Dashboard with Filters - Best Practice

Exxcellent

Hi all,

I am pretty new to Smartsheet and will need your help to build a dashboard. What is the best practice to create one?

GRID

I have multiple salespeople in my team, each of them have their own grid.

The grid looks something like this:

ID | Date | Stage | Comments

I am creating forms for them to fill up on a daily basis - which will make their lives easier.

In Stage, there are multiple values which they can choose from a dropdown list such as:

1. Touch 1 - Customer did not pick up call
2. Touch 2 - Customer did not pick up call for a second time
3. Nurture - Perhaps customer will revisit next time
4. Meeting Set - Face to face meeting set
5. Evaluation - Met customer(or had an appointment with customer) now evaluating solution
6. Dropped - Not interested/solution does not fit
7. Sold

DASHBOARD

Now, I like to create an overall picture for management to take a quick look. The dashboard will look like this as attached.

Dashboard.png

I like to show piecharts of total calls, total meetings for a particular day and a particular salespeople. The tricky part is that total calls should only consist of (Touch 1, Touch 2, Nurture, Meeting Set) while total meetings will consist of (Evaluation, Dropped, Sold). Also, the detailed report for the filtered salesperson should also be displayed in a widget

This dashboard should also allow me to quickly filter (as you can see in red) a sales person and date.

What is the best approach with this? Thanks in advance!

Genevieve P.

Hi @Exxcellent

It's currently not possible to create a filter in a dashboard the way you're looking to do (please submit an Enhancement request when you have a moment!). My suggestion would actually be to create multiple dashboards:

1 . Overview Dashbaord with Team Totals

This dashboard could have some other rollup data like total calls for the entire team, but most importantly it would have quick-links for each sales person's personal dashboard. This would be instead of a filter.

Clicking on the link to the other dashboard would navigate the user to a new page in Smartsheet, but they could either click back in their browser to get back to the Overview Dashboard, or you could have a link in each sales person's dashboard to take them back to the overview.

2 . Unique Dashboards per-sales person

Then you would need to create individual dashboards per-person. Once you've set up one dashboard the way you like it, this would be pretty easy to duplicate, using the "Save as New" ability.

On this unique dashboard you could then embed a Report for that specific user with the Report Widget.

For the other Chart widget data, this would require a separate roll-up sheet where you can use cross-sheet formulas to create calculations and produce numbers based on criteria, such as using the COUNTIFS function.

3 . Webinars

If you're fairly new, I would suggest reviewing the two webinars below:

• Dashboard Best Practices Webinar (Preparing Data)
• Dashboard Best Practices Webinar (Building & Designing)

If you're having any issues with creating the rollup summary sheet, please feel free to post again we'd be happy to help!

Cheers,

Genevieve

Jumana Bowes

I'd like to do the same exact thing that was requested above. I've already submitted an enhancement request. Any chance we'll see this dashboard filter option feature added any time soon?

Genevieve P.

Hi @Jumana Bowes

Thank you for submitting an enhancement request! That form goes to the Product Team so they can review your feedback directly. I do not believe that dashboard filtering is one of the updates coming in the next Dashboard release, so I currently do not have an ETA for when or if this feature will be included in Smartsheet.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Azia HM

@Genevieve P. does there happen to be an update for slicing/ filter capabilities of Dashboards?

Genevieve P.

Hi @Azia HM

No, I don't have an update in regards to this feature request. Please fill out the Product Feedback form, here, to detail your own use-case and let them know this is something you would also find valuable.

Cheers,

Genevieve

DonMc

I appreciate that this is not currently available.

However, creating a new dashboard for every team member is unreasonable.

It would be a nightmare to maintain and is not scalable.

Rolling out a change to the source to add new data to the dashboard would require a manual update to all dashboards. Inevitably this would get to the point that half the team would have the updates while the other half did not as it was being rolled out.

cmore04

I have submitted a feature request for this as this is something I need for my Projects as well. My workaround was unfortunately creating 12 dashboards for each team member.

Maaik Meijerink

@cmore04 @DonMc Ever thought about a report build with reports based on the 'current user' filter ? In this case you only have to make 1 dashboard which is based on only a few reports. Of course the Viewer Mode for each report-widget must be set to 'Their own perspective'

Lukas

@Genevieve P. We would like to use Smartsheet reports and Dashboards at a larger scale in our company. Filtering on Dashboards is an important feature for us. We currently use Tableau and this is really a key functionality to create smart reports.

Do you have any update on this ? As I understood from this conversation, an Enhancement request has already been made. Thanks in advance for your advice.

Kind regards, Lukas

Genevieve P.

Hi @Lukas

Filtering in Smartsheet Dashboards is still specific to each individual widget and the filters applied to the source data, versus a filter applied to the Dashboard itself.

If you're using Tableau, you could Use a Web Content Widget to embed your Tableau content.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Shaun Turcott

Any updates? I had to abandon using Smartsheet for a critical company-wide project because of this one missing feature. Smartsheet is such a great product, but the dashboard features are frustratingly lacking. Really hoping improvements are in the pipeline.

Andrée Starå

Hi @Shaun Turcott

I hope you're well and safe!

I've developed solutions for clients where you can select filters on a sheet/report or by using a form.

Can you describe your process in more detail and maybe share the sheet(s)/copies of the sheet(s) or some screenshots? (Delete/replace any confidential/sensitive information before sharing) That would make it easier to help. (share too, andree@workbold.com)

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Laura Krylov ASGLLC

@Andrée Starå Is there another communities conversation thread where you describe how to create filters for a dashboard using a report or a form?

Jessica H

More than little disheartening to see a thread that outlines your exact question/need and realize there is still no solution. This request/enhancement is from 3 years ago, seems like if could have been included in more than a few releases.

Francisco

This functionality seems like it would be table stakes. We're currently building out stopgaps in Tableau (which is not repeatable for most teams we work with).

A one-stop-shop with the ability to filter between workstreams would be helpful... especially when you've got 10+ workstreams per program and multiple programs. I understand the opportunity to up-sell features/products, but this lack of basic features can turn SmartSheet into a hard sell. @Shaun Turcott, I fear that we also might run up against similar difficult conversations if basic stuff like this can't be satisfied.

Edit: I'm glad to submit a request and upvote this post, but if there's any indication as to whether this feature is being considered on the near-term roadmap, I would appreciate it.