Chapter 24
IN THIS CHAPTER
Planning your dashboard strategy
Creating dashboards
Adding and editing components
Organizing dashboards
Dashboards are visual representations of custom reports that you create in Salesforce. For example, you can see data in a chart, a graph, or a gauge. You can use dashboards to illustrate key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics important to your business. A metric is simply something you want to measure (for example, sales by rep, leads by source, opportunities by partner, cases by agent, and so on).
What does this mean for you? If you’re a sales or service rep, you can track your daily progress against attainment of goals. If you’re a manager, you can easily see how reps stack up against each other and where you need to get involved to hit your numbers. And if you’re on the executive team, you have dashboards with actionable charts and graphs for strategic decision making to improve the business.
In this chapter, we share tips on planning your metric reporting strategy. Then we show you how to create dashboards. We walk you through updating dashboard properties and components. We also explain how to organize dashboards and their related reports so that you know you’re looking at the right information.
Dashboards are pages in Salesforce comprising tables and charts designed to help you understand important aspects of your business, such as opportunities per territory and leads by source. Dashboards are critical to being able to assess the health of your business and spot trends early. The following sections show you some basic concepts so that you can consider your strategies before you start unleashing them on your organization.
You can build a dashboard with as many as 20 individual charts, tables, metrics, gauges, or custom components; each item is a dashboard component. Similar to building charts with the Report Wizard (see Chapter 23), components are based on reports that you create. In fact, you can click a component on a dashboard to make the underlying report appear. Here’s a quick summary of the components that are available to you:
Tables create simple but powerful four-column tables. For example, use tables if you want your dashboard to show the top ten forecasted deals in the quarter in descending value.
You can create tables in dashboards but not in the charting tool of the Report Wizard.
www.appexchange.com
and click the Components category to see what others have created.If you’re an administrator or a user with permission to manage dashboards, you can create, edit, and organize them. And even if you don’t have such permissions, you can still view them by clicking the Dashboards tab on the home page.
We always say that the best way to build a system is to envision what you want to ultimately measure. Do you want to know who your top sales reps are? Would you like to understand what your best accounts are buying from you and how much? Do you wonder how long it takes to close a case? This method of starting with the business questions you want to answer applies to your building of reports and is true of dashboards.
To build a dashboard, you need to create your custom reports first. You also need to create public folders for your dashboard reports if you want dashboards to be viewable for other users. See Chapter 23 for all the details on creating custom reports and organizing them in folders.
In the following sections, we show you how to install a prebuilt dashboard and how to clone a dashboard. Then we cover the steps to build a dashboard from scratch.
One of the best ways to get your feet wet with dashboards is to install sample dashboards from the AppExchange. Salesforce not only creates the dashboard for you but also builds the underlying sample reports to generate the components.
To install sample dashboards, follow these steps:
In your web browser go to www.appexchange.com
.
The AppExchange home page appears.
Type Dashboards in the Search bar at the top and click the Magnifying Glass button.
A page full of AppExchange apps appears. The apps with the Salesforce or Salesforce Labs logos are made and provided for free by Salesforce.com.
Click an app’s listing to see more information about it.
The App Overview page appears with a description and images. If you find a set of dashboards that you’d like to download and install, check out Chapter 19 for more information on installing apps from the AppExchange.
If you’re having trouble accessing dashboards, or installing them from the AppExchange, you may not have the proper permissions. In this circumstance, consult with your administrator.
To save time or repurpose useful features, you can generate a dashboard by cloning an existing one and then modifying it. For example, if you envision creating multiple dashboards for different sales units with common components, you can use this shortcut and then modify the associated reports.
To clone a dashboard, follow these steps:
Click the Dashboards tab.
The last dashboard that you viewed appears.
Type the name of a dashboard in the Find a Dashboard search bar to search for a dashboard, or browse and select an option from the Find a Dashboard drop-down list to select a dashboard that you want to clone.
In this example, choose the sample dashboard entitled Company Performance Dashboard.
The dashboard appears.
Click the Clone button.
The Dashboard Builder page appears.
Click Save to leave the Dashboard Builder.
The Save Dashboard dialog box appears.
Change your new dashboard’s settings, paying close attention to the following:
If the running user for a dashboard ever leaves the company or is made inactive for another reason, the dashboard won’t show data. The same goes for any reports the dashboard references if that report is moved into a folder that the running user doesn’t have access to.
Now that you know the basics of dashboards, let’s find out how to develop a dashboard from scratch.
To create a new dashboard, follow these steps:
Click the Reports tab.
The Reports & Dashboards home page appears.
You need to build your custom reports before you can develop a dashing new dashboard.
Build your custom reports and save them to a public folder.
See Chapter 23 to find out how to build custom reports.
Dashboards that you want others to see can’t use reports in your My Personal Reports folder. For purposes of this running example, find and click the Sales Reports folder (located in the left sidebar of the Reports & Dashboards folder navigation tree on the Reports & Dashboards home page) and click the following reports that show up in the main page:
You must be an administrator or a user with permission to manage public reports if you want to add report folders.
Click back on the Reports tab.
The Reports & Dashboards home page appears.
Click the New Dashboard button.
The Dashboard Builder page appears.
Drag the horizontal bar chart component from the Components tab on the left to one of the three available dashboard columns on the right.
A New Dashboard Component appears in Edit mode.
Complete the fields, entering a header, footer, and/or title.
For this running example, name the header PIPELINE METRICS and enter the title Pipe by Rep and Stage. You could also add a footer at the stage, but don’t bother for this example.
Click the Data Sources tab on the left.
A list of reports grouped by folder appears.
Find the appropriate report by expanding the folder you saved it in.
You can use the plus and minus signs to expand and collapse the report folders.
Drag the report onto your dashboard component.
A preview of your dashboard component appears.
Click Save.
The Save Dashboard dialog box appears.
Click the Save and Run Dashboard button to run the dashboard.
Your new dashboard appears with your dashboard component.
Over time, you may have to make changes to your dashboards, whether for cosmetic reasons or to make substantive updates. We can come up with a dozen common edits, but the good news is that updating is easy.
If you need to change the basic settings of a dashboard — such as the title, folder, or running user — you need to edit the dashboard properties. To edit the properties, follow these steps:
Click the Dashboards tab.
A dashboard appears.
Select a desired dashboard from the Find a Dashboard search bar that also doubles as a drop-down list.
The dashboard you’re trying to locate appears.
You can also just start typing a portion of the name of one of your dashboards to be presented with a list of matching dashboards.
Click the Edit button at the top of the dashboard page.
The Dashboard Builder appears.
Click the Dashboard Properties button.
The Dashboard Properties dialog box appears.
Modify the settings, as needed, and then click OK.
When you click OK, the Dashboard Builder reappears, and your setting changes are applied.
You may want to add or change — edit — an existing component. To edit a component, follow these steps:
Go to a dashboard and click the Edit button.
The Dashboard Builder appears.
Click the Wrench icon above a component that you want to modify.
For example, you may want to change the chart type or display units.
The Component Editor dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 24-4.
Click OK.
The Dashboard Builder reappears with the changes you applied to the component.
Click Save.
Your changes are saved, and your dashboard reappears.
If you need to modify the dashboard layout, you can also perform this while in the Dashboard Builder.
Go to a dashboard, click the Edit button, and alter the layout. You can
When you’re satisfied with your changes, click the Done button. The dashboard reappears with your modifications.
Before you make decisions based on your dashboard, you’ll want to make sure that those decisions are based on the latest data. Click any dashboard from your dashboard list. In the upper-right corner of the dashboard is a timestamp starting with As Of. You can use this to find out the last time your dashboard data was updated.
When you want to manually update your dashboard data, simply click the Refresh button at the top of the dashboard page. The components reappear one by one. When the refresh is completed, a new timestamp appears.
Enterprise and Unlimited Edition customers can schedule their dashboards to be automatically refreshed on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Just use the drop-down list next to the Refresh button.
To schedule a dashboard to automatically refresh, follow these steps:
Click the Dashboards tab.
A dashboard appears.
Click the Schedule Refresh option.
The Schedule Dashboard Refresh screen appears, as shown in Figure 24-5.
(Optional) Select the To Me and/or the To Others check boxes to email a copy of the dashboard when it’s refreshed.
If you have regularly scheduled meetings, you can automatically email your dashboard to the meeting attendees prior to the meeting to give them a sneak peak of what will be discussed.
Select the frequency that you want your dashboard to be refreshed.
Each frequency option has additional options that allow you to specify exactly when the dashboard will be refreshed.
Select a refresh time from the Preferred Start Time drop-down list.
The dashboard reappears.
If you have the permissions necessary to manage dashboards, manage public reports, and view all data, you can organize your company’s dashboards in folders and define the proper security access for users. By organizing dashboards, you can make sure that the right people are focusing on the right metrics to manage their business.
Unlike most other tabs in Salesforce, clicking the Dashboard tab doesn’t take you to its home page. Instead, the last dashboard that you viewed appears.
To access your viewable dashboards, follow these steps:
Click the Go to Dashboard List link at the upper-left corner of any dashboard.
A dashboard folder list page appears.
Use the Folder drop-down list to select a desired folder.
The Reports & Dashboards home page appears. The page for the selected folder appears in the main window with a list of available dashboards in the folder.
From this list page, users with the permissions mentioned in the preceding section can perform a variety of functions:
From the Reports tab, which takes you to the Reports & Dashboards home page, you can also create and edit folders. Editing a folder is easy when you understand how to create one.
To create a folder, follow these steps:
On the Reports page, click the Folder icon to the right of the Find a Folder search bar and select the New Dashboard Folder option in the Folder drop-down list.
A New Dashboard Folder page appears.
Type an intuitive name for the folder in the Dashboard Folder field.
For example, if you want a folder for only senior management, you might name it Executive Dashboards.
Use the radio buttons to select who should have access to the folder.
Your choices are All, None, and Selective.
Click Save.
The folder list page reappears. Now you can add dashboards or move existing dashboards to the new folder, which we explain in the section “Modifying dashboard properties,” earlier in this chapter.