Create dashboards

In this video, you will learn:

  • What a dashboard is in Workfront
  • How to create a dashboard
  • How to find and use dashboards
  • How to share a dashboard with other Workfront users
  • How to print a dashboard
Transcript
Welcome to Create Dashboards. In this video you will learn what a dashboard is in Workfront, how to create a dashboard, finding and using dashboards, how to share a dashboard with other Workfront users, and how to print a dashboard. Your boss wants a report that shows the status of projects the team is working on, late tasks by team member, and new work requests that are not yet assigned. You create three separate reports, a project report, a task report, and an issue report to show all the data. Then you combine all three reports in a dashboard and share it with your boss. A dashboard in Workfront is a collection of reports. Dashboards provide an easy way to collect related reports of various object types, project, task, issue, and report types, list, chart, matrix. Navigate to the Dashboards area from the main menu. From here you’re able to create your own dashboards or view dashboards shared with you, such as Marketing Performance or Energy Drink Launch Performance. Similar to the Reports area, the Dashboards area has My Dashboards for new dashboards you create, Shared Dashboards for all dashboards shared with you, and All Dashboards showing all of them together. Let’s create a dashboard using some reports that you either created or have been shared with you. We call it Projects, Tasks, and Hours. From the Dashboards area, select New Dashboard. Start from the left and give it a name. Description is optional. Next, move to the right and select a layout. There’s a variety of options. List reports generally look best filling the entire width of the dashboard. Charts often work well in the shorter widths. Choose the fourth layout from the left. In the center area, search for reports or custom calendars. First, search for My Projects by Due Date and drag it over to the right to include it in the dashboard. Put My Projects by Due Date on top so it takes up the full width of the dashboard. Then, put Late Tasks assigned to me on the left side of the divided area. Late Tasks by Project can go on the right side, and DM Team Hours last quarter on the bottom, full width. Now let’s add two more things to the dashboard. A custom calendar and an external page. To add the calendar, click the Calendar tab to show the options. You’re able to add Jones’ calendar to the bottom of the dashboard. Now click Add External Page. This allows you to add any URL as a page in a dashboard. This could be an online spreadsheet, or an internal website, or an online document. We’ll do an outline document. Insert the URL. Note that the HTTPS colon forward slash forward slash is required. Give it a name. A description is optional. Click Save. Click Save plus Close to save the dashboard. We’ll also pin this workspace to make it easy to return to it. Scroll through and take a look at the dashboard. Notice how Late Tasks assigned to me looks in this view. All you can see is the task name column. If Workfront displayed all the columns, they would be squished together in this half width area. But there is a way you can choose which columns you want to see when a report is in a dashboard. To do this, you’ll have to edit the report. Click the report name to open it in full screen view so you can view or edit it. There are 10 columns in this report. You want to display four of them in a dashboard, which shouldn’t look too crowded. To show a column, select it and go to Advanced Options. The checkbox for Show this column when on a dashboard causes the column to appear when the report is side by side on a dashboard. Workfront’s default is that this isn’t checked on any column. The dashboard displays only one column in that case. But if you check this for one or more columns, they will be those that appear in the shorter view. Let’s check the following columns as well. Assignments, Do On, and Percent Complete. Now, save this report and go back to see how it looks in the dashboard. It looks like four columns fit comfortably. There are several ways to find a dashboard. One way is to navigate to it from the main menu. Dashboards that you use frequently can be added to your favorites list for easier access. And they can be pinned, as we showed earlier. To share a dashboard, you can click on Dashboard Actions and choose Sharing. When you share a dashboard, all the reports within the dashboard are included. To print a dashboard, you can click on Dashboard Actions and choose Print.

Activity: Create a dashboard

Create a dashboard with only one report in it—“Search Notes in This Project.” This is useful for quickly finding any update made on a project, even if there are thousands of updates to search through. This will search into update threads to quickly extract any updates that meet the criteria you specify in the prompts.

Create this report by making a copy of the “Search Notes” report you created in the “Create a note report” activity (or use another report if you didn’t do that activity).

  • Remove the Project Name prompt from the copy and rename the report “Search Notes in This Project.”
  • Name the Dashboard “Search Notes.”
  • Go to any project landing page and create a custom section for a dashboard.
  • Note that when you search for notes in your custom section it will only show notes contained within the project you’re currently in.

Answer

  1. Run the report you created in the “Create a note report” activity.

  2. Click Report Actions and select Copy. Workfront creates a new report named “Note Search (Copy).”

  3. Go to Report Actions and select Edit. Click Report Settings and change the name to “Search Notes in This Project.”

  4. Click Report Prompts and delete the Project > Name prompt from the list.

    An image of the screen to create a new dashboard

  5. Check the Show Prompts in Dashboard box.

  6. Click Done, then Save + Close. You now are looking at the Prompts screen of the report.

    Next you’re going to use a shortcut to create a new dashboard and add this report to it.

  7. Click Report Actions and select Add to Dashboard > New Dashboard.

  8. Drag the report “Search Notes in This Project” to the Layout panel.

  9. Notice that the name of the report becomes the name of the dashboard. Edit the name to just “Search Notes.”

    An image of the screen to create a new dashboard

  10. Click Save + Close.

    Now add the dashboard to a project page.

    An image of the screen to create a new dashboard

  11. Go to any project. From the left panel menu, click the Add custom section icon.

  12. In the Add a Dashboard field, type “Search Notes” and select the dashboard from the list.

  13. In the Custom section title field, type in “Search Notes.”

  14. Click Add new section.

  15. From the left panel menu, find Search Notes. Click the dots to the left of the section name and drag it right below Updates.

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