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Dashboards

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Dashboards are a collection of views, charts, IFRAMES, web resources, and several other type graphical reports, charts or views that give you a high-level overview of data all in one diagram.

You can show how many opportunities closed at the same time showing all the open opportunities that you still have pending. See example in the picture below:

Screenshot example of a dashboard in Dynamics 365

The out of the box option offers a maximum of six components per dashboard. Unless you are using interactive dashboards or with customisations like PowerShell, you can increase this default. This allows you to analyse different sales data at the same time. Essentially, a dashboard is a snapshot of the data in different formats on one page.

Note: Page does not auto-refresh, but it will offer the most current data every time the user loads the page.
In Dynamics 365 for Sales, there are several out of the box dashboards that allow users to measure their productivity and compare how they measure up to the other users in their organisation.
These out of the box dashboards are called system dashboards and are available for all users of the organisation to see. In Dynamics 365 for Sales, the out of the box dashboards are:
  • Sales Dashboard
  • Sales Activity Dashboard
  • Sales Activity Social Dashboard
Each container is called a component. You can expand these components or drill down into the records associated with the graphs by clicking on the appropriate icon.
If the graph is expanded to show records, you can click on one of the graphical pieces and see just the records associated with that area. Once you are finished reviewing the data, you can easily close these screens and you are back at your original dashboard.
If you expand one of the views, you can change the view that you are looking at to analyse a different view, but this would only be valid for the current session. The definition of the system dashboard does not change unless you change it in the customisation of the dashboard.

Custom Dashboards

If the out of the box dashboards does not meet your needs, you can easily customise these dashboards and make new ones for the user to access. Organisational and user-owned are the two types of dashboards that you can create.
Users with the appropriate security roles can create system dashboards, which are then available for every user in the organisation to use. User-owned dashboards or personal dashboards are individual dashboards that are associated with the originator’s individual login. User-owned dashboards can be shared with other users but are not visible to others by default.
Note: If a user is disabled and that user has user-owned dashboards that have been shared with others, those dashboards will no longer be available to the user that they were shared with.
You can modify an existing dashboard if you have the appropriate permissions and save it with a new name or you can create a dashboard from scratch. When creating a dashboard, you can have up to 6 different components on the standard dashboard but many more if you are using Interactive Dashboards.
When customising system dashboards, the different components you add are Insert Chart, Insert List(view), Insert Relationship Assistance, insert iframe or insert Web Resource.
For personal dashboards, you have one extra option and that is Add a Power BI tile.
Note: Allow Power BI visualisation embedding has to be set to Yes in the system settings. This is set to No by default.

Interactive Dashboards

Interactive Dashboards are different from other dashboards as they will give a visual representation of data associated with one entity. Dynamics 365 currently does not have out of the box interactive dashboards for sales so you would have to create your own if you want to use within the sales hub.

There are two types of interactive experiences. The multi-stream dashboard displays your data in real-time with single or multiple data streams. The data in the stream can only have one entity but there can be multiple streams with each stream to a different entity. You will see the visual filters in a row on top and the data streams below them.

Screenshot of selecting Multi-Stream dashboard.

While single-stream dashboards display data from one stream from one entity view. You can add many more components to a single stream dashboard than a multi-stream dashboard. The single-stream dashboard has the data stream on the left and visual filters and tiles on the right.

Screenshot of selecting Single-Stream dashboard.

Interactive dashboards also have the option to modify the colours for fields used when rendering your charts. Just like all dashboards, you can set security roles for individual dashboards.

Interactive dashboards were originally designed for customer service but are a growing option for all other Dynamics 365 applications.

Remember to engage with peers – share an experience, ask a question or leave a comment. When you are ready, click on Mark as complete and we will move on to the next step which is reports.

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Dynamics 365: Customer Engagement for Sales

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