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Chapter
3
The Manage Dashboard
Screen
37
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Oracle CRM On Demand Dashboards
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Chapter 3: The Manage Dashboard Screen

here are a few prerequisites to creating a dashboard in Oracle CRM On
Demand. You will have, by this point, determined that a dashboard is
the correct solution to fill your reporting need. You will have a plan for
what you want to include on that dashboard and will know who will be
using it and how. Of course, you should also have the reports you
developed and saved in Oracle CRM On Demand that you intend to place on your
dashboard. This book will not do much to help you with this last prerequisite. If you
need a resource for developing reports in Oracle CRM On Demand, please stop here
and pick up a copy of Oracle CRM On Demand Reporting (McGraw-Hill, 2008).
In this chapter, you will read about the Dashboard tab in Oracle CRM On
Demand, particularly the Manage Dashboards page. If you access the Dashboard
tab in Oracle CRM On Demand and do not see the Manage Dashboard link at the
right end of the header just below the Help link, you are most likely missing the
Manage Dashboard privilege in your Role setup. Your system administrator can
assist you with this if you do not have access to update your role settings.

The Dashboard interface is simple. To access dashboards in Oracle CRM On
Demand, you open the Dashboard screen by clicking the Dashboard tab. Upon

bar just below the Select Dashboard field. This frame will contain scrollbars, both
vertical and horizontal, if the size of the dashboard is larger than the size of the
frame.
The other element on the Dashboard screen is a hyperlink to the Manage
Dashboards screen. The Manage Dashboards link, located on the right side of the
Dashboard header, is only visible if you have the Manage Dashboards privilege
enabled on your user role. If you do not see this link on the Dashboard screen,
contact your system administrator to have your user role modified. You will need to
sign out and sign back in to see the change.

When you click the Manage Dashboards hyperlink on the Dashboard tab, you
navigate to the Manage Dashboards screen, as shown in Figure 3-1. It is on this
screen that you will create new custom dashboards. Creating a new dashboard is a
two-step process. The act of creating the dashboard record is just the first step. The
design step is the second step, and is much more involved.
The elements on the Manage Dashboards screen include the New Dashboard
button, which, as the name implies, is used to create the dashboard record. Once a
custom dashboard exists in Oracle CRM On Demand, the other links on this screen
become active.
 Manage Dashboards screen
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Chapter 3: The Manage Dashboard Screen
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Below the Manage Dashboards header, you will see the dashboard name and
description of all of the custom dashboards. To the left of each dashboard name, you
will find an Edit link along with a drop-down menu containing the Delete and

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Chapter 3: The Manage Dashboard Screen

developers. The description that you enter here only shows up on the Manage
Dashboards screen, to which most of the users of your Oracle CRM On Demand
application probably have no access. All most users will ever see before actually
executing the dashboard is the dashboard name in the Select Dashboard field on the
Dashboard tab.
Once you have named, and optionally described, your dashboard on the
Dashboard Edit screen, click the Save button to save the dashboard record and
return to the Manage Dashboards screen. If you are creating multiple dashboards,
you also have the option of clicking the Save & New Dashboard button. This button
saves the current dashboard and brings you right back to the Dashboard Edit screen,
ready to create another dashboard record.
The Cancel button allows you to exit the Dashboard Edit screen without saving
or creating the dashboard record.
Back on the Manage Dashboards screen, after creating a new dashboard record,
you will see the newly created dashboard in the list of custom dashboards. To the
left of the dashboard name are the Edit link and the drop-down menu with the
Delete and Design options. The Edit link will bring you right back to the Dashboard
Edit screen, where you can change the name and description of the dashboard.

Inside the drop-down menu to the left of each dashboard listed on the Manage
Dashboards screen you will find a Delete link. The Delete link, as you might expect,
allows you to delete a dashboard record. Deleted dashboards do not appear in the
Deleted Items list like other records in Oracle CRM On Demand. This means that
once deleted, that dashboard is gone forever and cannot be recovered.
When you click the Delete link, you are presented with a confirmation dialog
box, so it does take two clicks to delete a dashboard.

split the dashboard page into multiple columns. Each column will have its own
Properties button and Delete button, allowing you to format each column
independently and remove columns from the layout.

Under the Dashboard Objects heading on the Dashboard Editor screen, we find five
objects that may be dragged onto the dashboard canvas. Each of these is covered in
great detail in Chapter 5 of this book. Here I provide a brief description of each.
 Dashboard Editor window
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Chapter 3: The Manage Dashboard Screen
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First is the Section object. Multiple sections may be added to your dashboard
and configured independently. A section is essentially a frame within the dashboard.
All of the other objects that you place on your dashboard will be positioned inside a
section. A number of options may be set for each section. Sections may be
collapsible, they may be displayed dynamically based on the results of a query
request, they may have their own title displayed and be formatted with borders, and
so forth.
The next object is the Link or Image object. This is a simple object that allows
you to display a hyperlink or image in your dashboard. This can be a link to another
report in Oracle CRM On Demand or any webpage URL.
The Text object allows you to add some static text to your dashboard. This may
be descriptive text, like we see in the prebuilt dashboards. You could include
anything here, from instructions on how to use the dashboard, to important phone
numbers, to a copyright statement.
The Folder object is an interesting one. This object allows you to embed a report


said earlier that a dashboard is a webpage that contains frames into
which you place reports and other dashboard objects. When you
created the dashboard record, as described in the previous chapter,
you created that webpage. At this point, your dashboard is empty. In
this chapter, I describe the process of configuring the dashboard by
setting the dashboard properties and configuring dashboard pages. I should point
out that the order of the remainder of this book is designed for your reference and
ease of finding information rather than implying an order to how you complete your
dashboard. Once you have created the dashboard record, which is an obvious first
step, the order in which you configure the elements on that dashboard is not terribly
important.

Across the top of the Dashboard Editor screen are a number of buttons that are used
to configure the dashboard page. Figure 4-1 shows these elements. The first button is
the Dashboard Properties button. You can identify this button by the pointing finger
icon; or, by hovering your mouse over the button, you will see the name of the
button in a tooltip. I am going to skip this button for now and move to the next
element.

Next up on the Dashboard Editor toolbar is the Page Selector. This field allows you
to select the page that you are designing on the Dashboard Editor screen. When you
initially create a new dashboard, that dashboard will contain only a single page
named “Page 1,” and this is what you see in the Page drop-down list field.
Your dashboard may contain many pages. The number of pages that can be
included in your dashboard is technically unlimited. Your dashboard may, however,
become unwieldy, reaching a practical limit, if you add too many pages.
I
 Dashboard Editor toolbar
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Chapter 4: Dashboard Pages and Properties

the user in fewer clicks. As technology continues to progress, a trend that I predict
will continue is the reduction of clicks. By putting multiple pages in your dashboard,
the user can access the dashboard and then be a single click away from the next
dashboard page. When we get to the topic of dashboard filter prompts, you will see
that a single prompt can affect one or all pages in the dashboard, further reducing the
number of clicks necessary to get to the dashboard data.
Another reason is for printing. Reports, as you know, are designed for presentation
on the computer screen more so than the printed page. Dashboards are often
designed to provide a high-level summary of sales and service data that is printed and
provided to executives, included in presentations, and even posted on bulletin boards
in the company break room. Dashboards can be designed for the printed page for this
purpose, but may require multiple pages to include the necessary data.
Similarly, the dashboard may contain reports from multiple subject areas and
display reports for multiple unrelated topics. That is the power of the dashboard. It
brings multiple reports from multiple subjects together in a single place. Sometimes,
this togetherness is desired for practicality, but as humans, we still have a need to
segment and organize, so we include multiple pages to separate our sales reports
from our service reports, for example. Whether it is a matter of usability, practicality,
or personal preference, the multipage dashboard is a popular and useful tool in
Oracle CRM On Demand.

The next button on the Dashboard Editor toolbar looks like a printer with a pointing
finger on top of it. This is the PDF and Print Control Properties button, and clicking
it opens the PDF and Print Control window shown in Figure 4-4. You will use this
window to adjust the way your dashboard pages print.
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Landscape. Again, this does not affect the appearance of the dashboard on the
screen, but rather changes the orientation of the dashboard elements on the printed
page.
The third setting here in the Page Settings section is the Print Rows option. You
can choose to print visible rows or all rows in the embedded reports. This setting
applies to reports with Table views that default to the first set of records and have
paging controls. For instance, a list of accounts may default to show only the first 25
records in the table. You have the option within the report to page through the
records 25 rows at a time or show all rows by clicking the Show All Pages button on
the table paging controls. If you open the report in an HTML-printer-friendly view,
you will see just the visible rows on the screen. This holds true regardless of the
setting in the Print Rows field. However, if you set the Print Rows field to All and
open the dashboard in PDF Printer Friendly view, you will see all of the rows in the
table, not just the first 25.
If you leave this setting at Visible, then the HTML and PDF Printer Friendly views
behave exactly the same. You will only see the visible rows in the printer-friendly view.
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Chapter 4: Dashboard Pages and Properties

If you want to print all rows, you would need to first display all of the rows in the table
before clicking the Printer Friendly link at the bottom of the dashboard.

The other section on the PDF and Print Control window is the Header And Footer
section. You have the option of including a header, footer, or both on your printed
dashboard. Including either a header or footer consists of two steps. First, click the
Include Header or Include Footer check box. Next to each check box field is an Edit

break symbol [br/] appears in the text field indicating the position of the line break.
The Insert field button gives you the ability to insert dynamic elements into your
header and footer, such as dates, times, and page numbers. The options available to
you from the Insert Field menu are Saved Name, Author Name, Date, Time, Page
Number, and Image. When you click one of these options, a bit of code is inserted
into the text field at the current cursor position. Table 4-1 describes these codes.
The Saved Name expression returns the name of the dashboard page. If you have
not added any pages to your dashboard, you will want to go ahead and rename the
dashboard page if you want something other than the default “Page 1” returned by
the Saved Name expression in your header or footer.
The Author Name expression actually returns the entire user sign-in ID for the
current user. This may not be the most desirable result, as the user ID actually
includes the company name prefix and the slash, which appears as a hash/pound
sign (#) in the results in your header or footer. It may be desirable to include it in the
footer, however, if you want to know who printed that dashboard left in the copier
or on the printer in the office.
The Date expression returns the date in month/day/year format. This format is not
editable. In other words, you cannot change the code to @{timeCreated[yy/mm/dd]}
to change the format to year/month/day.
The Time expression returns the time at which the dashboard was opened in
Oracle CRM On Demand. The data repository time is shown, which is not
 
Saved Name @{savedName}
Author Name @{authorName}
Date @{timeCreated[mm/dd/yy]}
Time @{timeCreated[hh::mm::ss]}
Page Number @{pageNumber}
Image @{fmap: …}
 Insert Fields for Dashboard Headers and Footers
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
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Chapter 4: Dashboard Pages and Properties
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Returning to the Edit Header or Edit Footer window, you find that there is a Clear
button to the right of the Insert Field button. This button will clear the entire header
or footer. Clicking this button removes all text and expressions entered into the five
text fields.
Next to each of the text fields, you find an Edit Format button. When you click
an Edit Format button, the Edit Format window opens, as shown in Figure 4-7. The
Edit Format window allows you to make decisions on the way the fonts and header
and footer sections appear on your dashboard. The font settings available here allow
you to set the font family, size, color, style, and effects. The default font is 10 point
Arial, and the default color is black with regular styling and no effects.
Your font options are Arial, Arial Black, Arial Narrow, Courier New, Garamond,
Lucida Sans Unicode, Microsoft Sans Serif, Times New Roman, Tahoma, and
Verdana. If your company has a standard font, you may want to select a font for
your dashboard header and footer that adheres to this standard.
To change the font color, click on the white box to open the color selector. You
can choose from 48 standard colors. Alternatively, if you know the six-digit
hexadecimal color code for your desired color, you can enter  and the six-digit
code in the field at the bottom of the color selector pop-up. You may also make your
font bold, italic, or both using the Style field. The available effects are underlined
and strikethrough. The difference between setting font styles here as opposed to the
tags discussed earlier is that settings applied here apply to the entire text block
rather than just the text inside the formatting tags. The format tags will take
precedence over formatting applied on the Edit Format screen.
 Blank dashboard with multiple columns
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There are three small icons in the upper-right corner of the Edit Format window.
The left icon, an eraser, resets all of the format settings to the default values. The
copy icon copies all of the settings so you can format another text block; click the
third icon, paste, to apply the same formats to the text block.
Click OK to apply the format changes to the text block. You will not see any of
the formatting back on the Edit Header or Edit Footer screen.
Finally, back on the Edit Header or Edit Footer screen, we find one last field: the
Display In Browser When Applicable check box. When you select this check box,
the header will appear on the dashboard in the Oracle CRM On Demand interface.
Footers only appear on a printed dashboard and not on the screen.
Click OK on the Edit Header or Edit Footer screen to apply the changes and
return to the Edit Dashboard screen.

The last button on the Edit Dashboard toolbar is the Add Column button. When you
first create your new dashboard or dashboard page, you have exactly one column in
your dashboard. You can add a column by clicking the Add Column button. The
new column appears as a light gray block to the right of the existing column.
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Chapter 4: Dashboard Pages and Properties
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 Column Properties window
Each of these column blocks contains a Properties button and a Delete button.
Figure 4-7 shows a blank dashboard page with multiple columns and breaks
between columns.
Each time you click the New Column button, an additional column area is
added to the dashboard to the right of the last column in the dashboard. You can

that the pages do break in the printed dashboard. This is extremely useful when you
want to display multiple charts on a dashboard on the computer screen but want to
print each chart on a separate page.
In Figure 4-7 I am showing a dashboard page with four columns. The Original
Column is in the upper-left corner. One click of the Add Column button gives us the
second column with No Break selected as the Break option. Another click of the
New Column button adds a third column to the right of this column. If you then add
a column break, this third column moves down to be a single column below the top
two columns. One more click of the New Column button adds a column to the right
of the third column. If you then add a page break with column break to this fourth
column, it moves down below the third column with a page break between the third
and fourth columns. This final state is what you see in the screenshot.

Let us return now to the first button on the Dashboard Editor toolbar. I saved the
Dashboard Properties button for the end of this chapter because the properties we
are modifying here affect all of the pages in the dashboard rather than each page
individually. When you click the Dashboard Properties button, the Dashboard
Properties window (see Figure 4-9) opens showing you two sections: General
Properties and Dashboard Pages.

The General Properties section of the Dashboard Properties window shows you the
path to the dashboard. There is nothing you can do here to change this path. It is
merely informational.
Also in this section of the Dashboard Properties screen is the Description field.
This is the same description that you may have entered when you created the
dashboard. You can update this description here as well.

The Dashboard Pages section is where you can modify page names, hide pages,
delete pages, and reorder pages in your dashboard. Keep in mind that we are
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