Local deployments require the use of the Dashboard Viewer desktop application (available on Windows platforms only). End users open locally-deployed dashboards in the Dashboard Viewer, which must be pre-installed locally or on a shared file system. See the Using the Dashboard Viewer for more information.

With Web-based deployment, the Dashboard Viewer does not need to be installed locally. Dashboards are invoked through a Web browser, and are installed on demand, as simple web pages, applets, or Web Start applications, so they can easily be deployed across a wide area network, including the Internet.