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Utilizing CRM Charts and Dashboards

Microsoft Dynamics CRM comes with many bells and whistles that just aren't utilized. Even when you first open your CRM Online instance, you are immediately taken to the Dashboards area. We have numerous clients who wish to create new charts and dashboards for both management and users. However, sometimes the data they are looking for is already available--if you know how to get to it.

So what exactly are we missing here? Drill-downs and Grid Views. So many times management wants to see data in a chart that is already available if they drill down into a top level chart. Let's take a look at the basic, out-of-the-box funnel chart that comes in the standard CRM online implementation.

This funnel chart encompasses all of the open opportunities in CRM. Looking at the legend, you can see what stages are being displayed and the dollar amounts for each.

But what if we want to look at these by Estimated Close Date? No need to create a new chart for the dashboard. We can just drill down to that level.

If we click anywhere on the chart, we will see a small box which allows us to select a drill-down field as well as a chart type for displaying the new data.

Please keep in mind that we clicked on the "Develop" section of the funnel chart. So our drill-down chart will consist of only that data.

DrillDown Options

In this example, I have selected Estimated Close Date. This will drill down into the data and show me my opportunities in a new chart based on the Month of the Estimated Close Date.

Select Field

You can now see the open Opportunities in the "Develop" stage by Month of the Estimated Close Date. This offers a better picture into your funnel and the time-frame for your pipeline.


We can now take this one step farther and drill-down into a particular month's data and show us the opportunities by Owner. We once again click on a bar of the chart, choose our drill-down field and chart type and click the blue arrow to see our new chart.

By Owner Options2

Select Owner

Being that this is sample data, we only see one owner within that Month. But you get the idea.

And now, if we want to actually see the data behind the chart, we can click on the Grid View icon in the upper right-hand corner. This will give us our list of records related to the chart. Keep in mind that you can do this at any time while drilling down.

By Owner

After clicking the Grid View icon, we now see a list of the records associated to our chart on the left as well as the chart to the right of the list. This actually opens up in a new screen or tab allowing you to close and go back to your chart in your dashboard.

One final thing that is sometimes overlooked is the navigation buttons at the bottom of each chart. These allow you to navigate back to the last drill-down chart or you can choose to go "Home" to the original chart in the dashboard.

So before you start creating new charts and dashboards, see if you can Drill-Down to get the data you need.

Beringer Associates, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is always here to provide expert knowledge in topics like these. Please contact us with any questions you may have.


theProfessor

theProfessor

Rob is the CTO of Beringer Technology Group, and focuses his efforts on software development, cloud engineering, team mentoring and strategic technical direction. Rob has worked with Beringer since 2005, and has influenced every department from Development, Security, Implementation, Support and Sales. Rob graduated with his MBA from Rowan University in 2012, earned his Bachelors of Computer Science in 1997, and is current with several Microsoft technical certifications. Rob is very active, and loves to mountain bike, weight train, cook and hike with his dog pack.