Create dashboards

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 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. 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 doc here. We’ll do an online doc here. Insert the URL. Note that the https:// 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 this 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.