I have not actually encountered many (or any) box-and-whisker plots in the course of my work or in dashboards I have come across. I have not seen many histograms either.
That being said, I think it is mostly easy to understand them. Having bins seems useful to quickly and easily show data that fits into certain categories. Box-and-whisker plots I think look most useful in identifying those outliers which might otherwise skew the interpretation of a dashboard.