Executive Dashboard Improvements on Tap from mrc

November 9, 2010 Alex Woodie

Michaels, Ross and Cole (mrc) recently unveiled an enhancement to its m-Power development tool that makes it easier to create and customize executive dashboards. The improvements exist in m-Painter, the drag-and-drop screen editor that ships with m-Power.

In late October, mrc announced an enhancement to m-Painter, which allows users to create interfaces to m-Power applications in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) fashion.

Thanks to a new import panel, m-Painter gives users a wizard-like approach to importing applications (such as reporting applications generated with m-Power) into their executive dashboards.

The Chicago-based developer also introduced a new widget panel that gives users more options to customize the layout of their dashboards. Users can re-arrange the layout of the different widgets that make up their dashboards by simply dragging and dropping them on the screen.

The new dashboards in m-Power also make it easier to use filters to control how much information is displayed on the screen. This will help users fine-tune the look of their dashboards, and prevent information-creep from overwhelming their executives.

All of the new features are focused on making dashboards easier to create and use, says Brian Crowley, mrc’s director of development. “A good dashboard is one that lets users easily see any aspect of their business and make informed decisions based on that data,” Crowley says in a press release. “These new enhancements do just that–users now have more control over their dashboards, and even better yet, easier access to their data.”

m-Power is a model-based development tool used to quickly generate a variety of Web applications, such as portals, e-commerce sites, executive dashboards, mobile phone apps, and business intelligence systems. Many m-Power customers use the product, which generates J2EE code, to Web-enable existing IBM i applications, and to deploy them using the integrated Apache Web server. For more information and trial downloads, see www.mrc-productivity.com.