Chapter 4

Grabbing Hold of the Dashboard

In This Chapter

Choosing your personal preferences

Adding portlets to your dashboard

Setting up your portlets

It’s time to make NetSuite your own. Personalizing your suite can make your workday more productive and more enjoyable. You can organize your dashboard and put your most important data right at your fingertips.

Your home dashboard and overview screens are broken up into small, customizable windows called portlets. Portlets summarize critical business metrics and are specific to your role. For example, if you’re logged in as a Sales Person, the Leads Dashboard displays a list of leads that belong to you and a set of links to common tasks.

You can add and remove portlets, drag and drop portlets to move them to new locations, and alter the content each portlet displays. Put your most important data right at your fingertips, whether you’re a sales person who wants a list of leads or a billing manager who wants a list of overdue accounts.

There is much more to know about customization, of course; see Bonus Chapter 4 (at www.dummies.com/go/netsuitefd) for more information on customization and Chapter 20 for a deeper dive on dashboards.

Being Privy to Different Portlets

Not all users are created equal. Even if you’re a sales person surrounded by 100 other sales people, you may have different needs and expectations than the rest of the team. You may only want the list of your hottest leads on your Home tab, while your coworker wants to load his Home tab with every possible option, including KPIs, report snapshots, and daily phone calls.

NetSuite dashboards provide ultimate flexibility in organizing your workspace. Setting up your dashboard to meet your individual needs is one of the most important and effective ways to ensure success in NetSuite and to give you an edge over your competition.

NetSuite offers many kinds of portlets so you can display the data you need:

Activities: Shows daily and upcoming activities, with links to detailed activity records.

Custom Search: Shows the results of a saved search. Custom search portlets display three columns of data when placed in the right or left (skinny) columns of a dashboard, and eight columns when placed in the center (wide) column of your dashboard. See Chapter 3 for more on saved searches.

Lists: Shows the type of records you choose with links to view (and edit, if you have permission) individual records.

Key Performance Indicators: Shows summary data and key business metrics, with options to highlight results that don’t meet defined thresholds, and to show comparisons between date ranges. As shown in Figure 4-1, the KPI portlet brings your critical business data to the forefront of the dashboard.

No matter what role you use or what job function you serve, you’ll want at least one KPI on your dashboard. If none of the standard KPIs meet your needs, you can create custom KPIs using saved searches. (Creating custom KPIs is covered in Chapter 20.)

KPI Meters: Shows a graphical meter of KPI data, with options to flag metrics that meet a specific threshold and to compare across date ranges.

KPI Scorecard: KPI scorecards can provide complex comparisons among multiple KPIs over multiple date ranges or accounting periods. Scorecards also can include Excel-like formulas with KPIs and functions in their expressions.

Figure 4-1: Find critical business data in the Key Performance Indicators portlet.

What’s the difference between KPIs, KPI meters, and KPI scorecards?

• KPIs show a quick table of key performance indicators that you select. The table includes the KPI name, the period being compared (this month versus last month, for example), the current value, the previous value, and the percentage change. This portlet provides a quick overview of a number of KPIs.

• A KPI meter shows how you’re doing on a particular KPI. Maybe you’re a customer support representative who shouldn’t have more than ten cases open at any one time.

• KPI scorecards are powerful analytical tools that are mainly used by managers to monitor the relationships among KPIs. They can watch the company’s fiscal health, for example. This isn’t your average Joe’s “How am I doing this week?” kind of a KPI tool, in other words.

Quick Date Selector: Shows a drop-down list of time period comparisons. Your selection from this drop-down list resets the date ranges for all dashboard portlet content. Does your dashboard show results for the last month? Change the dates in this drop-down list and you can change all the dashboard portlets to year-to-date values, for example. Choices include comparisons like This Week versus Last Week.

Reminders: Shows reminders of upcoming and overdue tasks such as outstanding bills, overdue calls, and items that need to be ordered.

Report Snapshots: Shows a graphical summary of a report’s data, with a link to view the underlying report. The summary can be displayed as a bar graph, pie chart, or list. If none of the standard report snapshots meet your needs, you can create a custom report snapshot and display it in this portlet. (Creating custom report snapshots is covered in Chapter 20.)

RSS/Atom Feed: You can publish information from news sources on your dashboard. By default NetSuite offers feeds from CNN, Reuters, Yahoo!, CBS Market Watch, and more. In addition to the predefined feeds, you can display custom RSS feeds from other sites or create a custom feed to publish messages to users of your NetSuite account. To stop a feed, click the X in the upper-right corner of the portlet.

Shortcuts: Shows links to selected pages so you can navigate quickly to frequently used pages. You can edit the default shortcuts or create your own from scratch.

Trend Graphs: Shows a line graph of KPI data trended over a time-based X-axis. Custom KPIs based on a saved search can also be displayed.

Figure 4-2 shows a dashboard with several portlets enabled.

Figure 4-2: This dashboard shows business data.

Adding, Subtracting, and Moving Portlets

Dashboards in NetSuite are a lot more malleable than the dashboard in your car. You can customize the page by adding, hiding, or repositioning portlets. Don’t try this at home with your speedometer.

Adding and removing portlets

To expose the Add Content pane, click the Personalize Dashboard link in the upper-right corner of your dashboard. For a description of what a portlet looks like and the data it displays, roll your cursor over its label in the Add Content pane. An enhanced tooltip box appears with a graphical representation and a brief description, as shown in Figure 4-3.

The Add Content pane shows the portlets available to you, organized in folders. All roles will see a Standard Portlets folder; only roles with the appropriate permissions will see the Report Snapshots and Trend Graphs folders.

1. Click Personalize Dashboard.

The option is available on every dashboard.

2. Drag the portlet you want from the Add Content pane to the dashboard location where you want it to live.

You can also click the portlet in the Add Content pane to add that portlet to the top row of your dashboard.

Figure 4-3: Add portlets via the Add Content pane.

Your administrator can create and publish specific content to a dashboard. If your administrator has published a specific dashboard for you and locked down the content, you can’t add, remove, or set up your portlets. Published dashboards are covered in Chapter 21.

Removing a portlet really means hiding it: Click the X in the upper-right corner of the portlet.

Positioning portlets

Repositioning, removing, and minimizing portlets are as easy as clicks of a mouse. All portlets allow you to these basic actions, as shown by the crossed arrows when you hover over the portlet. Figure 4-4 shows the Shortcuts portlet being dragged to a new location.

Reposition by drag and drop: To move a portlet into a new position, simply click and drag its title bar. Some portlets, such as Report Snapshots and Custom Searches, expand to show more data when they’re in the wide center column.

Minimize/maximize a portlet: You can minimize portlets so they’re easily accessible but don’t take up space on your dashboard. Minimizing also reduces the time your dashboard takes to load. When a portlet is minimized, you only see the title bar that displays the portlet name.

Maximize and minimize via the icon in the upper-right corner of the portlet. When you want to minimize, click the minus sign (−) icon. When you want to maximize, click the plus sign (+).

Figure 4-4: You can drag and drop a portlet when you want to reorganize.

Customizing Portlets

Most portlets allow you to control the displayed data and how it’s formatted. Click Set Up (shown in Figure 4-5) at the bottom of a portlet to expose a setup window with all of the available options.

Report Snapshot, Trend Graph, List, and Custom Search portlets are empty until you click Set Up and choose the content you want to see. Other portlets have data by default (examples include your calendar or your reminders).

Figure 4-5: Click Set Up to modify the contents of your portlets.

Portlets generate their content when you first log in. If you think the data has changed, click the Refresh icon (circular arrows) in the top right of the portlet to see the most recent information.

Comparing between dates

The Quick Date Selector lets you change the dates for everything in your dashboard at once. To compare periods, choose a comparison option from the Quick Date Selector drop-down list, such as This Qtr vs Last Qtr or This Qtr vs Same Last Year. On the other hand, you can keep it recent with Today vs Yesterday.

Flagging metrics that meet a threshold

The Key Performance Indicators portlet provides an easy way to show you how to flag metrics that exceed (or fall below) a given threshold.

To flag results that fall over or under your desired threshold:

1. In the upper-right corner of the Key Performance Indicators portlet, click the down arrow and choose Set Up.

The Set Up Key Performance Indicators screen appears.

2. Click Add Standard KPIs.

The Choose Standard Key Performance Indicators window appears.

3. Select a key performance indicator.

4. From the Highlight If drop-down list, choose Greater Than or Less Than.

5. In the Threshold field, enter a value that you want to monitor.

6. Click Save.

The dashboard refreshes to display the current value for the Key Performance Indicator. If the value for the KPI exceeds the threshold, a flag appears.

See the icon on the right side of your key performance indicator? That is the Refresh button. See the icon to the left of it? Click it to display a trend graph.

Display custom RSS feeds

Display custom RSS feeds from other sites with these steps:

1. Choose Personalize Dashboard.

The Add Content Pane appears.

2. Select RSS/Atom Feed.

An RSS feed (that an admin has set up) is added to your dashboard.

Create shortcuts

The Shortcuts portlet includes shortcuts to all your favorite pages. So if you enter purchase orders all day, you can go straight to that screen (or any other of your favorite screens).

To add a shortcut to the shortcuts portlet (which is displayed by default):

1. Go to the page you habitually visit.

2. In the upper-left corner of the page, select Add to Shortcuts from the star drop-down menu.

An Add Shortcut windows appears.

3. Click Save.

A link to this page is added to your shortcuts portlet.