Using Dashboards to Understand Your Sales Process

Throughout the Dynamics 365 Sales process, your team gathers valuable data. Leads progress into Opportunities, Opportunities lead to Quotes, and successful Quotes can become Orders. That information doesn't have to sit passively in CRM. Dashboards allow you to organize and visualize your sales data so you can identify trends, monitor performance, and make more informed decisions. Dynamics 365 includes system dashboards, but you can also create custom dashboards for specific users and business needs.

Dashboards for Different Sales Roles

Different people may need different information from CRM. A salesperson's dashboard could include:

• Open Leads
• Open Opportunities
• Opportunities by pipeline stage
• Open and closed Opportunity charts
• Daily activities and appointments

A sales manager might want a broader dashboard showing Opportunities across the organization, along with visuals that help compare sales activity or performance across the team. When a useful dashboard is available as soon as users enter CRM, it can provide a quick snapshot of the information that should influence their work.

Using Different Dashboard Visuals

Dynamics 365 dashboards can display CRM information in several ways, including:

• Lists
• Column and bar charts
• Pie charts
• Area charts
• Sales funnels
• Other CRM components

Dashboards can also contain an iframe, which allows a website to be embedded within the dashboard. The goal is to present information in a format that makes the underlying CRM data easier to understand.

Start with a Useful View

If you can create a useful view in Dynamics 365, you're already on your way to creating a dashboard. For example, suppose a sales manager wants to understand how salespeople are spending their time. You could start with an Appointments view and customize it to show the information that matters for that analysis. You might remove unnecessary columns such as Priority or Location while adding information such as Duration. You can also move columns into an order that makes the view easier to read.

Filter the Records You Need

After selecting the appropriate columns, you can change the filters to determine which records appear in the view. For example, if you want to review recent employee appointments, you could filter the Start Time to appointments occurring within the last week. Dynamics 365 provides a variety of operators for date and time fields, giving you considerable flexibility over which records you include. Once your columns and filters are configured, save the result as a new personal view so you can use it in your dashboard.

Create a Chart from Your View

Charts use the records in a view as their source data. You can start with an existing system chart and use Save As to create a personal version. Once it becomes your personal chart, you can edit it to display the information you need. For example, a chart analyzing employee appointments could use:

• Duration as a value
• Start Date along the horizontal axis
• Owner as a category
• Daily groupings to compare activity over time

The chart editor also allows you to choose between visualization types such as column, bar, area, and pie charts. A preview helps you determine whether you've selected the appropriate data and axes before saving the chart.

Build Your Custom Dashboard

Once your view and chart are ready, you can add them to a custom dashboard. You don't necessarily need to build a dashboard from scratch. If an existing dashboard is close to what you need, you can save a personal version and modify it. Dashboard components can be added, removed, resized, and repositioned to create a layout that works for you. For example, you could place your custom Employee Appointments list alongside a chart summarizing those appointments. This provides the detailed records and a visual analysis of the same information in one place.

Control the Views Available from a Dashboard

When adding a list component, you can determine which view users initially see. Depending on your needs, you can allow users to switch among other available views or restrict the component so that it displays only the specific view you selected for the dashboard. This gives you additional control over how users interact with the dashboard and the information it presents.

Understand Personal and System Dashboards

Dynamics 365 distinguishes between personal dashboards and system dashboards. A personal dashboard, or "My Dashboard," is created for an individual user. If you want other users to access it, you'll need to share it with them. System dashboards, on the other hand, can be created and deployed by an administrator so they're broadly available to users throughout the organization. The appropriate option depends on how widely the dashboard needs to be used.

Remember to Share Supporting Components

Sharing a personal dashboard doesn't necessarily mean other users automatically have access to everything included in it. If you've created a custom personal view that supplies records to your dashboard, that view also needs to be shared with the people using the dashboard. The same consideration applies to personal charts. When creating a dashboard for other people, remember to review access to:

• The dashboard
• Custom personal views
• Personal charts

If a dashboard needs to be distributed broadly across the organization, having an administrator create a system dashboard may provide a more practical approach.

Turn CRM Data into Sales Insights

The information entered throughout the Dynamics 365 Sales process becomes especially valuable when you can step back and analyze it. Dashboards give salespeople and managers a visual way to monitor the information they're already collecting. Instead of searching through individual records, users can see important lists, activities, pipeline information, and charts together in one location. With thoughtfully designed views and charts, you can build dashboards around the questions that actually matter to your organization and turn everyday CRM activity into information that helps guide your sales strategy.