How to handle Sugar: Dashboards that really help

Dashboard and Dashlets: What is What?

In Sugar, a "dashboard" forms a workspace where you can bring together various pieces of information. The individual elements on it are called "dashlets". Depending on the area and configuration, dashlets can, for example, display data records from Sugar, lists, reports, or other relevant information. This eliminates the need for a sales representative to open each module individually to get an initial overview. Important information can converge directly where daily work begins.

A Dashboard Should Have a Task

Before you build dashboards, it is worthwhile to ask a simple question: Which decision or task is a dashboard supposed to make easier for me? For a sales representative, this could mean, for example: Which sales opportunities require my attention? For sales management, the question might rather be: How is our pipeline developing? And in customer service, different information is relevant yet again.

This results in an important principle: A good dashboard is not simply a collection of interesting CRM data. It supports a specific role or task. A dashboard can not only support a user's personal work, but also enable a view of overarching goals. When relevant KPIs of a company, a department, or a team are mapped, it is possible to see at a glance where things currently stand and how key metrics are developing. In sales, these could, for example, be pipeline, incoming orders, closing rates, or other defined sales metrics. In this way, the dashboard connects daily work with the goals by which the success of the team or company is measured.

Selecting Dashlets Selectively

Sugar allows you—depending on permissions and the respective configuration—to customize dashboards and dashlets. When making a selection, however, you should not be guided by everything that can be displayed. It is more interesting to consider what information is needed regularly.

For a sales representative, for example, their own open opportunities, upcoming tasks, sales opportunities with an approaching closing date, or important or newly assigned data records could be relevant. Sales management, on the other hand, might require more aggregated information and reports on the pipeline or the development of sales.

The specific selection of available dashlets depends on the Sugar version used, the licensed features, and the individual configuration of the system.

Less Can Be More on a Dashboard

Precisely because dashboards can be designed flexibly, the temptation quickly arises to fit as much information as possible onto a single page. However, this often leads to the opposite of the desired effect.

When ten or fifteen elements compete for attention simultaneously, you first have to figure out which information is actually important. The dashboard then turns into a search task itself. Prioritization is more helpful: What do you need to see daily? What do you only need occasionally? Which information leads to a concrete action? Anything that does not answer these questions may not necessarily need to be permanently on your main dashboard.

Different Tasks Need Different Dashboards

Sugar supports multiple dashboards so that different work contexts can be separated from one another. But not every information requirement needs to be mapped on a single interface. Instead of building a single overloaded dashboard, you can, for example, structure information by task areas. You could, for instance, use one dashboard for your daily sales work and another for a more analytical view.