The Epi Info™ Visual Dashboard complements Classic Analysis with a more modern, graphically-oriented interface for configuring analytical tools and displaying their results. Whereas the largely text-based output of Classic Analysis accumulates in a scrolling output page, with HTML anchors to facilitate navigation, the analytical tools in Visual Dashboard, known as "gadgets", are intended to be positioned on a canvas, like gauges on a dashboard, allowing the user to take in the status of the project in a single view. While Visual Dashboard does not support programming for automated processing, the ability to update the analyses (with a single button-click) when new data becomes available, eliminates the need for it, in all but the most sophisticated use cases.

The requirements for this module are divided into three sections. Navigation covers the Toolbar and Status Bar, located at the top and bottom, respectively, of the Visual Dashboard window. Canvas discusses the requirements for functionality residing in the Dashboard itself. The final section, Menu Commands, covers the tools accessed from the master menu including populating the canvas with gadgets, charts, and calculators, as well as loading and saving canvas and project data. In many cases, there are multiple ways to access a given functionality between, and even within, the canvas and Toolbar. The first two sections indicate how the various functions are accessed; Menu Commands describes the functions in detail.

Navigation

Compared to Classic Analysis (CA), the Visual Dashboard user interface is streamlined with relatively few buttons and menus. The display is divided into a thin Toolbar at the top of the Visual Dashboard window, an even thinner Status Bar at the bottom, with the majority of space allocated to the Canvas, where the user constructs his or her personalized dashboard. This section focuses on the Toolbar and Status Bar. Of the two, the Toolbar is most functional, providing button or menu access to all Dashboard functionality. The Status Bar indicates field and record counts for the current data set and the number of "gadgets" present. The status bar also contains a Dashboard zoom widget, and buttons to control the appearance and layout of gadgets on the canvas.

Canvas

In Visual Dashboard, the Canvas is the area where the dashboard gadgets are positioned after configuration. These gadgets display the output of the analyses carried out on the current project data, including any Defined Variables and subject to the active Data Filters. Canvas data can be exported to MS Excel or Word files, preserving most of the internal structure and organization of the individual gadgets. The Canvas can also be saved independently of the data, keeping a link to the data source, and storing the configuration of every gadget, Data Filter and Defined Variable in the canvas file. Functionally, the right mouse button accesses the Options Menu, where the user may select gadgets to deploy. The Defined Variables and Data Filters tools are accessed from tabs located on the left and right edges of the Canvas, respectively. Their interfaces open into the Canvas when selected using the tab or the corresponding Toolbar button.

Menu Commands

This section describes the gadgets and other functionalities available on the Visual Dashboard Options Menu. The menu can be accessed from the Canvas (right mouse button) and Toolbar (first button on the left). The commands of the menu are divided into four groups, which are organized along functional lines. The commands in the first group manage the source data and canvases. The second group is responsible for the output of Canvas data (i.e., results) to different file formats and exporting source data. The third group of menu items allows the user to select and configure gadgets for the Dashboard, including StatCalc calculators and NutStat growth charts. The last group contains commands for showing the Canvas properties and data dictionary, rearranging gadgets, refreshing the source data, and resetting the dashboard as a whole.

Gadgets

The gadget is the key element of Visual Dashboard (VD). All other functions described in Navigation, Canvas, and Menu Commands exist to prepare data for analysis by these gadgets. The gadgets, used here in the generic sense, are divided into four groups on the Dashboard Options menu: Analysis gadgets, StatCalc calculators, NutStat growth charts, and Report gadgets. The Analysis gadgets are similar to the familiar Statistics and Advanced Statistics commands in Classic Analysis (CA) that encompass both descriptive and inferential statistics. The StatCalc calculators are used to estimate the sample size and power of various study designs and statistical tests commonly used in epidemiology. The NutStat growth charts are plotting tools which combine CDC and WHO reference data on infant and child development with the ability to plot chronological data from an individual on the same graph. This facilitates the comparison of the subject's growth over time to percentile curves from the reference samples. Finally, the Report gadgets provide a mechanism for labeling and annotating the Dashboard, as well as any files and hard-copies created from it.

The tables in the Data Analysis Command Reference show the correspondence between VD and CA commands and analyses that are unique to each module. Functions not available in CA include StatCalc (also available as a stand-alone module) and NutStat (only available in VD); both are integral components of the Dashboard.