Dashboards
A dashboard is a single screen that visualises the answers your reports produce. It is built from components, and every component is backed by a source report — a dashboard cannot show data that a report does not already return. That coupling is the key mental model: to change what a dashboard shows, you change or add the underlying report.
Each component gets a visualisation: bar, column, line, donut, funnel, gauge, metric (a single big number), or table. You pick the chart that fits the question — a bar chart to compare pipeline by stage, a metric for total open pipeline, a line for a trend over time. Components are arranged on a grid, and because each one points at a saved report, a viewer can click through from the chart straight to the underlying rows.
One setting deserves special attention: the running user. A dashboard displays data according to the record access of its running user, not the person viewing it. With a fixed running user, everyone sees the same numbers (useful for a leadership scoreboard). With a dynamic dashboard, it runs as the logged-in viewer, so each person sees only their own data — ideal for "My Team's Pipeline" style dashboards. Choosing wrongly here is a common cause of "why can this person see that data?" incidents, so it is worth understanding precisely.
Dashboards refresh on demand or on a schedule you configure, and can email a snapshot to subscribers. Like reports, they live in folders whose sharing controls visibility.
As an exercise, take the Opportunities-by-Stage report from the previous lesson and build a dashboard with a bar chart of that report plus a metric component showing total pipeline. Set the running user and place it on a Home page. Reports and dashboards together let leaders steer the business — but only the right people should see the underlying records, which is exactly what the next lesson on security covers.
