SuiteCRM Tutorial for Customizing your optimized Dashboard

Your SuiteCRM dashboard is the critical first view you see upon logging in, offering an immediate snapshot of high-priority business needs and your current focus. This comprehensive tutorial shows you how to transform the standard homepage into a highly efficient, role-specific control centre by mastering dashlet configuration, filtering, and tab organisation.

• Learn how to filter dashlets to display only relevant data rows (e.g., customers).
• Discover how to integrate third-party BI reports or external websites.
• Implement role-based dashboards (Sales, Marketing) using multiple tabs.
• Understand the process for resetting your homepage configuration to standard settings.

Introduction to the SuiteCRM Dashboard and Dashlets

When you load your CRM system in the mornings, the first screen that you see is your homepage and dashboard. You want to get a quick overview of what is going to happen today, or what is your high priority right now. In order to do this, you can add and change dashlets.

A. Defining a Dashlet

A dashlet is essentially a basic representation of data drawn from the various modules that exist within your CRM system. The standard dashboard structure usually includes "My calls," "My meetings," "My top opportunities," and "My accounts".

Step 1: Configuring Existing Dashlets via Filtering

Existing standard dashlets often show data across several modules or the entire company. For instance, the 'Accounts' module might be used for competitors, research, partners, suppliers, and customers. If you are working in sales, you most likely want to see only the customers and not your competitors.

A. Applying Filters to Rows (Data)

1. Access the Edit Wheel: Go into the specific dashlet (e.g., My Accounts) and click on the edit wheel.
2. Use Filter Settings: The settings are similar to the filters that you use inside your module list view. You can use these settings to drill down and filter what you want to see.
3. Set Specific Criteria: You can filter by several different things. For example, you would filter by 'Type' and ensure the type is set to 'Customer'.
4. Save Changes: Hit "Save" to update the dashlet. The dashlet will now show only customers inside your accounts.

Insight: You can configure which columns you see via the list views. You can even have two different dashlets showing filter results of the same module but configured with different filter settings.

Step 2: Adding New Dashlets for Comprehensive Insight

If you want to see data from other modules, such as your cases or projects, you can add new dashlets.

1. Click on Actions: Click on the 'Actions' menu.
2. Add a Dashlet: Click on "Add a dashlet".

A. Dashlets for Module Lists (e.g., My Documents)

You can add lists like "My documents". These can be filtered further, such as by status (e.g., an active one), assigned user (e.g., to me only), or category (e.g., Marketing). This high flexibility allows you to build your screen as you see fit.

B. Charts for Visualisation and Forecasting

There are pre-built charts available for you to use. If you are working in the sales department, the "Pipeline by Sales Stage" chart makes sense. This chart provides a little bit of sales forecast direction. You can see the amount currently in stages like prospecting or qualification. This information helps you know what is going to happen in one, two, or three months, depending on your sales cycle length.

C. Utilising Tools and External Integration

You can utilise several tools:

• My Activity Stream: This shows activity across the whole company or over several modules.
• Jot Pad: The Jot Pad was helpful once in a while in a project where people calling didn't display the number, allowing you to quickly start typing notes. However, it is not very useful because it creates unstructured data inside the node.

• Integrating External Websites: You can add websites, which is quite useful if you need to integrate third-party information. In past projects, BI reports from a data warehouse or BI tool have been exposed to the internal network and added here. This lets you see reports of a BI software that goes much deeper than the charts or reports you can do within the CRM. This functionality is also very useful if you have to integrate external services or microservice architecture components.

   

Step 3: Organising with Tabs and Column Structure

To avoid clutter, you can use additional tabs on your dashboard. These tabs can be organised per role, per department, or per process.

A. Creating Role-Specific Dashboards (Tabs)

It makes sense to build out different tabs for different roles.

1. Add a New Tab: Name the tab based on the function, such as "Sales Dashboard" or "Marketing Dashboard".
2. Populate the Tab: For a sales dashboard, charts like the "Sales Pipeline" and the outcome per month make a lot of sense. For a marketing dashboard, you might want a report showing "Leads per Day". This allows the marketing department to monitor if a campaign is successful, manage data quality, and identify potential issues, such as a broken website lead integration into the CRM system.
3. Role Organisation: Building different dashboards for roles like sales, marketing, customer support, project management, and the COO gives a quick, real-time overview of what is happening inside the company.

B. Adjusting the Number of Columns

You can change the number of columns on a tab (e.g., to one, three, four, or five). This is important because some data displays are wider, while others are very narrow.

Troubleshooting: Performing a Hard Reset

If your dashboard organization becomes unusable, or if you run into problems, such as a very large or complicated report preventing the whole dashboard from loading, you can reset the configuration. This has happened in several projects already.

1. Go to Edit Profile: Navigate to your user profile settings by going to "edit your profile".
2. Find the Reset Button: On the top right, locate and click the button labelled "Reset Homepage".
3. Confirm and Reset: The system will ask for confirmation. Once confirmed, everything reverts back to the standard setup, and all custom tabs are gone.
4. Rebuild: This functions as a hard reset. You can then build up the report structure again according to your needs.

Conclusion

By correctly setting up your dashboard with targeted dashlets, appropriate filters, and role-based tabs, you gain quick insight into the most important things you need to focus on right now. This provides real-time insight into your company as you have never had before with unstructured tools, like Excel files.