I started a project thinking I wanted to get away from a dashboard and present the information within the context of a website. Once the building process started, I realized I missed dashboard tooling. I determined scratched the idea of a traditional website and went back to the framework of a dashboard.
About this time, I ran into this article about dashboards. It is a thoughtful piece on the context of dashboard troubles and when they can be useful.
It is wonderful when you can build a dashboard that is useful for someone even for a specific purpose. The article also serves as a reminder to keep things simple and not to get hung up on all encompassing tool.