Can I build a Dashboard in Sharepoint Online?
I would like to create a dashboard in Sharepoint Online http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/sharepoint-online-online-collaboration-software-FX103789366.aspx.
I have seen references to a Dashboard Designer http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff806339.aspx, but have not found a way to install it. I think it might be available from a link in the on-premise SharePoint online.
I also installed the "Office Developer Tools for VisualStudio 2012". When I try to create a "SharePoint 2013 - Visual Web Part", it says "The required version of SharePoint Foundation 2013 ... is not installed on this system". This leads me to think I have to install VisualStudio on our server, which I can't do (SharePoint is online).
I would like my dashboard to retrieve data from an external data source (an Azure database), so I don't just want to publish a spreadsheet. I've already created an external list to retrieve the data, I now want to put it into a webpart.
Is it possible to build Dashboards in SharePoint online?
Answer
Only half an answer as I'm also looking for Dashboard Designer (see my comment).
To develop a solution (app) for SharePoint Online 2013, you need to create a hosted app. It is probably worth starting with Microsoft's experimental "Napa" tool that you can get from the SharePoint app store since this walks you through the process.
Your app doesn't actually run on the SharePoint infrastructure, it runs in a special Azure workspace.
The reason for the error you are seeing is that you are trying to create an app for an on-premise installation of SharePoint and you need local access to all of the libraries. I'm not a Visual Studio expert (as yet) but there are different project templates for building SharePoint Online 2013 hosted apps and this is what you want.
Without access to dashboard designer, you can use the new Excel tools, notably PowerQuery. Use this to query your Azure data and build the dashboard using PowerPivot and Excel charting tools. Then store the spreadsheet on SharePoint and use the Excel web part to publish the relavent bits to a page.