Book excerpt: Acquire finesse with CTools features and build rich and custom analytics solutions using Pentaho About This Book Learn everything you need to know to make the most of CTools Create interactive and remarkable dashboards using the CTools Understand how to use and create data visualizations that can make the difference The author of our book works for Pentaho as a Senior Consultant Acts as a follow-up to Packt's previously published products on Pentaho such as Pentaho Business Analytics Cookbook, Pentaho Analytics for MongoDB, Pentaho Data Integration Cookbook - Second Edition, and Pentaho Reporting [Video] Our book is based on the latest version of Pentaho, that is, 6.0 Who This Book Is For If you are a CTools developer and would like to expand your knowledge and create attractive dashboards and frameworks, this book is the go-to-guide for you. A basic knowledge of JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is highly recommended. What You Will Learn Install Community Tools on Pentaho; and understand the necessary concepts and considerations when creating an exciting dashboard design Get data from many different Pentaho datasources and deliver it in different formats (CSV, XLS, XML, or JSON) Use the Community Data Access (CDA) as the data abstraction layer and understand the concepts in the Community Dashboard Framework (CDF) Create a Community Dashboard Editor (CDE) dashboard and make the most of the main components Create and make use of widgets and use duplicate components to have data-driven sections on the dashboard Customize and create interaction between all components, including charts, using the Community Charts Components Create and embed dashboards in a better and new way Create plugins and make use of parameters inside Pentaho without writing code In Detail Pentaho and CTools are two of the fastest and most rapidly growing tools for practical solutions not found in any other tool available on the market. Using Pentaho allows you to build a complete analytics solution, and CTools brings an advanced flexibility to customizing them in a remarkable way. CTools provides its users with the ability to utilize Web technologies and data visualization concepts, and make the most of best practices to create a huge visual impact. The book starts with the basics of the framework and how to get data to your dashboards. We'll take you all the way through to create your custom and advanced dashboards that will create an effective visual impact and provide the best user experience. You will be given deep insights into the lifecycle of dashboards and the working of various components. Further, you will create a custom dashboard using the Community Dashboards Editor and use datasources to load data on the components. You will also create custom content using Query, the Freeform Addins Popup, and text components. Next, you will make use of widgets to create similar sections and duplicate components to reproduce other components on a dashboard. You will then learn to build a plugin without writing Java code, use Sparkl as a CPK plugin manager, and understand the application of deployment and version control to dashboard development. Finally, you will learn tips and tricks that can be very useful while embedding dashboards into other applications. This guide is an invaluable tutorial if you are planning to use custom and advanced dashboards among the solutions that you are building with Pentaho. Style and approach This book is a pragmatic, easy-to-follow guide that provides theoretical concepts, ideas, and tricks to better understand the necessary theoretical concepts. It also provides you with a set of highly intriguing samples of dashboards with customized code within them that can be utilized for future projects.