Smaller widgets and 8 columns on dashboards
Carla Williams
I am having a hard time getting the reporting that leadership wants all on one screen in a dashboard due to the size of the widgets. Much of the data that needs reporting out is just a one or two digit number, and it is taking up a tremendous amount of real estate on the screen. They have shown me dashboards that they have used in other software that they like, and all of them are 8 columns wide vs 4, and it allows for a shorter widget height. This would be tremendously helpful and overcome a lot of objections I'm hearing regarding reporting.
Konstantin Skorodumov
This would be GREAT!
Jon Darbyshire
Hiya Carla Williams, thanks for this post! I have a few more questions for you:
- What specific data or metrics are most important to display on the dashboard?
- Are there any specific examples of dashboards from other software that you find effective?
- How frequently do you need to update or change the data displayed on the dashboard?
Carla Williams
Jon Darbyshire,
- That is the reason we need more room. For example, one report we always need to watch is our work-in-progress per month per development. We're forecasting our WIP 24 months out times 8+ developments at a time... and that's just one of hundreds of things that we want to be watching. A lot of these metrics would work better to look at on a table view, but the data can only be displayed using a widget. Other metrics we want to have on dashboards is average gross profit (also by plan and by development and by time period= a ton of different widgets just for GP metrics). I'm currently using a chrome extension named "Revolver - Tabs" to rotate through several different dashboards so that we can see more. We have a dashboard for production metrics, GP metrics, WIP metrics, sales metrics, future developments.... and each of them have a ton of widgets we use.
- See the screenshot attached to the original post.
- The metrics are updating in real time by many individuals in their roles. At this time, I am having to update the widgets every month for WIP because I need to delete the widget for the month that just passed and add another widget to cover the 24th month. It would be nice for it to not have to add and update widgets that we are using for month-specific reporting.