Choosing dashboards for each role

The home dashboard is the screen your team sees most. Get it right and a technician opens Suprata to their next visit with directions, a salesperson to their goal and the estimates to chase, and you to the money. Get it wrong and people learn to ignore it.

You don't have to set anything up for it to work. Every role starts on a dashboard chosen from what that role can do. This article is about the five minutes it takes to make that choice deliberate.

The one rule that makes this safe

A dashboard never shows anything a person's permissions don't allow. Each widget belongs to a feature. Revenue widgets need Revenue, Sales & Billing Reports, the tickets widget needs a ticket permission, and so on. If someone's role doesn't have that permission, the widget isn't on their dashboard, isn't in their Add widgets list, and isn't in the summary line under their name.

So the settings below can only take things away. Putting a technician on the Owner dashboard does not show them revenue. They get the Owner layout with every money widget missing. If you want someone to see a number, give their role the permission for it, on the role's Access tab.

First: what kind of business are you?

Before any role, Suprata needs to know what your business mostly does, because that decides which set of dashboards your roles choose from. An owner of a heating and cooling company and an owner of a campground both want an Owner dashboard, but they want different things on it. One wants today's jobs and the estimates out for approval. The other wants tonight's occupancy and today's arrivals. Neither wants the other's numbers taking up the top of the page.

Open Administration → Company → Dashboards → What your business does. There are four kinds of business:

Three dashboards come with every kind of business: Accounting, Customer Service and My Day.

Pick your main kind, then tick anything you also do. A repair shop that also sells maintenance plans picks Service & jobs and ticks Memberships & subscriptions. Its dashboards stay service dashboards, with a row about plans and renewals added underneath, and the membership dashboards become available to offer to a role.

Until you choose, Suprata works it out from what you've billed over the last six months. Something has to be a real share of your billing to count, so one stray booking doesn't turn a repair shop into a rental business. The page shows what it worked out. If that's right, leave it on Detect automatically.

Changing your main kind of business moves everyone at once. Every role, and everyone's own choice, moves to the matching dashboard in the new set. An owner stays on an Owner dashboard and a front desk on a front desk one. People keep their own arrangement of each dashboard. A role whose job doesn't exist in the new kind of business, like a field technician at a rental business, moves to My Day.

Step 1: Pick each role's default dashboard

Open Administration → Team → User Roles, choose a role, and open its Dashboard tab.

A line at the top says what your company is set up as, with a link to change it. Default dashboard is where people with this role start. The first option, Automatic, shows what it would pick today: "Right now: Field Technician — picked from what this role can do". Automatic is a good choice for most roles. It follows the role: give it Edit Company Settings and it moves to Owner, take that away and it moves back.

Pick a specific dashboard when Automatic gets it wrong, or when you want it fixed regardless of permissions. The list is grouped: your main kind of business first, then anything you also do, then the dashboards every business has. What each is built for:

If your company does more than one kind of business, the names say which set a dashboard belongs to, for example Owner · Reservations.

People who hold several roles get the most senior of their roles' dashboards (Owner first, My Day last).

Step 2: Offer other dashboards where they help

Under Also available to this role, tick any other dashboards its people may switch to. They pick from the menu at the top of their dashboard, and Suprata remembers their choice.

They can also tick Save for this device, so the computer at the counter opens on Front Desk while the one at their desk opens on Accounting. Untick everything and the role stays on its default.

Good combinations:

• Owner: add Accounting and Sales. The owner who closes the books at month-end and still sells won't want to rebuild a dashboard each time.
• Office manager: default Operations Manager, add Customer Service and Accounting.
• Front desk at a rental business: default Front Desk, add My Day for the phone.
• Lead technician: default Field Technician, add Dispatcher for the mornings they run the board.

Step 3: Switch off widgets you'd rather a role didn't have

Below the dashboards is Widgets. It lists every widget this role can have, grouped by area, with a switch on each. Turn one off and nobody with this role sees it, even if they go looking in Add widgets.

Everything the role can't have is folded underneath, under Not available to this role. Each one says why: it needs a permission the role doesn't have, it isn't in your plan, it isn't set up yet, or it's switched off for everyone. Tick a permission on the Access tab and the widgets it unlocks move up into the main list straight away.

The switch people reach for first is the Sales leaderboard. Salespeople can see each other's monthly numbers on it. Many teams like that. If yours doesn't, switch it off for the Sales role and keep Me vs the team, which compares each person with the team average without naming anyone.

If someone holds two roles and one of them has a widget switched on, they get it. Roles add up, the same way permissions do.

Step 4: Change a dashboard for everyone, or make your own

The dashboards Suprata comes with are a starting point. If your owners all want Who owes the most near the top, or your front desk never looks at the waiting list, change the dashboard once for everyone instead of asking each person to rearrange theirs.

To change one: open Administration → Company → Dashboards → Change or make dashboards, find it under The standard dashboards and choose Change. You can also open it from your own dashboard's menu: Change Owner for everyone. The dashboard opens in edit mode with a banner saying you're changing it for everyone:

• Add, remove, move and resize widgets exactly as you would on your own dashboard. Add widgets lists everything your plan includes, not just what you can see yourself. You're building it for other people.
• A widget your own role can't see appears as Hidden from you. That's expected. The people it's for will see their numbers there.
• Nothing is saved until you choose Save for everyone. Discard throws your changes away.
• Put back the original returns a changed dashboard to the way it comes. The Company page marks every dashboard you've changed.

To make a new one: choose New dashboard on the same page, give it a name, and start from any existing dashboard or from blank. It opens in edit mode. Add the widgets and choose Save for everyone. Use Name & look to give it a description (people see it when choosing dashboards), an icon and a colour. Then give it to roles: on a role's Dashboard tab it's listed first, under Made by your company, as a default or as one its people can switch to. While editing any dashboard, Save as new keeps the original as it was and saves what's on screen as a new dashboard.

A typical example: a small office where one person answers the phone and books the work. Start a new dashboard from Service Counter, add Waiting to be scheduled and Unread texts, call it "Front office", and make it the default for the Office role.

Who sees the change. Everyone who uses the dashboard and hasn't arranged their own copy sees it on their next visit. Someone who has rearranged theirs keeps their own arrangement until they choose Reset, which brings them to your new version. Permissions still apply: putting Revenue this month on the Front office dashboard shows it only to people whose role can see revenue.

Deleting a dashboard you made sends the roles that used it back to the company default, and the people who'd picked it back to their role's dashboard.

Step 5: Check it before anyone signs in

Every role has a Preview dashboard button. It opens the dashboard exactly as someone with only that role sees it: their layout, their widgets, their summary line. A yellow banner tells you you're previewing, and nothing you change there is saved. The "my" widgets (my sales, my visits) show your own numbers, since nobody else is signed in.

Do this for every role you change. It takes ten seconds and it's the only way to be sure.

Company settings: Administration → Company → Dashboards

This page holds the settings that aren't about a single role.

• Roles without a dashboard get: keep it on Automatic unless you want every unassigned role on one dashboard, for example My Day for a company that would rather start simple.
• Let people switch between the dashboards their role offers: turn this off and everyone stays on their role's default, whatever's ticked under Also available.
• Goals: the company's monthly revenue goal, monthly sales goal, a per-person sales goal, new jobs and new customers each month, and a daily revenue goal. Leave the daily goal blank and it's the monthly goal spread over the month. Underneath, Personal monthly sales goals lets you give each salesperson their own number; anyone left blank uses the per-person goal. Goal widgets fill up through the month and show where you should be by today.
• What your business does: your main kind of business and anything you also do. See the first section. Saving a change reloads the page, since every dashboard list on it changes.
• Off for everyone: a widget switched off here is gone for the whole company, whatever any role says.

Common mistakes

• Switching off widgets one by one to get rid of another industry's numbers. If your Owner dashboard is full of occupancy and you don't rent anything, your kind of business is wrong, not the widgets. Fix it under What your business does and every dashboard changes at once.
• Ticking everything under "Also does". Each one adds rows to every dashboard. Tick what's a real part of your business, not what you might try one day.
• Using the dashboard to hide something sensitive. Switching off a widget hides it from the dashboard only. The reports and pages behind it still open for anyone with the permission. If someone shouldn't see revenue, remove Revenue, Sales & Billing Reports from their role.
• Asking everyone to rearrange their own dashboard. If the whole team wants the same change, make it once with Change … for everyone. Their own arrangements stay theirs.
• Expecting a change for everyone to reach people who've arranged their own. It won't until they choose Reset. Tell them when you've changed something they'll want.
• Putting everyone on Owner "so they see everything". They won't see more, only a longer page with gaps where money used to be. Give each role the dashboard built for its job.
• Setting goals nobody will hit. A ring that's always far behind pace gets ignored by week two. Set the monthly goal you'd be pleased with, not the one you'd brag about.
• Forgetting the per-person goals. With none set, every salesperson is measured against the same per-person number. Give your senior and junior sellers their own.
• Skipping the preview. It's the only way to see what a role actually gets, without guessing from the permission list.

Related: Your home dashboard · When to create a custom role · The permission catalog