Chapter 8: Building Your First CRMA Dashboard

It's time to put your new understanding to use and build your first CRM Analytics (CRMA) dashboard. By the end of this chapter, you will be able to create a dashboard from scratch, navigate through the dashboard editor, add and edit widgets, add pages, slice and dice data, and share your findings with others.

We will cover the following main topics in this chapter:

• Getting to know your dashboard editor
• Creating a dashboard and placing widgets
• The devil is in the details
• Understanding the top-down design with pages
• A user's guide to a CRMA dashboard

Technical requirements

You will need the following to successfully execute the instructions in this chapter:

• The latest version of the Google Chrome browser (Chrome is the preferred browser when working with CRMA)
• A working email address

Be sure to be logged in to your CRMA dev org.

Time to jump in and build your first CRMA dashboard!

Getting to know your dashboard editor

In this section, you will get hands-on and learn how to use the dashboard editor in CRMA.

From your Analytics Studio home page, click on Create and select Dashboard, then click on Create Blank Dashboard. You will come to the dashboard editor canvas, which looks like this:

Figure 8.1 – The initial dashboard editor canvas

Before proceeding with the next steps, save your dashboard as My First Dashboard in My First Analytics App.

Now, configure the dashboard settings by clicking on the Default gear icon. I typically use these default settings:

• Name: Default
• Columns: 50
• Row Height: Fine
• Cell Spacing: 8 (horizontal) and 0 (vertical)
• Maximum Dashboard Width: 1500
• Background Color: Leave as-is for now

There are 14 tools available on the left-hand side of the canvas, as detailed next; these will be explained as you add them to your dashboard:

• Chart
• Table
• Filter
...

Creating a dashboard and placing widgets

The best way to show you how to build a dashboard and help you become familiar with the dashboard editor is to walk you through a simple dashboard build.

Creating a sales dashboard

We will create a sales dashboard based upon the Opportunities dataset in My First Analytics App. Follow these steps:

1. Create a fresh query by clicking on the Create Query button on the right-hand side of the canvas.
2. Select the Opportunities dataset in My First Analytics App. This brings you to a view that is familiar to you as being almost identical to a lens.
3. At the top left, where you see a pencil icon, rename the query Pipeline by Close Date.
4. Change the measure (Bar Length) to Sum of Amount.
5. Add a grouping (Bar) for Close Date (Year-Month).
6. On the far right, click on the Charts icon and change the chart type to Time Bar in the DATES & TIMES category.
7. Add a filter for Closed equal to the value of False (as in, open opportunities...

The devil is in the details

In this section, you will learn about the detailed options available for editing your dashboard.

While in your new dashboard, check out the query panel and the options available there. You can see an overview of this in the following screenshot:

Figure 8.8 – Query panel and options

You have five actions available for each query from the panel, outlined as follows:

• Edit: Opens the query for editing and formatting.
• Clone: Creates a copy of the query and opens it in Edit mode.
• Properties: Gives access to query configuration options such as faceting, selection type, and initial selections. More detail will follow in this section.
• Delete: Deletes the query from the dashboard.
• Preview: Opens a preview window in a values table format.

Regarding the query properties, here is some more detail:

• Display label: The user-facing query label can be edited here.
• Apply global filters: Uncheck...

Understanding the top-down design with pages

From a business user perspective, it is inconvenient to have to constantly move from dashboard to dashboard when investigating and analyzing data. Also, filters applied to one CRMA dashboard are not carried over to another dashboard. A versatile, top-down design for dashboards using CRMA pages overcomes these obstacles and provides a simple, flexible interface for slicing and dicing data.

The best way to understand the pages functionality is to apply it to a dashboard, so edit your My First Dashboard dashboard, and follow these steps:

1. Open the user interface (UI) for CRMA pages by clicking on the drop-down arrow next to Untitled, to the right of Default.
2. Click on Rename and rename the existing page Sales.
3. You could click on + to add a new blank page, but we want to carry across the highlights panel, so select the drop-down arrow and then select Clone. A new page appears, named Clone of Sales.
4. Rename the new page...

A user's guide to a CRMA dashboard

You will now open your new dashboard in Preview mode and approach it as a business user, learning how to slice and dice your data in CRMA. Before we explore the data, remove the static target on the hero chart, Pipeline by Close Date, as this will hinder our exploration. We will look at dynamic reference lines in Chapter 9, Advanced Dashboard Design and Build. Also, make sure all chart widgets have Selection Type set to Multiple Selection.

The following steps will help you to explore and share your dashboard:

1. Open the My First Dashboard dashboard and enter Present mode.
2. Filter by Segment by choosing MM and GB in the List widget.
3. Drill in by deal size by selecting 50,000 – 500,000 under Sum of Amount.
4. We're interested in new deals only for this analysis, so exclude Existing Business under the Type global filter (using Does Not Equal).
5. Facet the dashboard by going to the Pipeline by Stage chart and selecting...

Summary

As you have seen in this chapter, CRMA is a versatile and user-friendly platform for building dashboards, analyzing data, and sharing findings.

What exactly have you learned? First, you are now able to identify and use the tools available in the CRMA dashboard editor. Also, you can create widgets and add them to a dashboard. Third, you can edit and format widgets to meet your requirements. Plus, you are confident in adding and managing CRMA pages. Lastly, you should be competent in using a dashboard and sharing findings with others.

The next chapter will teach you how to build advanced features into your CRMA dashboard.

Questions

Here is a list of questions to test your knowledge:

• If you want a colleague to access a particular view of a dashboard and drill into the data, how would you share it with them?
• What is the purpose of the Copy widget to clipboard command?
• What is the recommended number of default columns for a dashboard?
• When you move from one dashboard to another, do any filters applied to the first page remain in place?
• How could you use the Container widget in a dashboard?
• What is meant by a top-down dashboard design, and how is it facilitated by CRMA pages?
• The Clone Query command clones the query and opens it for _______________.