Building a dashboard
One page of tables, charts, stat tiles and notes drawn from several reports, on a drag-and-drop grid.
A dashboard is one page of widgets drawn from several reports at once: tables, charts, stat tiles, statements and notes. Each widget reads its own report's stored result and updates when that report refreshes. Dashboards live in the app, under Dashboards in the sidebar. To put a single widget on a NetSuite home dashboard, use a portlet instead.
Who sees what
A dashboard has its own audience, which works like a report's: Public, or any mix of roles, employees, departments and subsidiaries. Each widget still follows its own report's audience on top of that. A viewer who cannot open one of the reports sees a notice in that widget instead of data. A dashboard never shows anyone more than the reports themselves would.
Creating a dashboard
- Open Dashboards in the sidebar and choose New Dashboard in the top bar.
- Enter a name and a description, and pick a category. The description appears in the dashboard list, so say what the page shows and who it is for. The list offers only categories marked for dashboards.
- The new dashboard opens in edit mode.
- Choose Add widget. The widget appears at the top of the grid and moves everything else down.
- In the side panel, choose the widget's Report first. Then configure it as described below.
- Drag a widget by its title bar to move it, and drag its handle to resize it. A dashboard can hold several tables.
- Choose Filters… to build the filter bar. See Dashboard filters.
- Choose Settings… to set the name, description and audience. You can also delete the dashboard from there.
- Choose Save dashboard. Cancel discards the draft.
The Widgets list at the top of the side panel selects any widget, including one hidden under another. The editor draws the selected widget on top so that you can drag it out.
Widget kinds
| Widget | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Stat tile | One headline figure with its period, and optionally a comparison and a target |
| Bar chart, Horizontal bar | A figure for each group, such as the top 10 customers by invoiced amount |
| Line chart | A figure over time, optionally with one line for each value of a Series column |
| Comparison trend | This period against the previous period or the same period last year |
| Pie chart, Donut chart | Shares of a whole |
| Table | Rows from a report, with its own filters, row numbers and totals row |
| Statement | A financial statement layout. See The Statement widget. |
| Text note | An explanation for readers |
Deriving a figure
Most widgets turn the report's rows into a figure in the Derive part of the side panel:
- Group by: the column that makes the bars, slices or points. Leave it empty to use the raw result.
- By: for a date or month column, the bucket, which is Year, Quarter, Month or Week.
- Aggregate: sum, count, average, min, max, distinct count or median, applied to a value column.
- Sort and Limit: High to low (top N) or Low to high (bottom N), with a number, or No limit.
- Filter: a relative period such as This year or Last quarter, a date range, or a condition on a column.
A figure takes its column's format: money as money, a percent column as a percentage, and a count as a whole number.
Distinct count and median over detail rows
A summary report stored by month cannot give a distinct count or a median by quarter. The figures have already been added up. Build the widget over the detail report instead, where each row is one line. A bucketed distinct count or median is then exact at any grain, for example distinct vendors per quarter or median days to proposal per year.
Lines, Series and the dashed future
A line chart grouped on a date or month column runs in date order. A Series column draws one line for each value, such as purchase orders expected against bills received. Past today, each line is dashed and a Today marker shows the current bucket.
Comparison trend
Pick a date, datetime or month column, the value to total, the period, what to compare it with and how fine the points are. You can compare with the period right before, the same period a year earlier, or your own dates. Points can be day, week, month, quarter or automatic. The chart draws the reported period solid and the comparison dashed grey, lined up by position.
Stat tiles
The caption under a stat tile's figure names the period it covers. When its filter is a relative period, the tile compares automatically against the period right before. Tick Advanced: choose the comparison manually to pick a different one. Target is a number you type in.
The dashboard list
The Dashboards page shows each dashboard with its description, category, owner and widget count, as cards or a table. Authors can change a dashboard's audience from its chip. Select turns on selection mode, with Set Audience, Archive and Delete for the selected dashboards.
Related: Dashboard filters · The Statement widget · Charts on a report · Adding a report to a NetSuite dashboard