First step - what data do you need to display?
In the first step, make sure you understand what it is your dashboard needs to display. This is easy enough normally since this may be provided. Here is an example.
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Now that the objective is defined, it is time to find where to get this information.
Second step - where do you get that data?
Simply put, the DOR. The DOR can interpret formulas fed to it and gather the requested data from the plc tables. To find what plc tables you should be feeding to the DOR you can check out the plcadmin page or just look at the tblPLC_PLCid table and look at the descriptions.
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You can test the formulas at /DOR/adminpages/formulatester.aspx.
Third step - where do you build the dashboard?
To build the dashboard there are to pages you can navigate to. The first is /dor/adminpages/ReportAdmin.aspx and the other is /dor/adminpages/SimplifiedReportAdmin.aspx. The simplified page is better for the initial layout and the ReportAdmin page is better for inputting the formulas and information quickly, just be sure to save.
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Using the Report admin, we can quickly fill any information:
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Fourth step - how do you know the data is accurate?
To check that the data you are calculating is accurate, you can navigate to /Graphing/CreateEditGraph.aspx. You can break down your formula to get the data in base units and do the calculations yourself to verify.