Business Intelligence & Data Analysis : 2014

Dashboards in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013

Dashboards

Dashboards in Microsoft Dynamics CRM provide an overview of business data ‒ actionable information that is viewable across the organization. Create dashboard components that help you find and analyze important data.

You can create two types of dashboard:

User dashboards. An individual user owns a user dashboard. It can be assigned to other users or teams. A user dashboard can be set as the default dashboard for individual users. A user dashboard overrides the system dashboard for the user.

System dashboards. A system dashboard is available to all users in the organization, and can be set as the default dashboard for the organization. Importing, exporting, or uninstalling a solution applies the relevant actions on the dashboards.

Dashboards collect your organization’s most important information in one place, in an easy-to-read format. Use a dashboard to gain insight in real time, and then take appropriate action.

Components of Dashboard :

Chart: Graphical representation of a particular set of data. Records returned by the view of the entity type can be totalled or listed within a pie, bar, funnel or line grap

List/Grid: Allows insertion of individual views of entities into the Dashboard, such that multiple different entities and/or views can be displayed to the user as a single view of the CRM Areas that relate to them

iframe: Use an iframe to display a webpage or to run a web app. You can use an iframe to refer to sources outside your domain

Web resource: Use a web resource to display an HTML page or an image, or to run a Silverlight application or JavaScript code. Web resources are stored on a Microsoft Dynamics CRM server.

Dashboarding Capabilities

Embed reports inside dashboards using iFrame
Enable security roles
Set default dashboards to display
Customize width & height of each component
Share dashboards with other users
Drill down a chart inside dashboard
Mobile dashboards

A Sample Dashboard in CRM with 6 components

Different states of Opportunity, Quote, Order and Invoice in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Sales Process

1. When we create a new opportunity, it goes in Open state as shown in image below

2. When we create a quote from opportunity, the quote goes in Draft state. Click Activate Quote to make it active

3. Once clicked on activate quote, it goes in Active state. From this we have option to create order from this quote or close the quote into Closed state

4. When we click create order, we close the quote with state as Won and also we have the option to close the opportunity as Won or leave as it is

5. At this stage the order is in Active state. Here we can either cancel order so that it goes in Cancelled state or create invoice from this order

6. Once clicked on create invoice, it goes in Active state and we have the option to cancel invoice (Cancelled state) or invoice paid (Paid state)

7. Assuming we fulfilled the order and paid the invoice, the state for order changes to Fulfilled and invoice to Paid

8. Similarly we can check the final states of Opportunity, Quotes and Orders

The overall process can be explained with the help of diagram as follows:

Capabilities of Charts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

Different Capabilities of Charts in CRM

Here we have a basic chart which shows Estimated Revenue from Opportunity v/s Total Amount from Order. Then later we will modify the XML to show its charting capabilities.

1. We will modify the title of both the axis as well as of legend and will remove the label from the top of column. Also will increase the font size for overall chart. The output chart after modification is as shown below

2. We will combine the multi series chart to create a single series chart and will change the color palette to make it look different. Palette color here is Bright.

3. Now we will make the chart more readable and attractive by modifying the label and arrow style.

Also will with the margin to make it more understandable.

4. We can also break the scale of a chart when it contains higher range values. Also we can step the label to a particular degree (here 45 degree) to make text adjustable and readable. Here we change the Palette color to Pastel.