts, but custom functionality can easily be added via a Silverlight with great user experience provided by Infragistics controls. For more information please the whitepaper by Mahindra Satyam titled BI Capabilities in SharePoint Online using Infragistics Controls.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to email me at akshayl@infragistics.com