A Dashboard viewlet is a view from the Global Console that you can use as an applet. As such, you can use viewlets in the following ways:

  • Create an HTML page that includes one or more viewlets to provide a customized display of VMware Smart Assurance analysis. Because this view is displayed in a web browser, it is accessible from any host with a web browser.

  • Provide an application that dynamically generates a URL in response to a notification that displays one or more viewlets in a web browser.

  • Embed a viewlet within a web portal application to combine the information from the Global Manager within an existing information view.

    The configuration tasks that must be completed to provide any of the above Dashboard viewlets are similar. After you create a viewlet for a web page, for example, you could also embed that same viewlet within a portal. This enables you to re-use viewlets, assigning them as necessary according the user’s role or informational requirements.

    You can also use the Dashboard viewlets located in the BASEDIR/smarts/tomcat/webapps/templates directory. The HTML code for each viewlet has been converted to HTML that displays properly in both Netscape and Internet Explorer. Chapter 3, “Examples of Dashboard viewlets,” provides additional information about the sample viewlets. The HTML converter used to create browser-specific HTML is installed as part of Java 2 Platform Standard Edition 6.0.