Creating a Dashboard

Dashboard allows you to combine multiple reports in a single page for a quick overview. Zoho Analytics provides a flexible m x n layout that allows you to organize the dashboard in any way as required. With this, you can easily create a visually rich and interactive dashboard by adding reports, widgets, user filters, and rich-formatted text.

The following is a sample Dashboard.

The following is the same dashboard in Degisn Mode.

1 - Custom Title added in the Dashboard

2 - User Filters added in the Dashboard

3 - KPI widgets added in the Dashboard

4 - Reports added in the Dashboard

5 - List of Reports in the Workspace to drag into the Dashboard

The above is a sample layout of a dashboard, which could be customized. Once you have created your reports/views that you want in Zoho Analytics you can start designing your Dashboard. This following section describes how to create a Dashboard and layout it as needed.

Creating a Dashboard

With Zoho Analytics, you can easily create multiple tab dashboards with easy-to-use, flexible m x n layouts. You can quickly drag and drop reports and more components to your dashboard to organize them the way you require. 

To create a Dashboard, click the Create button at the top left which invokes the Dashboard Editor. Select the New Dashboard option. The Edit Design window will open. Design your dashboard as required.

The following video explains how to create a dashboard.

 
Note:

You can also create a new dashboard from the Dashboards button in the menu bar.

A shortcut link Create New Dashboards will be available inside the Dashboards button in the menu bar. You will be navigated to the Dashboards Editor by clicking the Create New Dashboards link.

Adding Tabs

Zoho Analytics allows you to add multiple tabs to organize your reports. You can add up to 10 tabs in a dashboard. You can add tabs while creating a dashboard, or to an existing dashboard. Follow the below steps to add tabs to a dashboard.

  1. Open the Workspace.
  2. Click Create at the top left and then select the New Dashboard option. 
  3. The Dashboard designer will open. Click Add Tab button. 
  4.  The existing view will be assigned as New Tab 1 and a new tab will be created. You can further add tabs using the (+) icon.  You can add up to 10 tabs in a dashboard. 
  5. Click the Action icon that appears on the mouse over on the tab. Select Rename. 
  6. The tab title will convert to edit mode. Specify the names for your tabs. 
  7. Clicking the Duplicate option will copy the tab along with the embedded components into a new tab. 
  8. Click the Remove option to delete a tab. 

Adding Reports

Zoho Analytics allows you to add reports to your dashboard easily with a drag and drop interface.
Follow the steps below to add reports to your dashboard.

  1. Open the Workspace.
  2. Click Create at the top left and then select New Dashboard option. 
  3. You will notice that all the reports available in this Workspace listed in the left panel, which you can drop into the Design Area and resize them to fit your need.

You can add any number of reports to the dashboard and organize them as needed. 

Layouting components in Dashboards

Zoho Analytics provides a flexible m x n layout Dashboard. You can organize the dashboard in any way. You can simply drag and drop the components in edit mode of the dashboard.

Reorganizing Components

You can rearrange the components in a dashboard into any location needed by drag and drop. As you drag, other components will be automatically arranged.  A purple line will appear marking the borders of surrounding views. This will be useful to arrange the views in the desired way. 

You can now move views between the tabs in a dashboard. This allows you to rearrange views in a multi-tab dashboard easily. 

You can also reorganize multiple components together. Select components in the same row and/or column and drag them to the required location. The following animation explains how to re-organize multiple components. 

Resizing components

You can resize the components in the dashboard anytime using one of the following options. 

Drag to Resize 

You can easily resize the component by dragging the border. As you drag, a purple line will appear marking the borders of surrounding views. This will be useful to arrange the views in the desired way. 

You can also resize multiple components together. Select components the same row and/or column and drag them to resize. 
The following animation explains how to resize multiple components together. 

Copy and Paste Dimensions 

Zoho Analytics allows you to apply a uniform dimension to multiple components using the Copy-Paste Dimension option.  
You can select the component with the desired dimensions and click Copy Dimensions option in the contextual toolbar that appears at the bottom. Now select the components on which you want them to be applied and click Paste.

The following animation explains how to copy-paste dimensions from one component to others. 

You can choose to copy the width, or height or both. 

Fit Components to Width

Fit components to width allows you to resize the components to fill available space with proportionate width. 
Select components which are in the same row and same height and click Fit to Width option in the contextual toolbar that appears. The components will be resized with proportionate width to fit in the available space. The following animation explains how to resize to fit components to width.

Fill Space

You can resize the components to fill the space in the dashboard layout in few clicks. The following animation explains how to resize to fill the space.

Remove Components

You can easily remove the components from dashboards anytime. 
To remove a component, click the action menu of the component and click Remove. 

To remove multiple components together, select the components you want to remove and click the trash icon in the Dashboard contextual toolbar.

Handle Deleted Views

In case a view present as part of a dashboard is deleted, you can choose to restore or remove it from the dashboard. 

Restore
To restore the view from dashboard, hover the mouse over the deleted view and click the Restore icon on the top right.

Remove
To remove the view from dashboard, click the Close icon of the deleted view.

Customizing Dashboard

Zoho Analytics provides context-specific customizing options for all view that you dropped in a dashboard. You can also apply themes to improve the look and feel of your dashboard. To know more details on this, refer to the Customising Dashboard section. 

Below is a final Dashboard with customized theme.


Adding Formatted Text, Images & Embed Elements using HTML

Zoho Analytics allows you to add rich formatted text and images, which can enrich and enhance your dashboards with relevant contextual information and styling.  You can also add elements such as Google Maps, YouTube videos, online forms, etc (by using HTML iframe code snippets).

To add text:

  1. Click Text option from the toolbar.
  2. Enter the content in the Text Editor that opens.

  3. You can insert an image by clicking image icon.
  4. You can insert content using HTML editor. Will be useful to insert any Web components like Youtube video etc.,.
  5. Click Insert button. The content you have added will be inserted

Zoho Analytics allows you to organize the added text as needed at any time. To know how to layout your dashboard, refer here.

Adding KPI Widgets

Zoho Analytics offers a widget-based model for adding single number and chart type widgets within dashboards. These are called KPI Widgets. This is a pretty useful feature to highlight any key metric in a dashboard for easy comprehension. The key metric can also be accompanied with associated comparison indicators to highlight the trend or plotted against a target to show progression.

Zoho Analytics offers two types of widgets,

  1. Single number widget
  2. Chart type widget 

Adding a Single number KPI Widget

Adding a Chart Type KPI Widget

Click here to read a detailed help document about adding a KPI Widget.

Adding User Filters

Zoho Analytics allows you to include dynamic filtering capability in the dashboard view mode using the User Filters option. This enables viewers of the dashboard to apply filters dynamically and view the required information. You can add User Filters to the entire dashboard or for the individual reports embedded as required.

The following sections explain how to add User Filters.

User Filters for the Dashboard

To add User Filters to the Dashboard:

  1. In the Edit Mode, User Filters section will be available. Click Add User Filters button.
  2. All columns relevant to the reports added in the dashboard will be listed in the column panel at the left. Drag and drop the required columns to be used as user filters.
  3. Editing user filters column is similar to editing user filters for charts (or pivot table or summary view).
    ​

Auto Add User Filters

Zoho Analytics allows you to add user filters available in the embedded reports into the dashboard too. This is an easy & convenient way to add users filters to a dashboard, without the need to repeat the task of user filters creation again.

To achieve this:

  1. Select the Auto Add User Filters checkbox from the User Filters field.
  2. Add reports with user filters to the dashboard. User filters in these reports will be automatically added to the dashboard.

User Filters for the Individual Reports

You can also add user filters for individual reports that have been added in a dashboard.

To achieve this:

  1. Create a report (chart/pivot/summary view) with User Filters.
  2. Add this report to the dashboard.
  3. Hover your mouse over the added Report.
  4. Select the Show Report Specific User Filter checkbox from the Options. Click Apply.

User Filters will be added to the corresponding report alone.

Columns Not Related

Zoho Analytics will display an alert over a user filters column (refer to the image below), which is longer relevant to the dashboard i.e., All the reports that use this column is removed from the dashboard. You can easily remove these user filters by hovering your mouse over the corresponding column and select Remove. You cannot save the dashboard without removing these columns.

Adding Timeline Filters

Zoho Analytics allows you to create a common Date/Period User Filter that can be applied to all the reports in a dashboard irrespective of the base tables. This user filter is not tightly bound to any date column in a single table. Using this, you can filter by any date or time range or relative period such as today, this week, last month etc. Zoho Analytics will apply the filter criteria on all reports, matching it with the best possible date column associated with the report.

The Time Slicer option in this filter provides dynamic filtering ability with a different section for each date element such as Year, Quarter, Month, Week, Date and Hour. This enables you to easily select the period for filtering the dashboard. The Time Slicer supports an infinite date range for filtering dashboard timelines. 

Note: Since this is a common period filter, you can set up only one Timeline filter in a dashboard.

Adding a Timeline Filter

  1. Open the dashboard in Edit Design mode. 
  2. Click Add User Filters link.
  3.  Select the Include Timeline Filter checkbox. 
  4. The Timeline Filter will be added in the User Filter tab. 
  5. Hover the mouse and click the Edit icon that appears.
  6. The Edit Timeline Filter dialog will open. You can modify the filter as needed.
  7. In the Filter Display Name field,  specify a name for the filter. 
  8. In the Choose Component Type drop-down, select the type of filter you want to add. Supported options are:
    • Single Select Box - Select this option to filter the dashboard by single relative date elements that you have specified, or with a custom range selected using a date picker. 
    • Time Slicer - Select this to add a slider to filter by infinite date range, or by a specified date range. You can also add relative period to this filter. 
  9. Expand the Timeline filter column mapping section. This allows you to map columns to be used for filtering in case a table has multiple date columns. 
  10. In the Order of applying filters section, specify the order of priority to filter the reports. Available options are, 
    • On date columns used in the report (this cannot be removed).
    • On date columns in the table on which the report has been created.
    • On date columns in related tables.
  11. Click OK. User Filter will get added to the dashboard. 
Single Select Box filter

This option allows you to filter by a custom Date Range selected using date picker in the User Filter. You can also add filters for relative period. By default, the following relative periods will be added as filter items along with the Date Range option.

  • Today
  • This Week
  • This Month
  • This Quarter 
  • This Year

You can remove these items using the Rem​ove icon. To make an item as default filter, click the Star icon that appears on hovering. 

​

Click the Edit link to add more relative periods to the filter. 

The following screen shows the Single Select Box filter as a Timeline Filter. 

Time Slicer

Time Slicer adds a dynamic slider to specify a date range for filtering. 

Select Any Date Range to add a slicer for infinite date range. You can also Include relative values as filter in this option. Refer here to add relative period as filter. 

Select Specified Date Range to add a slicer for a period you define here.

The following screen shows Time Slicer as Timeline Filter. 

Click the Filter icon to filter by relative period that you have added to the Time Slicer. 
​

Merging User Filters

Zoho Analytics allows you to merge multiple user filters into a single a filter. This is pretty useful in cases when you have a dashboard with reports created over similar columns from different tables, but still wanted to have a single common user filter to apply over them.

You can merge user filters by simple drag and drop. 

You can add or remove the column from these filters anytime as shown below.

Note:
  • You cannot remove the primary user filter column over which other User Filters are merged.
  • Values from this primary column alone will be listed as filter values. 
  • You cannot merge two columns for the same table into the same User Filter.
  • You cannot merge two columns with different data types in a User Filter.
  • You can merge columns with similar data types in the same category. Such as Number, Decimal Number, and Positive number can be merged.

Reports as Filters

Zoho Analytics allows you to set reports to act as filters in your Dashboard. By doing so, you will be able to click on any data point and filter all other dependent views based on the value. 

You can set reports to act as filters from the Dashboard Settings dialog. Select Enable Reports to Act as Filters to allow reports to act as filters. Click here to learn about more Dashboard Settings. 

Now you can click on any data point and filter all other dependent views in the dashboard. Reports as Filters allows you to filter by the following filtering options:

  • Filter including this value - The selected value will be filtered in the Dashboard.
  • Filter excluding this value - The selected value will be excluded from the Dashboard. 

Combined User Filter as Preset

You can define a preset filter by combining multiple user filters. This eliminates the mundane task of clicking and selecting values from multiple user filters every time. And you can have multiple preset filters too.

Follow the below steps to define a Preset Filter.

  1. Apply the User Filter combination you want to save. For example, you need to see the data for Canada this year. 
  2. In Filter, click Save. Please note that if you have saved a Preset Filter already, then you need to click Save As to avoid overwriting and save this as a new combination.
  3. The Save As dialog will open. Specify a unique Name.
  4. Click OK.
  5. Repeat the above in case you need multiple preset filters. In the screenshots shown, one preset filter can be this year data for India, the next preset filter can be last year data for the USA, etc.

  6. As you select the filter, the defined user filter combination will be applied over the dashboard.

     

You can choose to rename or delete the Preset filters by clicking the Customize Filters link.

Click the Edit icon to rename, and the Trash icon to delete a Preset Filter.