Essential Dashboards for Streamlined Operations

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Making it easy to get to the information your team needs is an integral part of centralizing work and mastering enterprise work management. Consolidate key reports on dashboards for groups of users, elevate critical data points and simplify navigation to help your team quickly access relevant data and improve the user experience! 

Below is a list of must-have dashboards for you and your team: 

For the System Administrator - The Workfront Clean-up Dashboard with an added User exceptions report that highlights missing user settings. This dashboard will help the System Administrator easily find Workfront data that may need to be cleaned up, may cause resource planning issues or that can affect reporting.

For the Project Manager - A dashboard that shows pertinent project data and calls out exceptions that need to be addressed will enable a Project Manager to quickly see the health of their projects, address project-specific issues and ensure reporting integrity. 

Consider including these reports:

• Project Health & Status Report that shows project status, priority, condition, planned and actual dates, status icons and the last Update. Helpful groupings may be by planned completion month, priority, portfolio or program.
• Task Status Report that shows late or incomplete tasks and is grouped by project. A milestone report may also be a helpful visual to add to the dashboard.
• Project Exceptions Report that flags missing data that is required for accurate reporting. Fields to include are portfolio, program, company, group, resource pool, schedule, or any critical custom data.

For the Worker - A dashboard that houses reports showing active tasks, overdue tasks, upcoming work and requests assigned to the user or their home team is instrumental to easily find and prioritize work that needs to get done. 

For the Executive - A dashboard that provides an overview of key performance indicators as well as the alignment, health and risks of the work being done across the organization is pivotal to inform leaders of the health of the business and to drive strategic decisions. Consider including these reports:

• Portfolio Report that shows portfolio health, financial data and alignment score.
• Project Health Report(s) that show at risk projects, projects by Owner, incoming work by Queue and resource capacity.
• Project Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Reports that show trends such as the # of projects created per year, # of open and closed projects, # of late versus on-time projects, average duration of projects over time, # of proofs approved and other relevant data points.

For the Requestor or Reviewer - A dashboard that shows active requests, recently closed requests and pending approvals will provide a snapshot of relevant data to the user - clearly showing them the status of requests and flagging a call to action when needed.

PRO TIP: To show a select column from a report on a dashboard simply edit the report by selecting Report Actions > Edit, click on the column that you’d like to surface, select Advanced Options and check the Show This Column When On a Dashboard box. 

Adding a Dashboard to an Object or Navigation Area

You can add a dashboard directly to an object - like a Project, Task, Issue or Portfolio - or to a navigation area - like the Requests or Programs areas - for easy access. Simply select the Add Custom Section option from the left navigation panel, add a custom title for the section and select the dashboard that you’d like to add. The reports on the added dashboard will only return data relevant to that object or area.

Make sure that your team has the reports they need to work efficiently and effectively - gather their reporting requirements and configure dashboards that will surface critical data and enhance the user experience. Remember to use wildcards, incorporate visual elements, and get feedback from your team to fine tune and drive continuous reporting improvement.

For more reporting blogs, check out the following:

• Your Workfront guide to create clear, effective reports
• Use charts to express complex data in a simple format
• Speed up execution by elevating key information with conditional formatting and more
• Surface related data in a centralized space with dashboards
• Essential dashboards for streamlined operations
• Dynamically Filter Reports with User and Date-Based Wildcards