Operations Manager Management Pack Authoring - Dashboards

This document is part of the Operations Manager Management Pack Authoring Guide.  The Microsoft System Center team has validated this procedure as of Revision #7.  We will continue to review any changes and periodically provide validations on later revisions as they are made.  Please feel free to make any corrections or additions to this procedure that you think would assist other users.

 

Introduction

Dashboards were introduced in System Center 2012 Operations Manager and allow you to present collected data in the Operations Manager consoles and are more flexible and powerful than views.  Dashboards have access to data that views do not and allow you to present that data using a variety of different visualizations.

Levels of Dashboard Authoring

There are three levels of customization for dashboards that are described in the following table.  A different sets of content is provided for each. 

Customization Level	Description
Operations Console	Dashboards can be created using wizards in the Operations Console. This does not require any specialized knowledge but is limited to the widgets and customization that can be performed in the console.
Custom Dashboards	Custom dashboards can be created from a variety of components that are available in the Visualization Library. Full customization of these widgets can be performed using a management pack authoring tool such as Visual Studio Authoring Extensions.  This is considerably more complex than working with dashboards in the Operations Console but also provides access to additional components and functionality.
Custom Widgets	Custom widgets can be created using any language that can create SilverLight and WPF controls. These widgets can then be included in a custom dashboard. This is the highest level of customization but requires the most specialized knowledge.