A dashboard is a dynamic board that can be populated with different lists of tasks,
projects,
or files based on specific criteria.
These lists are called widgets.
Information in the widgets gets updated in real time.
Dashboards help managers quickly understand what the team is currently working on
and see if anything is falling behind schedule.
Let’s have a look at how dashboards can help.
For example, Jessica is a marketing manager.
She wants a project dashboard to give her a high-level view of projects and a team dashboard
to provide details about the task progress made by team members.
Here’s how she would create them.
First and foremost, Jessica needs a project overview dashboard.
She clicks the “+ New Dashboard” button and titles her dashboard “Projects Dashboard.”
Initially, it's empty.
So she clicks the “+ New widget” button to add a widget.
There is a list of preset widgets she can choose from, or she can create a custom one.
She wants the first widget to show the current progress
across all projects for the month.
“Project widget” fits her needs, so she chooses it.
She gives it a name - ”Active projects this month”,
specifies where the projects will be pulled from (Marketing space)
and applies the necessary filters
status: all active;
finish date: this month.
With this widget, Jessica can immediately identify those projects that require her attention
by checking the progress bar color and completion percentage.
Then she can jump into any of those to get more details.
To take advantage of Project Progress functionality, you need to have a Business subscription
or higher and enable it for all your projects.
This high-level view will make it easier for her to report, discuss, and make decisions.
Let’s add the second widget.
In each project Jessica’s team works on, she specifies the milestones
to make sure everyone knows the important dates or events.
Proper management and monitoring of those stages help to prevent project delays.
This time, she clicks the plus button to add another widget and selects a custom one.
She titles it “Projects milestones,”
chooses Marketing space as the source,
and specifies the type of tasks
milestones
and the timeframe - this month.
With all the milestones in one place, she can easily check their status
and anticipate possible bottlenecks and delays.
It’s time now to add the last widget to this dashboard.
All the incoming project requests for Jessica's team first go through validation to check
if the information is complete and the request is ready to be worked on.
To make sure none of these requests get missed, Jessica will create a widget that shows her
all the incoming requests pending validation in real time.
She selects a projects widget again
and after giving it a title and specifying the location,
she goes to status filter and chooses the status “Validation stage”
from the projects custom workflow.
Custom workflows are available on Business subscriptions and higher.
This dashboard helps Jessica get a full picture of her team’s daily tasks
so she doesn’t have to distract team members by asking for updates.
Each team member’s tasks are broken into two widgets — Active tasks and Overdue.
This allows her to make sure that work is properly distributed between team members
based on their workload.
In a team meeting, she can drill down into the details and discuss possible challenges.
If she discovers that someone doesn’t have enough time to pick up the task
or is going to be out of office, she can easily reassign the task
by simply dragging it onto another person’s widget.
If you have the Wrike Resource add-on, you can manage such cases on the Workload chart.
With all the task details available on the team tasks dashboard, Jessica can see how
each team member is progressing with the tasks assigned and analyze how this will affect
the overall project progress.
Customize your own dashboards and see how easy they make it to stay on top of things
and manage work across multiple teams.