A widget is a single tile: one measure, presented one way. The cockpits are composed of widgets, and so are dashboards — the only difference is who chose the composition. The widget vocabulary is small on purpose:
- KPI widget — one headline number for a period, usually with its previous-period comparison and the variance between them. The cockpit KPI strips are KPI widgets.
- Trend widget — a measure over time, as a line or area.
- Bar widget — a measure by segment: one bar per customer, warehouse, category.
- Combo widget — two measures on one chart, like revenue and margin, or GMV and commission, so their relationship is visible.
- Donut widget — a measure as shares of a whole.
- Table widget — a short ranked list: top debtors, aging panels, best sellers.
- Pivot widget — a two-way cross-tab, rows against columns, for the questions that are really "this, against that".
- Gauge widget — a single value read against a scale, for dashboard targets and thresholds.
Every widget is powered by one of the governed measures in 2.9, sliced by the dimensions in 2.8. That is the whole secret of the defaults: a widget cannot display a number that has not been defined, so "what does this tile show, and how is it calculated?" always has the same answer — find its measure in 2.9, and that definition is the one in force, here and everywhere.