Salesforce Dashboards   •  Reporting & Analytics

The point of setting up Salesforce dashboards a certain way is to deliver information to your users in the ways that work best for them. This makes reporting easier, and much more user-friendly.

Dashboards provide you with a graphical view of the Salesforce data in reports. The components provide a snapshot of key metrics and performance indicators from your Salesforce data.

You’re undoubtedly spending a lot of time in Salesforce, so why not take that one extra step to customise your dashboards so they are optimised for easy reporting?

To begin customising Salesforce dashboards: 

**Note – Your report must be grouped by at least one field in order to choose a new chart component, if not this will display as the standard table type component**

To create a Salesforce Dashboard navigate to the Dashboards tab, click New Dashboard to create or click on an existing dashboard to edit:

• To add a component to the dashboard, press + Component.

• Choose a source report for the component, then press Select.

• You can choose a Chart Report and customise how the component displays data, then press Add.

• This component will now appear on the grid, like the screenshot below. You can arrange or resize the component as you like within the edit grid.

• You can keep on adding components to the dashboard and they will display as per the below screenshot.

To customise a Lightning dashboard

• You can edit an existing dashboard by clicking the pencil icon on the component or add a new component by clicking + Component.

Image source: salesforce.com

• ‘Display Units’ can be changed to display as a shortened number, full number, hundreds, thousands etc. 
• You can check the ‘Show Values’ and ‘Show Percentages’ to display these also.
• You can amend the ‘Measure filter’ to display as a record count a different value. 
• And last but not least, you can also change the colour palette of your dashboard, as well as changing the theme of the component to be dark or light!

• Click Update to save your changes.

You can further customise by changing the column layout by:

• Navigating to the Properties menu by clicking the gear icon.
• Under Dashboard Grid Size, choose 12 columns or 9 columns.

• Click Save.

In the lightning dashboards, each component has a series of properties that help you customise it until it shows exactly the data that you want. Salesforce offers further documentation surrounding ideas about when to use each type of component here.

Further ways to customise your dashboard

• Enable different user features

Provide convenience and ease of use by enabling different user interface features for reports and dashboards.

These features don’t affect your data but can provide a more user-friendly experience:

• Let users see report headers while scrolling (Classic only)

• Help users find dashboards quickly (Dashboard Finder)

• Exclude the confidential information disclaimer from reports

• Hide the Embedded Salesforce Classic Report Builder in Lightning

If you haven’t already, removing the visibility of the Salesforce Classic report builder, it maintains the sleekness of the complete Lightning experience. Salesforce data can be analysed intuitively within Lightning

Hide by following these steps:

1. Navigate to Setup and search Reports in the Quick Find box and select Reports and Dashboards Settings.
2. Select Hide the embedded Salesforce Classic report builder in Lightning Experience.
3. Click Save.

• Set Up Historical Trend Reporting

Historical trend reporting allows you to track how field values have changed over time. If you need to track changes that happen day-to-day, this is the perfect feature for you.

Historical reporting gives you 5 snapshot dates and the option to trace up to 8 fields on the Opportunity object and up to 3 custom objects.

Once this is enabled, a new report type is available when you create future reports.

Follow our step-by-step below:

1. Navigate to Setup, search Historical Trending in the Quick Find box.
2. Select Historical Trending.
3. Then select the object that you want to do historical trend reporting on. You can then select one object from: Opportunities, Cases, Forecasting Items, and up to 3 custom objects. 
4. Select Enable Historical Trending.
5. Optional: As retaining historical data increases storage requirements, you can select the data you want to capture. 

Use the filters under Configure Data for Opportunities, Cases, and custom objects. For Forecasting Items, the available data is preselected.

1. You can choose up to 8 fields to make available for historical trend reporting in Select Fields. 

These fields are preselected for Forecasting, however, you can select Opportunity fields. 5 fields are preselected: Amount, Close Date, Forecast Category, Probability, and Stage. You can add 3 more.

1. Click Save.

If you’re having troubles customising your Salesforce dashboards, or in Sales Cloud in general  – we’re here to help. Feel free to send us a message about our Salesforce consulting and admin support options.