Open Source ERP Academy

Business Intelligence (BI) Version 2 - Metabase or Grafana

The purpose of this page is to help you install Metabase (open source BI), configure iDempiere for use with Metabase, and create your first dashboards. While this tutorial does not go into detail for Grafana (another BI visualization tool), the concepts are amazingly similar and are easily adapted. This page is a work in progress. Below are the items I wish to improve upon:
  1. Create a detailed picture of success
  2. Release a plugin we created to be able to show dashboards in a dedicated iDempiere window and allows to zoom back Metabase to allow for zooming.
  3. Use apache as a https reverse proxy to allow you to protect metabase behind a username password maintained in iDempiere. See poor man's firewall.

References

Introduction

What is Metabase

Picture of Success

coming soon... This one is challenging because creating accurate and meaningful sample data is difficult. You can take existing 'real' data; however, you need to obfuscate it sufficiently such that it does not resemble the real data but still maintain the financial integrity.

Metabase Installation Introduction

Metabase Installation Demonstration

iDempiere BI Preparation Introduction

iDempiere BI Preparation Demonstration

iDempiere BI Maintenance Demonstration

Initial Metabase Configuration

Metabase First Question and Dashboard

Metabase Dashboards and Filters

Metabase Dashboard in iDempiere

Here are the instructions to share a Metabase dashboard inside iDempiere's home page:
  1. Creates a new Metabase dashboard
  2. Share your Metabase dashboard - see section called Sharing Dashboards with Public Links
  3. Log into iDempiere as Tenant or System
  4. Create dashboard widget from Dashboard Content window.
  5. Put the below iframe tag in HTML field with appropriate #metabaseURL#.
    1. <iframe src="#metabaseURL#" allowtransparency="true"></iframe>
  6. If you are using Logilite's version if iDempiere, you can use System Configurator "DP_COLUMN_WIDTH_PROPORTION" set to "20,60,20" to make the homepage columns different widths. Using "20,60,20" for example will make the middle column much wider; therefore, allowing for a bigger dashboard.