Data analytics have become increasingly important for business departments and modern cloud-based applications like Dynamics 365 continue to give users easy ways to visualize that data. Dynamics 365 Sales provides both sales managers and staff with insight dashboards right on the home screen. These customizable dashboards include charts, graphs, and lists related to sales data in Dynamics 365.

When salespeople log into Dynamics 365, the dashboard ensures they have all the information necessary to take the next step with their leads and opportunities. For management, dashboards can provide an overview of the entire sales team performance or more individual metrics to track staff one by one. Let’s walk through how these dashboards work for sales teams and how you can get started with them in your Dynamics 365 Sales instance right away.

Before we get into how these dashboards work, it’s important to note that the latest version of dashboards are on the Dynamics 365 unified interface. This past December, Microsoft automatically transitioned all Dynamics CRM Online instances to the unified interface. If you’re utilizing an on-premise instance of CRM or are an online client who isn’t aware of how the unified interface works, check out our blog on how to get started.

So how do these dashboards work? With the unified interface, sales dashboards utilize a multi-stream view where each “stream” shows a different entity. These entities can either be viewed as lists like all open opportunities for a specific salesperson sorted by date, or upcoming sales tasks. Records shown in these lists can be edited directly from the entity view stream meaning its easy for salespeople to take action from their home page without needed to navigate to another page.

Dashboards can also include visualizations like pie charts and funnel charts. These charts can provide a real-time look into specific metrics like opportunities by sales pipeline stage, or leads by current rating. These charts are completely interactive. If you click one piece of a pie graph chart, the other data streams will update to only include the records selected from the pie chart. To dive further into the data, global filters can be applied to limit data to specific ranges like dates, revenue, budget, purchase timeframe, and more.

Users aren’t stuck with a single dashboard. Users can create multiple sales dashboards that are easily accessible via the view selector on the dashboard page. This action works the same as selecting a different view on a list in Dynamics 365. While dashboards can be created for specific roles like manager or staff level, individual users can create their own dashboards to customize the data to best serve their needs.

So how do users go about creating a sales dashboard? On the dashboard window in Dynamics 365 sales, select New from the command bar. The system gives options for Power BI dashboards and Dynamics 365 dashboards.

Select Dynamics 365 to move forward with the dashboard. While this blog is focused on Dynamics 365 dashboards, check out our other blog on connecting Power BI to Dynamics 365 to take advantage of all the Power BI has to offer.

Next, choose the layout from the template list provided. The right-hand column provides a preview of how the dashboard will look. When you have the template selected, click Create.

A Power Apps window will open allowing you to build out the dashboard as you please. Each section includes six options including chart, list, assistant, iFrame, web resource, and Power BI tile. Clicking on one of the six icons will open a window to build out the visualization. For this chart section, I have chosen the leads entity, the open leads view, and leads by source campaign chart. Clicking add, will add it to the dashboard.

Dashboards in Dynamics 365 Sales provide both management and sales staff an easy way to keep track of sales operations. By customizing these dashboards to fit individual roles, sales teams can boost engagement rate and increase revenue.

Get started

Want help building out custom dashboards for your sales teams? Our Dynamics 365 team can help you design and implement data visualizations in Dynamics 365 with either native features or by setting you up with Power BI. Fill out the form below to schedule a call with our team and get started.