Introduction

In this how-to guide you'll be exploring adding new dashboards and setting up Dashboard Content. 

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Dashboards are simply an easier way for you to bring your data together in a more manageable way.

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So let's say you are a salesperson in a specific region and you want to keep track of your open quotes, view applicable price lists for your region, and keep on top of your workflow approvals in a single view, or you may have a customer or group of customers that you want to easily prepare and track progress on. 

So how do you do this? In Pricefx it's a simple process and you'll walk through it in detail so you can have enough information to be confident doing it yourself.  

Firstly you need to understand what information you want to appear on the dashboard, whether it's an existing system portlet already available or a dashboard bringing a group of existing charts into one place.

Organizational Structure and Naming Convention

Once you know what you'd like to appear on your dashboard you can look at how your organizational dashboards are structured. 

This is a simple process of reviewing your Dashboard Selection Menu. Here you can view other dashboards and their naming conventions, the categories of dashboards in your organization as well as how dashboards can be displayed.

This will help you ensure that when you create a new dashboard it retains the organizational standards and the dashboard will appear in the correct place in the menu structure. 

So let's have a look at the information here. If you collapse the menu items you can see the naming convention, beginning with 1. Sales Insight, through to 9. Contract. 

If you expand the Sales Insights Menu you can see that each individual dashboard has a numbering system with a number followed by a letter, like 1. a.

If you scroll down you can see that the last dashboard listed here is 1. i., so if you're adding a new dashboard you'd want to continue the structure and call it 1. j.

OK, so you now have Category 1. Sales Insights and we have the next number in the sequence 1. j.  You'll want to make a note of the Category somewhere to use it later.  

Adding a New Dashboard

To add a new dashboard, you need to head over to the menu on the top-right, click on the Spanner Icon for Administration and then click on the Dashboards option. 

This opens up the Administration section for dashboards and to add a new dashboard, you simply click on the Add button and you see the additional information that you need to complete before you begin. 

This is the Dashboards setting screen. This is where you'll create a blank dashboard for configuration. If you begin with the Dashboards Settings screen, you can see the information you'll need before you begin. 

Firstly you'll need to decide what you want to call the dashboard as well as a label for it.

The name should contain no spaces and should be one concurrent string of text, so for example you'll call this on 1j_My_Sales_Dashboard. 

For the label, you can enter the same name for the dashboard, as normal text, so in this case My Sales Dashboard. This is the name that will be displayed on your dashboard menu. 

This can be in any format, but since you know the naming convention in the menu already you can simply call this 1j My Sales Dashboard. 

The Target Date and Relative Target Date, allow you to set a specific date which the dashboard will use as a default when it opens, but in most common scenarios, this is not required, so leave it blank. 

The Hide option is only used for embedded dashboards, which means that if you want to create a dashboard within another dashboard and don't want it visible on your dashboard menu. You'll cover embedded dashboards in another tutorial, so for now, leave this check box unchecked. 

The Category allows you to select where on the menu you'd like this to appear, so in this case, you use the category already set up as: 

1. Sales Insights.  You'll need to type this in, so ensure that it matches the category in your dashboard menu exactly. 

This means that along with the category and the label you set you'll be able to find this dashboard under the Sales Insights Category on the Dashboard Menu. 

Dynamic Inputs - with this checked the Dashboard logic will be executed before the Dashboard is displayed.  Unless you have some specific other needs, use this approach - i.e. check the box.

OK, the next two pieces of information refer to who can edit or view the dashboard. Each user of the system is part of a user group, including yourself. You most likely belong to a user group along with colleagues who may need to cover or edit your work. This user group should be given access to edit, while any other associated user group may need to view the dashboard only, without being able to edit it. 

If you leave these blank, the dashboard can be viewed and edited by anyone within your organization who has access to Dashboard Settings. 

To find you a list of user groups you may need to speak to your system administrators or technical support team.

 Once you have all the information you need, simply fill in the information that you've gathered and then click Add again to create a blank dashboard. 

Adding Dashboard Logic

Now you need to add dashboard logic to it. Again you may need to understand the different logic set up by your organization. 

Within Dashboard Admin locate the new dashboard that you’ve set up and click on it to open the logic selection option. 

In the dropdown menu, you can see the dashboard logic already configured for your organization. 

Select the appropriate logic (or if you’re unsure, contact your technical support team or locate a similar dashboard and see what logic has been used). 

Here you’ll select the Customer Insights Customer Detail Logic:

The system gives you some additional options configured in this logic, such as selecting a specific customer, a time filter, category, etc. Complete the information and click Save. 

Adding Elements into Your New Dashboard

OK, so now you have an empty Dashboard and can now begin to add different elements into it. You now do this back on the dashboard menu, so let's navigate across there and here you can see the dashboard you've just created. If you don't see it refresh your browser and it should appear. 

Adding Portlets

In a dashboard, you can add either existing Portlets, or you can add charts that you have created or have access to. 

Let's begin by adding portlets. If you click to open it, you are now presented with a blank dashboard and can add existing portlets. 

In the top right is the Add Portlets button, click on this and you'll be presented with the portlets that you can add. Let's add My Charts and My Dashboards for easy access. 

Now you can see that they've appeared on the dashboard.

You can now resize them, change the fields to display, and move them around to position them where you want.

You can now save changes to this preference and it has been saved with the portlets you've selected.  

You can now access the dashboard anytime you want via the dashboard menu.

Adding Charts

To add a new chart, you simply navigate to the chart you wish to add. In this case, select the Waterfall chart from Analytics > Data Analyzer menu path.

Load an existing chart by clicking on the Load Chart button on the top-right menu.

The system displays the existing charts, click on the Load button.

The selected Waterfall chart is displayed, now you must add it to your Dashboard by clicking on the Add to Dashboard button on the top-right corner.

The system will ask you which dashboard you wish to add it to, select yours, provide a label and click on the Submit button. 

The chart is now added to your dashboard and you can navigate back to it and position it where you want. You can add as many charts as you wish.  

The dashboard is now tailored to your needs and you can use it whenever you want. 

And that's how you create a new dashboard. If you're trying to create a dashboard for a specific region, customer, or product, you may want to view some of our other tutorials on creating charts or you can add those you already have.