Building a useful dashboard takes more thought than dragging chart components onto a canvas. Plan the audience, the questions the dashboard answers, the underlying reports, and the filters before opening the builder. The best dashboards answer three to five specific questions cleanly rather than displaying everything you could possibly visualize.
- Identify the audience and the questions
List the people who will read the dashboard and the questions they are trying to answer. Sales VP looking at quarterly pipeline. Support manager tracking Case SLA. Marketing director measuring campaign ROI. Each audience needs different metrics and different time windows.
- Build the source reports first
Each dashboard component needs a source report. Build the reports before the dashboard. Confirm each report runs in under a few seconds with realistic data volumes. Slow reports produce slow dashboards.
- Create the dashboard
App Launcher > Dashboards > New Dashboard. Pick a folder for storage. Enter the dashboard label and description. The dashboard opens in the Lightning Dashboard Builder.
- Add components from the source reports
Drag the Component tile onto the canvas. Pick the source report, the visualization type, and any visualization-specific settings. The component preview updates live as you configure. Repeat for each metric you want to display.
- Set the running user
Dashboard Properties > Running User. Choose Specified User for executive dashboards where everyone sees the same data. Choose Logged-In User (dynamic) for personalized dashboards where each user sees their own slice.
- Add dashboard filters for time windows and segments
Dashboard Properties > Filters > Add Filter. Configure up to three filters per dashboard. Common filters: Close Date Range, Stage, Owner, Account Industry. Each filter cascades to every component that uses the filtered field.
- Schedule refresh and configure subscriptions
Dashboard > Subscribe button. Set refresh frequency (daily, weekly, monthly) and notification recipients. Schedule refresh during off-peak hours if the source reports scan large data sets.
- Share the dashboard folder
Dashboard Folder > Share > add users, groups, or roles with View or Manage access. Folder-level sharing controls who can see and modify the dashboard. Confirm permissions match the intended audience before announcing the dashboard.
Specified User for shared data context. Logged-In User for personalized per-viewer data. Dashboard Viewer for hybrid control.
Chart (bar, column, donut, line), gauge, metric, table. Pick to match the data shape and the question being answered.
Up to three filters that cascade to every component. Common patterns: time range, owner, segment, region.
- Dashboards do not auto-refresh when viewed. The rendered state caches until the next scheduled or manual refresh. Users seeing stale numbers is the leading dashboard support ticket.
- Running user choice has security implications. Specified User dashboards expose that user''s data access to every viewer; Logged-In User dashboards personalize but consume from the dynamic dashboard limit.
- Source reports that scan large data volumes can produce slow dashboard rendering or hit report timeout limits. Build selective reports first, then the dashboard.
- Lightning dashboards support 20 components max. Beyond that, build a second dashboard. Cramming too many components into one degrades readability and slows the load.
- Folder sharing controls dashboard visibility. Saving a dashboard to the wrong folder either hides it from the intended audience or exposes it to people who should not see it.