As I prepare for my Dynamics 365 certification in sales (MB 210), I’m creating blog posts based on my revision. I hope that collectively these posts may prove useful to anyone also preparing for the MB 210 exam. This time I will cover the concepts around sales dashboards.
In the skills measured statement (shown below) you will see a reference to dashboards.
In this post I will focus on the dashboards available to us in the core Dynamics 365 product. But you will also need to be aware the that we can view Dynamics 365 data on a PowerBI dashboard or include visualizations from PowerBI on a Dynamics 365 dashboard.
There are actually three styles of dashboard in Dynamics 365.
- The classic dashboard
- Interactive dashboards
- PowerBI Dashboards
What is a dashboard??? …. Dashboards are personalized pages. Just like your car dashboard they provide a snapshot of key information in an easy to access format. Dynamics 365 dashboards typically include charts and list views but you can also add iframes, web resources, Power Bi charts, Microsoft Social Engagement insights etc.
In addition to simply viewing data it is also possible to interact with the information presented. For example, you can drill into charts on a dashboard in exactly the same way as you can from list views elsewhere in Dynamics.
As with charts and views there are two types of dashboards. System and personal.
Personal Dashboards
- Users can create personal dashboards.
- Initially only the user creating the dashboard can see it.
-
Personal dashboards can be shared with other users and teams.
- When sharing dashboards, it is important to ensure that all personal charts and views contained in the dashboard are also shared.
- Sharing does not break any of the security model rules. You are sharing the dashboard not the underlying data!
- Classic dashboards can be personal dashboards.
- Interactive dashboards cannot be personal dashboards.
- PowerBI dashboards can be personal dashboards.
System Dashboards
- Out of the box various system dashboards exist by default.
- System dashboards can be created by developers with the system customizer or system administration roles.
- System dashboards can be made available to all users or have access restricted based on security role.
- Model driven apps may include all or a restricted number of dashboards.
- Classic dashboards can be system dashboards.
- Interactive dashboards can be system dashboards.
- PowerBI dashboards cannot be system dashboards.
As the image below shows, out of the box Dynamics 365 ships with multiple system dashboards. Some have a customer service focus and some concentrate on sales. Others are specific to optional Apps within Dynamics 365, such as Field Service, Project Service and Microsoft Social Engagement. Assuming you are using the new Unified Interface you will find that each app will contain a specific set of dashboards relating to that app. Loading the sales hub, for example, would typically show you the sales activity and sales performance dashboards.
Having clicked on a chart on dashboards three icons become visible. (Two accessible from the “…” option.) These allow the chart to be refreshed, opened using the view records option (showing the related records) and expanded to fill the screen.
Out of the Box System Dashboards
MB 210 is a sales exam! Therefore having an understanding of the types of information included in the out of the box system dashboards for sales may be beneficial.
Tip: In my opinion, the out of the box system dashboards should be considered a template that can be changed and enhanced. Some of the charts / views may need adjustment to report the results you’d like to see!
| Dashboard | Purpose / Content |
| Sales Activity Dashboard | As the name suggests the sales activity dashboard give us a sense of your “activity” in sales. Meaning this would commonly be used by a sales person to see KPIs for their activity and a view of any open activities they need to progress.
Charts include;
Views include;
|
| Sales Activity Social Dashboard | The sales activity social dashboard is actually very similar to the sales activity dashboard, the key difference is that it shows the sales persons personal wall. In the wall the sales person could engage in “conversations” about their activities.
Charts include;
Web resources include;
Views include;
|
| Sales Dashboard | The sales dashboard is again aimed at the individual sales person but contains many more views. I guess this might be considered to be one place to visit for the key things they need to review. Such as their open activities, open opportunities etc.
Views include;
Charts include;
|
| Sales Performance Dashboard | Unlike the previous dashboards the sales performance dashboard generally looks at company wide KPIs.
Charts include;
|
Interactive Dashboards
I really like interactive dashboards! When they were first introduced into Dynamics 365 their focus was probably more aimed at service scenarios, as they were initially part of the interactive service hub. These days, they are included in the Unified Interface and can be applied to any part of Dynamics 365.
The concept of an interactive dashboard is that you will have a primary view and filtering date. In a service scenarios this might be used to show things like open cases created this week. With a sales hat on, we might do things like showing open opportunities by their expected close date. (I’ve done exactly that to show as an example below.)
On an interactive dashboard we have a number of charts (visual filters) and then one or more streams (or lists!). The streams / visualizations are interactive. Meaning as I click on a visualization, the other charts and streams will filter to reflect the data selected.
Below you can see that I have clicked on a particular phase and rating. And my dashboard is now showing the data filtered by these elements. Additionally the ribbon bar and other navigation elements. As I can do things like hide / show the visual filters, swap to a tile view (showing totals) or edit the date range used to filter the dashboard.
Creating Personal Dashboards
Lets look at how to create a personal dashboard. These can be a classic dashboard or a PowerBI dashboard. I will cover PowerBI in a separate post. Below you can see that selecting new allows to create a “Dynamics 365 Dashboard”. (aka a classic dashboard.)
Whilst creating a new dashboard the user can select one of 6 templates, as shown below.
Once the template has been selected you can add …
- charts
- views
- relationship assistant
- ifames
- web resources
- social insights
- PowerBI tiles
As you select to insert components a dialog will prompt for the required details. As an example I have shown the dialog for adding a chart below.
Sharing Personal Dashboards
It is possible to share personal dashboards with other users and teams. (Just like charts and views.) Simply select the SHARE DASHBOARD option in the ribbon bar.
The sharing dialog will then appear. It is worth knowing that the process to share views (advanced finds) and charts is pretty much the same. Users and teams can be added and then you select the privileges as required. By default, just the “Read” privilege is given but you can add additional access permissions as required.
An important tip about sharing is that if you have added any personal charts or views to the dashboard you will need to also share each of those separately.
It is also important to be aware that the Dynamics 365 security roles apply. Sharing does not allow you to circumvent the role based security model. When sharing dashboards, views and charts you are only sharing the view. You are not sharing access to the underlying data.
For example:
If you share a dashboard with a sales person that contains cases and they don’t have access to cases, they would not be able to view that section of the dashboard.
Creating System Dashboards
We create system dashboards in a very similar manner to personal dashboards. Except only developers with system customizer or system administrator roles have access. When customizing the system, we have a dashboards option that gives access to existing system dashboards and allows the creation of new ones.
We currently have two user interfaces for customizing Dynamics 365. The old “classic” method for maintaining solutions (shown below) and the new Unified Interface style which is available at web.powerapps.com.
I will try to focus on the newer style approach! But it is worth knowing that currently (Feb 2019) I can only created Interactive Dashboards in the classic interface. (Therefore I may reference both interfaces below!)
When creating a system dashboard (in the classic UI), we have two options, dashboard and interactive experience dashboard. The first being the “traditional” dashboard the second being those available in the Interactive Service Hub.
When you create a system dashboard in the newer PowerApps interface, I don’t get the option to select interactive. When new is selected I simply pick my layout.
Once you have selected the dashboard layout, from this point on the process is pretty much the same. (Expect you will need to remember to publish the dashboard once it has been defined!)
As we saw earlier, in my system I can add PowerBI and Microsoft Social Engagement visualizations to my personal dashboards. With system dashboards I cannot add PowerBI Visualizations. Meaning only 5 icons are available to me when building a system dashboard.
One key difference with system and personal dashboards is that their access can be controlled based on user roles. Using the enable security roles option. As shown below we can enable the dashboard for all roles or select specific roles. Below you can see that I have selected a system dashboard and then used the “…” option to access the enable security roles option.
Having selected “enable security roles”, I can pick the role or roles who can access this dashboard. (Or select the “display to everyone” option.)
Adding system Dashboard to Apps
With the Unified Interface we have a concept of apps. A app is essentially as set of entities, forms, views (etc) that makeup a sub-set of functionality a user will access to complete a particular job function. We can opt to include all dashboards or specific dashboards as required.
Within PowerApps we have two types of App. Model-driven apps and canvas apps. In this context we are talking about model-driven apps.
Below you can see that I have selected the model-driven apps in my solution. I can then select an app and use the edit button to access it.
Once the app is loaded I can click on dashboards and decide which ones to include. These maybe classic dashboards or interactive dashboards.
Creating Interactive Dashboards
We currently create interactive system dashboards from the classic customization options. I have shown an example screen of how this shows below.
Firstly we set a number of mandatory fields;
| Field | Purpose |
| Name | The name of the dashboard, as seen by users. |
| Filter Entity | The primary entity for the dashboard |
| Entity View | The view to use for the dashboard, in my example I want to show open opportunities. |
| Filter By | What date to filter the entity view by. I opted for estimated close date. |
| Time frame | Time frame, options include things like today, yesterday, this week, this quarter etc.
Note: Users can change this at run-time. |
Having set my mandatory fields. I simply add a number of visualisations (charts) and streams (views).
I have covered quite a bit of information around dashboards! I hope this is useful when revising for the MB 210 exam. I am yet to take the exam! So I am unsure how much we’ll need to know about customizing system dashboards. As the word “configure” features so often in the skills measured I cam going to guess / assume quite a bit. As part of your exam preparation I suggest you include plenty of hands on time, creating and using both system and personal dashboards. And to also test the classic and interactive styles. Enjoy!
Microsoft Dynamics 365 
Hi Neil, Thanks for putting together such a great guide yet again. I just thought I would point out a rather unfortunate typo where I think “ass” should have been “add”: “by default, just the “Read” privilege is given but you can ass additional access permissions as required.”
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Hahaha …. I have corrected but it was one of my “best” typing mistakes!!
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