Writes John Robb, on how to manage and edit web services on the desktop, with an example:
A section for creating a new page on a digital dashboard like “add a page to my dashboard.” Select “add a service” and select the services you want to see from a hierarchical drop down menu (for example sales, inventory, financial, server stats, etc). Set the allowed parameters for the service (like all sales over $50,000 or sales by a specific salesman). Then associate the service(s) with a page. Click publish and the data appears in a preformated webpage on the desktop served by a content management system / dashboard application that gathers the data a preset interval in the background.
This type of simple digital dashboard approach is what people want. They want to crack open corporate apps and get the data they need out. Why? People either hate the current overly complex client they are provided or can’t afford to extend clients to all of their employees (given that they would need only a subset of the data).
The Digital Dashboard, enabled with XML and Web Services, can also work as the bridge between personal and enterprise information, unifying them both on a single screen.
