There are many ways to do it while you think to spice up your Salesforce reports, but many executives who use Salesforce newly may not have the time and patience to click through various isolated reports. They are on the lookout for features to enable a single view that shows all the relevant data at the same place. By having such an option, the decision-makers will easily and quickly compare the metrics and spot any notable trends.
While set up correctly, this is what a Salesforce dashboard offers the users. To get this advantage, you have to learn and build it the right way. Same as with the reports, the best feature of the Salesforce dashboard may not be readily available to all new users. In this article, we are trying to discuss some super-user tricks which will take the Salesforce dashboards you use to the next level. However, switching to Lightning from the Classic Salesforce UI is recommended if you want to enjoy these advanced features and functions. Many of these functions and dashboard views will only work with the new Lightning interface.
Setting up the filters for dashboards
A single view is not sufficient for any data-driven decision-making. Businesses nowadays are multi-faceted, and the decision-makers expect their reporting to reflect all these complexities but in a digestible manner. Salesforce Lightning enables a dashboard filter feature, which is significantly improved over the last few years. You can easily filter all the data on your dashboard instantly, even while pulling information from various objects.
Setting up the filters feature is very useful with the date fields as the system will let you choose which data fields and filters are most relevant. You can also prepare reports by sharing this feature with relative date filters like ‘next month,’ ‘whole year,’ ‘ single quarter,’ and so many other combinations. This enables an innovative dashboard with the right filters.
Search dashboard filters can also work with the picklists as the same fields exist on various reports on the dashboard. So, for example, you can easily filter the dashboard about the accounts, contacts, opportunities, etc., industry-wise so that the underlying reports will reference the same account and industry fields.
Dynamic dashboard creation
By default, the dashboards on Salesforce may display the values from the user’s perspective no matter who looks at it. The view is the same for users, admins, super-users, stakeholders, or decision-makers. A new feature on Lightening will let the users, based on their set security restrictions, see high-level data summaries. For example, while creating the sales dashboards, selecting the sales manager as the running user will allow the sales representatives to understand the team’s performance as a whole. Dynamic dashboards will also make sure that different users can see the dashboard differently based on the security access level of each.
You can effectively use this feature to build every single sales report based on specific sales deals. The sales manager will be able to view old sales deals of the entire team if needed. Gong to a higher level in the hierarchy, a sales director may have an overview of every activity across the company. You may need a different standard dashboard for every user to recreate this functionality. However, Salesforce only offers a limited number of dynamic ports, so you need to define each user to ensure that they see only their information. You can get the assistance of consultants like Flosum to plan it better.
Usage of custom coloring on the dashboard
Back in the spring’2018 release of Salesforce, the provider enabled the ability to customize the user dashboard based on a color palate. Now, you can choose the palate and set the background color for each component and custom style the dashboard in any unique way you want. If you are not seeing the option for choosing the color palette enabled, you may ask your admin to add the feature of change dashboard colors by enabling permissions for your profile. Also, by using the specific components as metrics and gauges, you can customize individual colors shown in each value range. All these items are defaulted to red, green, and yellow, but Salesforce gives several ways to find the adequate hue of your choice.
Building a perfect table
The older version from the table components of Salesforce offers only limited flexibility while building the dashboards. However, with the latest table feature on Salesforce Lightning, you are free to do more. As you can call them, the Legacy Tables are still available on Salesforce Lightning, which will let you view the data by grouping it in the source report. However, this legacy view will only display two columns. On the other hand, Lightning tables will show every roll of data and support up to 10 columns with borders or selecting fields. It will also help to try out different data types and see which one fits the best to your needs. Lightning table will also let you pull in more fields into the data view. Both types of tables support conditional highlighting, which can add the same option for custom coloring and the threshold for data.
Reusing the same reports multiple times
You can find that the dashboards on Salesforce now offer fantastic features and functionality. Every table from a graph and metric needs to be clubbed to a source report, and it is often used to refer to the same one multiple times if you have to see similar data in different ways. For example, if you are creating a report which shows the open opportunities, with the expected revenue amount grouped by staging and closed data, you may further build some additional charts and metrics from it like,
- Salesforce Funnel charts of opportunity grouped by stages
- Total current pipeline amount gauge
- The bar graph represents expected revenue based on the closed dates
- Metric components show total revenue expected in the sales pipeline etc.
These are some random tips and tricks which will make your dashboards and data usage much easier and palatable on Salesforce. This is a good starting point, whereas, with practice and experience, you will be able to explore more user-friendly features on the new Salesforce Lightning UI to make your data management easier and interesting.
