Outline

1. What’s a dashboard?
2. Dashboard layouts
3. Dashboard components
4. Interactive dashboards
5. flexdashboard vs. shinydashboard

What’s a dashboard?

This is a dashboard

This is a dashboard

This is a dashboard

This is not a dashboard

This is a dashboard

What’s a dashboard?

• A communications tool showing relevant information about different aspects of a system
• Full-screen, space-consuming layout
  • Often via subdivision
• High-level trends and summaries favored over details
• Information designed for quick, glancing consumption

Why build one with R?

• Reproducible; bundles analysis with presentation and communication
• Eliminate the middleman; empower analysts to produce executive-grade dashboards
• Virtually infinite customizability

What is flexdashboard?

• R package designed to produce beautiful dashboards easily
• Built on R Markdown
• Expresses the structure of a dashboard declaratively using Markdown
• Bundles common dashboard user interface components

Installation

install.packages("flexdashboard")

Via RStudio

Via the R prompt

rmarkdown::draft("dashboard.Rmd", 
                 template = "flex_dashboard", 
                 package = "flexdashboard")

YAML header

---
title: "Flex Dashboard"
output: flexdashboard::flex_dashboard
---

The Big Idea

• Use Markdown headings to describe the boxes and space division of your dashboard
  • Layout is implicit and automatic
  • Tweakable with custom attributes
• Content in your boxes fills the box automatically
• Supply gaps between R offerings and common dashboard components

Level three: boxes.

### This is a box. 

This is some text in the box.

Level two: columns

## My first column

### My first box

This is some text in a box.

## My second column

### My second box

This is some slightly different text in a box.

Level two: columns

Level one: pages

# Page one

### My first box

This is some text in a box.

# Page two

### My second box

This is some slightly different text in a box.

Level one: pages

Layout Recap:

• flexdashboards are composed of space-filling boxes created with level 3 headers (###)
• Boxes can be grouped into columns (or rows, or tabs) with level 2 headers (##)
• Pages can group other kinds of components
• Much more advanced layout is possible (see docs for details)

Plots and HTML widgets

• Any R graphics are supported
• Graphs and visualizations: the basic building blocks of most dashboards
• Contents automatically scaled to the size of the box
• HTML widgets can include interactivity

Plots and HTML widgets

### Iris data

```{r}
qplot(Sepal.Length, Petal.Length, data = iris, color = Species)
```

### Birthplace of R

```{r}
library(leaflet)
m <- leaflet() %>%
  addTiles() %>% 
  addMarkers(lng=174.768, lat=-36.852, popup="The birthplace of R")
```

Plots and HTML widgets

Value boxes

library(flexdashboard)
articles <- 204
valueBox(articles, 
         icon = "fa-pencil", 
         caption = "Articles per Day")

Gauges

satisfaction <- 86
gauge(satisfaction, min = 0, max = 100, symbol = '%', 
  label = "Satisfaction", gaugeSectors(
  success = c(80, 100), warning = c(40, 79), danger = c(0, 39)
))

Including Data: tabsets

## Column {.tabset}
 
### Chart 

```{r}
qplot(Sepal.Length, Petal.Length, data = iris, color = Species) 
```

### Data

```{r}
knitr::kable(iris)
```

Including Data: Chart

Including Data: Table

Interactivity with HTML widgets

• Simplest form of interactivity
• Static HTML; no special client or server requirements
  • Host anywhere, view anywhere
• Data must be fixed (can’t run R code)
• Interaction within single widget only
  • Most widgets don’t talk to each other (yet)

HTML widget interactivity

library(dygraphs)
lungDeaths <- cbind(mdeaths, fdeaths)
dygraph(lungDeaths) %>% 
   dyRangeSelector()

HTML widget interactivity

Interactivity with Shiny

• Stream data and update in real time
• More advanced interactivity
• Components can react to each other
• R expressions can be evaluated in response to interaction
• Deployment requires Shiny server or shinyapps.io

flexdashboard vs. shinydashboard

• Static host vs. Shiny Server (or shinyapps.io)
• Simplicity vs. complexity
• Constraints vs. flexibility

Advanced topics

• Layout tweaking: adjust column widths/sizes
• Storyboards
• Navigation

Links

http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/flexdashboard/

Acknowlegements:

• JJ Allaire - RStudio
• Jonathan McPherson - RStudio
• https://github.com/jmcphers/flexdashboard-talk
• HTML widget showcase