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Matrix
The tiered pattern works well when your hierarchical structure is clear and consistent. When people first design their workplace they will typically lay it out with a site structure that is tiered to match their organization structure. Yet, in the real world, a great deal of work is done cross-functionally. This is the horizontal view of information vs. the vertical approach. The result is a matrix design where you have a dashboard on the side that serves a specific user role or function that is separate from the tier.
Executive Dashboard
A typical example of the Matrix pattern is an Executive Dashboard. This is a role–based dashboard used by the executives to see information across the organization. Information from across the work environment is sliced and diced and brought back to the dashboard. There is sales information, issues, project tracking, and management objectives.
As most executive dashboards are, it includes quite a few charts which is common for a dashboard.
An important part of this design pattern is the ability to traverse the various other elements of the environment. With native SharePoint there are structural barriers that make this challenging and often drive the requirement for custom code development. There are actually 7 structural barriers as described in the white paper “7 Structural Barriers of SharePoint”. The Executive Dashboard goes across all structural barriers from multiple lists, sites, and site collections, to separate server farms, and external data sources. This capability is shown in the screenshot below of a Marketing Calendar. This calendar is a display of multiple lists from the Marketing Department portal which is a separate site in a separate Site Collection. The color coding here is to identify the type of marketing activity, but, it could alternatively be used to identify the source of the data.
Click here to access the Executive Dashboard in Breeze.
Breeze Portals
The main enterprise Portal in Breeze is another example of a Matrix design pattern. Technically, this Portal is in a separate Web Application from the rest of the environment. It uses a matrix pattern to go out and retrieve information from the Intranet and the Extranet. Below is a view of the Portal showing Employee Documents coming from different departments of the environment. The display is dynamic, not hard wired links. It automatically updates as departments add documents that are coded for display at the Portal.
Click here to access the Breeze Portal.
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