Scoping dashboards around audience, questions and actions
How a consultant turns a dashboard request into scoped requirements: personas and the path of inquiry, which requests to keep, where priority content and filters go, how to avoid clutter, and how to validate the design with users and a final checklist.
Given business requirements, scope, validate, and prioritize dashboard design requirements.
~8 min read · 12 practice questions ·
What the exam expects
- Scope a dashboard request by identifying the audience, the decisions they make and the order in which they ask questions, before choosing charts or a look.
- Prioritise requested widgets and decide which to keep, cut, or move to a linked dashboard or a progressively disclosed view.
- Place priority content and filters on the canvas, adapting the reading-order rule to the audience's language and attention.
- Validate the design before and after building: sketches, user review, Chatter feedback and the final checklist.
- Split content across dashboard pages and choose how viewers move between them.
- Recognise when a requirement calls for action from the dashboard (update a record, start a flow) rather than more information.
Key terms: persona (a defined user of the dashboard: role, goals, decisions, familiarity, device); path of inquiry (the Monitor, Investigate, Act stages users move through); progressive disclosure (showing essentials first and detail only on request); container widget (a widget that frames and sections related elements); link widget (a widget that navigates to another dashboard, page or asset).
Key facts
- Detail
- Purpose, then structure, then surface; look and feel last
- Detail
- Role and goals, decisions and questions, familiarity, frequency and device
- Detail
- Monitor, Investigate, Act, each flowing into the next
- Detail
- Task-driven for one or two audiences; persona-driven for three or more
- Detail
- Drill in, selection-driven navigation, expand and collapse, tooltips, detail panels
- Detail
- By device properties set on each layout, not by user
- Detail
- Up to 20 per dashboard; filters and selections can be shared
- Detail
- Row actions update records; buttons start flows, run mass actions, navigate
Sources for this section (6)
- Dashboard Best Practiceshelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Design for Your Audiencehelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Progressive Disclosurehelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Layout Ruleshelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Create Dashboard Pageshelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Make Dashboards Actionablehelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Which four attributes does Help say to define for each dashboard persona?
- When should an app's dashboards be grouped by task rather than by persona?
- Why should every action on a dashboard be tied to the path of inquiry?
- When does Help say progressive disclosure is the right tool?
- When do mobile users lose the ability to swipe between dashboard pages?
The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.
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