I'm just playing with dashboards beta (which is great, mostly).
A dashboard is something I want to set up and monitor, not run like a report. So the concept of reporting period becomes important.
For example, I want to monitor project costs over the last 3 months. As set up in beta, I have to filter by month, then select the last 3 months. After month end, I have to de-select the earliest month and select the new month. Every month.
So a criteria like "last 3 months" and similarly "last quarter vs prior quarter" would be very useful for comparing and seeing trends. If I want a detailed analysis I can run a report, the dashboard should alert me that I need to do so, without having to be validated every time I look at it.
Note that generally I look at things over short periods of time - this year vs last year has no meaning where projects that run for 3-6 months are concerned.
David
Posted 5 years ago
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Raghu K, Community Moderator
Joanne Jacobs, SVP, Product Mgmt
Mathieu Fenniak, Innovation Engineer
Hi David,
The Dashboard team has released Date filters today. With the addition of a Date filter, you can select a time range such as "Last 3 months" to filter data to that period, without the need to update the filter options on a regular basis.
The "Last 3 quarters" filter with a chart by quarter makes it easy to create a "last quarter vs. prior quarter" comparison like you were suggesting. The current quarter would also be included, though:
Thank-you for your feedback. Please let us know if this encompasses the functionality you were looking for, or if you have any other ideas for enhancements.
Mathieu
The Dashboard team has released Date filters today. With the addition of a Date filter, you can select a time range such as "Last 3 months" to filter data to that period, without the need to update the filter options on a regular basis.
The "Last 3 quarters" filter with a chart by quarter makes it easy to create a "last quarter vs. prior quarter" comparison like you were suggesting. The current quarter would also be included, though:
Thank-you for your feedback. Please let us know if this encompasses the functionality you were looking for, or if you have any other ideas for enhancements.
Mathieu
I really appreciate the dashboard feature and think it has a lot of potential. How about a date filter for "This week"/"Last 2 weeks"/"Last 3 weeks", etc? To me, it seems like a dashboard is something you might want to check daily/weekly to track time resources in close to real-time. If I am just looking at trends once a month, I might as well run a report. Thanks!
Mathieu Fenniak, Innovation Engineer
Hi Ben,
The reason we don't have that level of filtering is that the dashboard is displaying data in monthly segments. Viewing data month-by-month allows us to reduce the amount of data being sent to your web browser, which allows the dashboard to load quickly, and makes interacting with charts (eg. drill-down, filtering, pivoting) responsive.
More detailed filtering like "last 2 weeks" would also start to be very sensitive to issues like "Dan never enters his timesheets on time". Unless staff are entering their timesheets in real-time, we can never actually display data in real-time.
However, those are just issues we'd have to deal with -- you're absolutely right that this is what people want to look at frequently. It is a critical element in a dashboard to be relevant to "right now", and actionable.
I'll take this feedback to my team and see what we can do. We will need to be careful to not overload people's web browsers, and, make sure that we include metrics that help you identify whether everyone's timesheets are filled out / submitted / approved when looking at short-term numbers.
Thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate it.
Mathieu
The reason we don't have that level of filtering is that the dashboard is displaying data in monthly segments. Viewing data month-by-month allows us to reduce the amount of data being sent to your web browser, which allows the dashboard to load quickly, and makes interacting with charts (eg. drill-down, filtering, pivoting) responsive.
More detailed filtering like "last 2 weeks" would also start to be very sensitive to issues like "Dan never enters his timesheets on time". Unless staff are entering their timesheets in real-time, we can never actually display data in real-time.
However, those are just issues we'd have to deal with -- you're absolutely right that this is what people want to look at frequently. It is a critical element in a dashboard to be relevant to "right now", and actionable.
I'll take this feedback to my team and see what we can do. We will need to be careful to not overload people's web browsers, and, make sure that we include metrics that help you identify whether everyone's timesheets are filled out / submitted / approved when looking at short-term numbers.
Thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate it.
Mathieu
