To manage and analyze the vast volumes of internal data that any company and organization has, there is a need for tools. Even with the increased capabilities of today’s spreadsheet apps and the fact that data analysts can handle most of the work, employees frequently require a quick, visual way to expose and comprehend key data points. Many businesses develop dashboards, a data visualization tool that offers high-level insight into current performance, to swiftly view data. Software for dashboards, however, can be pricey. The next best thing is an open source data dashboard Frameworks—a cost-free, flexible option.
In this blog we will discuss what you need to consider when choosing the right open source data dashboard provider as well as some of the best open source data dashboard solutions available.
Features of the Best Open Source Data Dashboard Solutions
With the number of different open source data dashboard solutions available, it can be difficult to decide which dashboard framework solution will be best suited for your organization.
Before we go on to see our top picks for the best open source data dashboard, let’s look at some of the features we considered when putting this list together.
Simple to Use
- The dashboard won’t ultimately help your staff if it’s challenging to use. Select a solution with a shallow learning curve or a simple user interface (UI). Most well-liked apps include the highly user-friendly drag-and-drop widget feature. Dashboards ought to be reasonably self-explanatory so that anyone using them may easily access the information they need without a working knowledge of programming or coding.
Customization
- Different users could require different tool kinds, sizes, and configurations on their dashboards. Individual user’s needs must be easily accommodated by the dashboard framework. The best ones are versatile, allowing you to alter and personalise the display to fulfil the goals that each and every team has set for itself. Also, consider whether you have the time and expertise to make customizations if they end up being more complex.
Scalability
- Every initiative and organisation grows over time. Changing the necessary tools at every development stage is inefficient and expensive. Any good software should be scalable to the project’s development and offer features that can handle this growth seamlessly. Choose a solution that can handle the projected development of your business (as well as the growth of specific projects or departments).
Modularity
- A dashboard is more effective and simpler to use when various components operate independently of one another. Compact modules contribute to the dashboard’s overall visual improvement by making it appear more organised and uncluttered.
Integration
- Select a solution that works well with the data storage applications you already employ. Additionally, pick a software that can access many data sources if you don’t keep all of your data in a single tool.
Filtering
- One of the most useful functions is data filtering. Search for solutions where you may use filters to get only the necessary data into your dashboard rather than surfacing all (or sizable quantities of) data.
Security Management
- If your company is extremely prone to privacy violations or if your data is particularly sensitive, you might search for a solution with sufficient security measures to keep the data private.
Plugins
- Plugins are software elements that you may add to an existing product to enhance or expand on certain capabilities and functions. Although they are not required, they might help you save time when configuring your dashboard.
The Best Open Source Data Dashboard Frameworks to Choose From
Here’s our list of the best choices for an open source dashboard framework currently available.
Mozaik
To construct exquisitely created dashboards, Mozaik is a highly configurable dashboard framework solution based on the JavaScript trinity of Node, React, and D3.
Dashboards that are built to be readily expandable and adaptable utilising modules work with a variety of hardware. We like Mozaik’s straightforward, approachable UI and readily integrable widgets.
Advantages
- The ability to build and use several dashboards is one of its advantages.
- Enhanced real-time support and backend communication via WebSockets.
- It offers a grid system to assist customers in choosing the layout of their dashboard. A fantastic feature that facilitates user dashboard design.
- It allows users to design their own themes and comes with 6 highly customisable themes.
- It offers scalable dashboard layouts that work on various devices.
- It offers a large selection of widgets that let dashboards access a variety of services.
Drawbacks
- It might be difficult and takes some coding experience to create widgets that are not currently accessible.
Freeboard
Freeboard is a dashboard framework tool that was created with simplicity and use in mind.
New data sources may be added using its drag-and-drop JavaScript mechanism without any programming knowledge.
It is best suited for businesses and individuals working with online apps, external devices, or sensors because it is primarily intended to be utilised with IoT devices.
You can construct a dashboard using an open source tool without having to install anything utilising the project’s free and premium hosted options.
Advantages
- Adding widgets and data sources to your dashboards is simple.
- Since the dashboard is a static single-page web page, a server is not necessary.
- Simple connection with any online API you employ.
- MIT licenced, allowing users to use other Freeboards as the basis for their own dashboards.
- Freeboard also gives you a production-ready dashboard as an easily shared, unique URL.
- You have the ability to use as many devices as you like and receive limitless free dashboards.
Drawbacks
- Private dashboards are not supported in the free version. When managing sensitive data, we advise using the premium edition.
- A deficiency in data visualisation powers compared to its rivals.
- To design your plugins for Freeboard, you must be familiar with the JavaScript environment.
Dashbuilder
Dashbuilder is a fully complete web app dashboard tool that users may use to design deployment-ready dashboards. It is built on Java that may be altered in a variety of ways.
It may be used to construct static or live dashboards using data from many sources and comes preconfigured with support for a range of different visualisation tools and frameworks.
Dashbuilder, a member of the JBoss community, is made to work with a variety of technologies you might already be using.
The more recent version, UF Dashbuilder, has been completely redone and offers additional functionality and a better user interface. It’s a great tool for keeping track of company operations.
Advantages
- It supports a number of libraries and visualisation tools.
- Real-time or static dashboards may be easily created with it.
- It has the ability to access data from many different sources, including text files and JDBC databases.
- It gives many users and roles specialised access control features.
- It offers the ability to export data to Excel and CSV formats.
Drawbacks
- There are no integration options for current REST/SOAP systems in Dashbuilder.
- The inability of users to customise and personalise their experiences.
Kibana
A potent open-source data navigation and visualisation tool, Kibana is the K in the ELK stack, the world’s top log management platform.
It gives customers access to tools for managing and watching over their ElasticStack data.
Anyone who wants to manage their data using Elasticsearch or the ELK stack should utilise this tool.
Advantages
- In addition to the common visualisation tools, users may design their own ways to exhibit their data and figures.
- It enables users to investigate the connections in their data.
- Since it uses a Node.js web server, no additional coding or infrastructure is needed.
- It has strong anomaly detection tools that make it simple to find problems with the data.
- It offers users the ability to share data, as well as certain data export options to PDF and CSV formats.
- It offers a simple, effective user interface.
Drawbacks
- ElasticStack’s constraints still apply to Kibana because it integrates with ElasticStack, and the data exporting options are also restricted.
Stashboard
In comparison to some of the other dashboards we looked at, Stashboard is a little different. It was created to give you knowledge about cloud services and APIs so that you can quickly determine whether a specific service is up or down.
Stashboard, which was initially developed by Twilio for their phone service apps, can be used for just about any form of service and is built to function simply as a standalone application so that it may show the status of your project even if the main website is unavailable.
It is a fantastic solution that is best suited for small to medium-sized enterprises who utilise cloud services or APIs and need to monitor the condition of these services.
Advantages
- It is made to function on Google App Engine as a standalone application. Thus, even if the primary service is unavailable, it will still display the service status.
- It offers a complete REST API that can be used to receive and set status information.
- It can monitor several SaaS services and APIs.
- It gives users the option to personalise status messages and iconography.
- It offers a status history for each service that the user may retrieve at any time.
Drawbacks
- Its applicability is constrained because it can only offer information on the status of various apps.
Grafana
In order to track real-time statistics on server health and the numerous programs running on top, many people utilise the dashboard tool Grafana.
Numerous additional capabilities not present in some other tools, such as users and roles, snapshots, data annotations, and more, are supported. It also supports a wide range of various data sources.
Grafana is a potent, feature-rich data visualisation tool that enables users to create, study, and share dashboards.
Grafana boasts one of the most active developer communities with over 900 active developers and 30k stars on Github. It is primarily used to monitor server/architecture health and is mostly written in Go and Typescript, while it may also be used for various kinds of data visualisation or metrics dashboards.
Although it is most frequently used for infrastructure monitoring, it is helpful for any business owner or person searching for a visualisation tool to assess business KPIs.
Advantages
- It offers an official Library with a large selection of plugins and dashboard designs.
- Grafana supports a wide range of databases and data sources, including Prometheus, Graphite, ElasticSearch, OpenTSDB, InfluxDB, and many others.
- It gives consumers the option to customise their desktop for any type of company.
- It has an integrated user control and authentication system.
- Grafana offers a wide range of functionality, such as data annotations, snapshots, and much more.
- It enables users to create personalised alerts and notifications.
Drawbacks
- The dashboard takes a long time to set up and is less efficient than a rapid fix.
- Grafana is solely a visualisation tool, it does not allow data gathering or data storage.
DotNet Report Builder
By including DotNet Report Builder’s innovative Report Builder in your application, you can enable your users to create their own own Ad Hoc Reports and Dashboards.
Your end users may easily create customised reports with DotNet Report’s easy-to-use Report Builder. They can do everything and more, from choosing pertinent data and creating custom filters to scheduling their own reports.
They provide you a cutting-edge reporting solution that helps you save a tonne of time and money.
Dotnet Report includes a variety of Reports, Charts, and Graphs that users can simply create on their own, customise with filters, and run the necessary analytics on. Users may also design several Dashboards and organise the Reports anyway they like.
The Report Front-End code is open source and installed in your.NET application using the nuget package. You may simply alter the layout or add your own features.
Advantages
- DotNet report is simple to use for your end user
- DotNet Report Builder is driven by user feedback, ensuring that the features offered are what users actually want
- Simple install and set up process allows your reporting application to be up and running quickly
- The software has the ability to be white labelled
- DotNet offers a free trial so you can try out the software and see if it works for you.
Conclusion
The data of your business may be given significance with the use of interactive visualization tools. By using open source data dashboard software, you may have all of the essential data you need to operate a business in one place.
