Organising reports into categories and dashboards
Categories file reports so they can be found. Dashboards pin them so they do not have to be. They solve different halves of the same problem, and an account with many reports wants both.
Categories
Section titled “Categories”Where they are
Section titled “Where they are”Choose Admin, then Categories in the left-hand menu and Report categories. They are separate from course categories, which live beside them and do a different job.
Creating one
Section titled “Creating one”Choose New report category and name it. The list shows how many reports each holds.
That count is the thing to watch. A category holding nothing is clutter; a category holding forty is a category that needed splitting a while ago.
Filing a report
Section titled “Filing a report”A report’s category is set on the report itself rather than here. Anything unfiled appears under Uncategorized in the Reports list, which doubles as your list of tidying to do.
Dashboards
Section titled “Dashboards”What they are for
Section titled “What they are for”A dashboard pins saved reports onto one named screen, so the numbers that matter are one click away rather than four.
A default dashboard changes where Reports opens. With one set, the section redirects straight to that dashboard instead of showing the report list — which is the difference between a team that checks the numbers and a team that means to.
Creating one
Section titled “Creating one”New dashboard sits at the top of the Dashboards section, and an account with none offers Create your first dashboard in its place.
Build the reports first. A dashboard pins reports that already exist, so there is nothing useful to do here until there is something to pin.
What to put on one
Section titled “What to put on one”Pin what somebody acts on, not what is interesting. A dashboard of six numbers that change a decision beats twenty that get skimmed — and anything nobody has acted on in a month is a candidate for unpinning.
Sharing a dashboard also gives view access to every report pinned on it, which you are asked to confirm separately — and each viewer still sees only the rows their own visibility allows, exactly as with a shared report. Both rules are set out in Sharing reports.
A dashboard is reachable by its owner, by anybody it is shared with, and by administrators with account-wide access.
Which to reach for
Section titled “Which to reach for”| You want | Use |
|---|---|
| A report to be findable by subject | A category |
| A number to be looked at regularly | A dashboard |
| A number to arrive without anybody looking | A schedule |
The third is the one people forget. If a report only matters monthly, nobody needs it pinned — they need it emailed.