Chapter 20: Working with Dashboards

Dashboards are a pictorial representation of your custom report data, which gives a real-time snapshot of your organization's key metrics. Using dashboards you can easily visualize comparisons, patterns, and trends in sales, marketing, support, and inventory related data. For example, you can visualize at a glance the products that are selling fast over a period of time, compare the current quarter sales with previous quarter sales, or compare the actual sales to the projected sales.

In the Zoho CRM system dashboard comprises of different types of two-dimensional and three-dimensional charts (components). These charts are built over the Macromedia Flash technology, which displays the data dynamically. The charts are basically bar, pie, line, or funnel. The unique feature in the Zoho CRM system is Funnel chart, which can be used to visualize the sales pipeline at various stages intuitively.

Note: Please ensure that your Web browser supports Macromedia Flash. In case the Macromedia Flash is not enabled, Macromedia Flash plugin icon is displayed on the chart area. By clicking the Flash plugin icon you can install the Macromedia Flash plugin.

Limitations:

• Some of the international currency symbols will not display properly.
• Dashboard properties (color, gradient, borders, background etc.) cannot be modified through user interface.
• Dashboards need to be refreshed manually to display the up-to-minute changes.

You can perform the following operations in the Dashboards module:

• Create dashboards
• Create dashboard charts
• Modify the existing dashboards
• Drill-down charts
• Zoom out charts
• Manage dashboard folders
• Delete dashboard

Creating Dashboards

(Access Privilege: Read access)

Dashboard is a summary view of the custom report data in your CRM system. It may contain more than one chart. But ensure that at least one chart is added to the dashboard.

List of Standard Dashboard Components

In the Dashboard home page the following types of dashboards are available.

Note: You cannot modify or delete the standard dashboards.

To create a dashboard

1. Click the Dashboards tab.
2. In the Dashboards Home page, click the Go to Dashboard List link.
3. In the Dashboard List page, click the Create New Dashboard button.
4. In the New Dashboard page, specify the following:
   • Name: Specify name of the dashboard
   • Select Dashboard Folder: Select the folder in which the dashboard has to be stored.
   • Description: Specify additional details of the dashboard.
5. Click Save.

Creating Charts

(Access Privilege: Read/Write access)

After creating a dashboard you must add components (charts - represent the exact data in pictorial form), which includes Bar, Pie, Line, Funnel, or Table type charts. You can select the charts to display the data in pictorial form where as table to display the data in tabular format.

List of Standard Charts

Chart Type	Description	Example
Bar chart	To display different values of one or more items in data, which can be used to compare values across categories.
Pie Chart	To display the data with different parts of data into triangular areas (sectors) proportional to the percentages of the whole data.
Line Chart	To display a trend over a period with the variations in the multiple values in a single chart.
Funnel Chart	To show the convergence of data from the entry level to exit level. It is typically used show the sales pipeline at any point of time.
Table Chart	To show sum of the values in each category of the data.

To create dashboards

1. Click the Dashboards tab.
2. In the Dashboards Home page, click the Add Component button.
3. In the Add Component page, under the Specify Component Details section specify the following:
   • Component Type: Select the component type either Chart or Table.
   • Component Header (Mandatory): Specify the component name.
   • Source Report: Select the custom report to be displayed in dashboard component.
4. Click the Next.
5. In the Add Component page, under the Specify Chart Details section, select the type of chart from the Select Chart Type list box. You can select Vertical Bar, Pie, Line, Funnel, or Table.
6. Click the Finish button. The new chart is displayed under the Dashboard.

After adding a chart to the dashboard, you can perform the following operations:

• Change to 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional view
• Drill-down the chart
• Zoom out the chart
• Delete the chart

Drilling down dashboards

(Access Privilege: Read access)

You can view the data underlying each dashboard component.

To drill-down dashboards

1. Click the Dashboards tab.
2. In the Dashboards Home page, select the dashboard from the Switch to Dashboard drop-down list.
3. In the Dashboards Home page, click the dashboard component area for which you would like to display the report. The drill-down data is displayed in a report form.
4. In the Report page you can perform additional operations, such as Export to PDF/XLS/CSV, Save the report, customize further, or refresh the data.

Drill -down Dashboard

Zooming out Charts

You can enlarge the chart for a better visualization of data, which is very useful while working with huge data.

To zoom out chart

1. Click the Dashboards tab.
2. In the Dashboards Home page, select the dashboard from the Switch to Dashboard drop-down list.
3. In the Dashboards Home page, under the required chart area click the icon.
4. The enlarged chart is displayed in a separate Window.

Zoom out chart

Managing Dashboard Folders

(Access Privilege: Read access)

Dashboards can be stored in publicly accessible folders for all the Zoho CRM users or private folders with a limited access to some of the users.

Create Dashboard Folder

Note: System administrators and the users who created the dashboard folder have full control on dashboard folders. Other users can access the dashboards only after the owner of the folders enables the access rights.

To create dashboard folder

1. Click the Dashboards tab.
2. In the Dashboards Home page, click the Go to Dashboard List link.
3. In the Dashboard List page, click the Create New Dashboard button.
4. In the Dashboard Folder Details do the following:
   • Folder Name: Specify name of the folder.
   • Accessibility Details: Select one of the following options:
     • All Users are allowed to view this Dashboard Folder: Select if you would like to enable the folder access for all the users.
     • Show this Dashboard Folder only to me: Select if you would like to enable the folder access only to you.
     • Allow the following users to view this Dashboard Folder: Select the users or user roles who can access the folder.
       
5. Click Save.