Once you grasp the Salesforce data model, learning dashboards and reports will come naturally to you as your Salesforce journey progresses. Salesforce dashboards are an integral part of the platform’s ecosystem that quickly and easily visualize an organization's data. They provide a clear picture of a business's key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics, allowing users to monitor their performance and make informed decisions to drive growth and success. The data displayed in real-time on the dashboard can be easily customized to suit different user needs, enabling an organization to stay ahead of the competition by quickly identifying areas that require attention.
As a cloud-based platform, Salesforce integrates seamlessly with other systems in an organization, thus capturing and storing vast amounts of data. Learning how to use dashboards drives informed decision-making across multiple departments. They help identify patterns, trends, and anomalies within the data, which facilitates the identification of potential challenges and opportunities, allowing for a more proactive approach to problem-solving. For instance, analyzing CRM data can uncover trends such as decreasing customer satisfaction scores, enabling businesses to act before it's too late.
Lastly, Salesforce dashboards facilitate collaboration among different organizational departments via a single source of truth. It ensures everyone is on the same page regarding important business metrics, facilitating effective communication and decision-making. With Salesforce dashboards, stakeholders can access relevant data, regardless of location or department, and make data-driven decisions even remotely.
What is a dynamic dashboard in Salesforce?
A dynamic dashboard in Salesforce is a customizable tool that enables users to track and analyze their performance metrics in real-time. It allows for displaying various charts, graphs, tables, and other data visualizations that can be adjusted and modified according to individual needs and preferences. This type of dashboard is essential for businesses and organizations that require up-to-date insights into their performance, as it provides powerful data visualization and analysis capabilities.
Dynamic dashboards are highly customizable, meaning users can arrange their data in a way that makes it easy to interpret and actionable. The tool makes it possible to drill down into specific data points, examine trends, and detect opportunities for improvement quickly. It is handy for executives and managers who closely monitor their business operations and make decisions based on data insights.
One of the critical abilities of a dynamic dashboard in Salesforce is to automate the process of data collection and reporting. It eliminates the need for manual data entry, which can be time-consuming and prone to human error. Users can set up dashboards that refresh automatically and regularly, providing up-to-date insights without additional effort. Dynamic dashboards are also flexible, giving access to data from any device and anywhere with an Internet connection. This way, users stay informed on the go and respond quickly to changes in their business environment.
Why use them?
Here are five reasons you should consider using dynamic dashboards for your organization.
- Reduced workload for system admins. A single dynamic dashboard can display different data sets to different users based on their access settings. Thus, instead of creating multiple dashboards for separate user groups, admins can create a single dynamic dashboard that automatically adjusts based on the user's access permissions. This saves time and effort and ensures consistency of data across the organization.
- Always relevant data. Users do not have to manually refresh or update their dashboards to see the latest information. Instead, the dynamic dashboard will automatically adjust itself based on the user's permissions, ensuring that the data displayed is relevant.
- Secure access to data. Dynamic dashboards display data based on the user's access permissions, meaning only authorized users can see sensitive data. No unauthorized users can access the data.
- Automatic display of related data. Users who access more records will automatically see the data related to those records in the dynamic dashboard. This can be particularly useful in sales organizations where reps need a complete view of their accounts.
- User-specific tracking. Sales reps can see their own progress against their quotas, managers can track the performance of their team members, and executives can get a high-level view of the organization's performance. This can be a powerful motivator for users: they can see their progress and focus on areas they need to improve.
Standard vs. dynamic dashboards
Standard dashboards are basic pre-built dashboards that offer the same view to all Salesforce users, irrespective of their roles and responsibilities. For instance, if a company wishes to share overall insights or performance analysis with every employee, it would be ideal to use a standard dashboard since it offers limited customization options, and the data shown remains static for all users. Standard dashboards come in handy when a company wants to display general info to everyone, such as company objectives, top performers by departments, or real-time metrics.
Dynamic dashboards are tailor-made - they offer customization options based on the specific needs of each Salesforce user. They are best suited to role-specific data sharing, presenting personalized insights based on individual users' roles or responsibilities. This dashboard type allows users to personalize the data displayed to their preferred format, and it can also restrict irrelevant information from their view, making the data more meaningful.
One of the greatest features of dynamic dashboards is they give users more control over the data displayed, resulting in more flexibility in addressing business requirements. For example, HR managers could create a dynamic dashboard displaying recruitment metrics and performance indicators for recruiters and hiring managers. Meanwhile, sales managers could create a dynamic dashboard showing account executives' sales targets and performance metrics. Users can focus on critical insights that improve productivity, performance, and efficiency by tailoring data to specific roles.
How to create a dynamic dashboard
Salesforce is an advanced cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) solution that offers robust features and functionalities to help businesses enhance customer interactions and improve customer satisfaction. One of the most noteworthy features of Salesforce is the dynamic dashboard, which provides real-time insights into key business metrics and performance indicators.
To set up a dynamic dashboard in Salesforce, follow a few simple steps, which we will discuss in detail below.
Determine the components to include
The first step is identifying the elements you want to include - charts, tables, metrics, and other visualizations. These elements should be selected based on the key performance indicators (KPIs) essential for your business.
Set up security settings
Ensure that your dashboard is secure. You can do this by setting the user as "run as logged-in user" instead of "run as the specified user", ensuring that the dashboard user has the appropriate permissions and access privileges.
Create a dashboard folder
Create a folder to store and control access-related information. Navigate to the "Dashboards" tab and create a new folder by assigning it a meaningful name. This folder will contain all the dashboards you create.
Share the folder
Go to the dropdown next to it and click “share” to choose different users and define their access levels and roles. Only authorized users will access your dashboard.
Create the dashboard
Next, click “New Dashboard” and enter a name for your dynamic dashboard. Store the dashboard in the folder you created earlier and click “Create” to open the editor.
Add components
To add components to your dashboard, click the “+” icon and select the ones you want to add, such as charts, tables, or metrics. After adding a component, you can customize it by choosing the appropriate data source, fields, and visual styling.
Set up viewer settings
To complete the setup, select the gear icon on the screen and the dashboard viewer as the logged-in user. You ensure that the logged-in user can only see data they are authorized to view. Click “Save” to apply the changes.
How does a dynamic dashboard help sales professionals?
A dynamic dashboard helps sales professionals track and analyze their performance to identify trends and seize opportunities quickly. Sales professionals can choose the metrics that matter most to them and view them in a way that is easy to understand. They can also filter the data based on different criteria, such as time frame, product line, or geography.
The dashboard is interactive, meaning users can drill down into specific data points to understand performance better. They can also create graphs, charts, and tables to present the data in a visually appealing way and share their findings with their colleagues and managers easily.
Finally, the dynamic dashboard in Salesforce enables users to track progress toward specific goals. For example, if a sales professional has a target to sell x number of units within a specific time frame, they can track their progress towards this goal on the dashboard. This helps them to stay motivated and focused on achieving their targets.
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