A dashboard is made of widgets, and each widget is a metric shown as a visualization with its own settings. Building a dashboard is choosing the right metrics and laying them out to answer one question.
Suggested dashboards#
Not sure where to start? The Insights page offers suggested dashboards — curated widget sets for a purpose: Finance Overview, Profitability Watch, Cash & Collections, Company Health, Sales Pipeline, Service Desk, Team Utilization, and Outbound (dials per day, connect and reply rates, what happened on each touch, and where every call block stands). Pick one and choose where it goes:
- A new dashboard — created and laid out in one click.
- An existing dashboard — either replace its widgets, or add alongside them (widgets whose metric is already on the board are skipped, so applying a template twice never duplicates anything).
Widgets for metrics you can't access are skipped automatically — a template never smuggles data past a permission.
You can also just ask Prox: it can build a dashboard from a template, lay out widgets, and share the result for you (see Sharing).
Adding widgets#
Use Add widget to browse the metrics catalog (grouped by area) and drop one onto the dashboard, or drag from the palette onto the grid. Each widget stores its settings — but never a fixed scope; scope is always re-derived from whoever's viewing (more on that in Metrics catalog).
Visualizations#
Each metric supports the visualizations that make sense for its shape, and you can switch between them inline with Show as…. The selectable types are:
- Number and value — a single headline figure. When a figure cannot be measured yet (nothing invoiced, no agreements, no activity in the period) the tile shows a dash and a line saying why, never a misleading 0; an empty chart shows the same explanation.
- Bar — compare across categories.
- Columns — the same comparison, vertical — available wherever Bar is.
- Donut — parts of a whole.
- Funnel — stages that narrow (a pipeline).
- Gauge — progress toward a target.
- List — the underlying records.
- Trend — change over time.
A metric only offers the visualizations that are honest for its data, so you can't accidentally misrepresent it.
Scope and date range#
Most metrics take parameters you set inline:
- Scope — mine, my team, or everyone — so the same metric can show your numbers, your team's, or the whole organization's.
- Date range — a preset: today, yesterday, this week, last 7 days, last 30 days, this month, last month, last 90 days, this quarter, this year or last 12 months. (Custom dates are available on reports, and on the dashboard's own period bar below, not on a single widget.)
Change these on a widget and it re-runs instantly with the new view.
Filter a dashboard by period#
Under the dashboard's title is a bar with two choices that apply to the whole dashboard at once.
- Period — starts at Each tile's own period, which leaves every widget on the date range it was set to. Pick a period such as Last month or Last quarter and every widget that follows the dashboard's period switches to it. Custom dates… opens a small window for a first and a last day (both are included, and the last day can't come before the first).
- Compare to — No comparison, Previous period or Same period last year. Number tiles say how far they moved ("+12% vs previous period"; if the earlier figure was zero they show the plain difference instead). Trend charts draw the earlier period as a dashed line, bar and column charts add a muted second bar for it, and tables add Previous and Change columns. Donut, funnel and gauge tiles don't draw a comparison, so their caption doesn't mention one.
A line under each widget's title says which dates it shows: the period's name, Shows its own period for a widget with a date range of its own (hover to see which), or As of now for a figure that is always about right now, such as open tickets. When a comparison is on, the caption adds "vs previous period".
What you pick is in the page's address, so you can reload it or send the link to a colleague and they see the same view. It is a view only: nothing changes for anyone else until you save it. Clear filters (or Back to saved, when the dashboard has saved filters) returns the page to how it was saved. On a phone the bar is a single Filters button that opens the same choices.
Clicking into a widget shows the records for the period you are looking at, so they match the number on the tile.
Save the filters#
People who can edit the dashboard also see a save button: Save for everyone on a shared dashboard (on My dashboard it is Save as my default). It saves the period and comparison you are looking at, and it stays greyed out until they differ from what is saved. After saving, everyone who opens the dashboard starts on those filters.
- Scheduled reports keep their own period. They use the period set on the report, not the dashboard's.
- Shared links keep the period they were made with. A new link is made with the filters you are looking at when you create it, and an existing link keeps them until the owner uses Re-publish, which takes the dashboard's current saved filters.
Arranging and drilling in#
- In customize mode (owner/editor), drag and resize widgets on the grid, and show or hide them. Hidden widgets aren't deleted — you can bring them back.
- Duplicate a dashboard to branch from it — the copy starts private (shares aren't copied).
- Drill into any widget to see the actual records behind the number, with deep links straight to those tickets, deals, invoices, or tasks.
Resilient by design#
Widgets survive change: if a metric is renamed or you lose access to it, the widget shows a clear "this metric is no longer available to you" tile rather than vanishing or erroring — so a dashboard never silently loses meaning.
Start from the question, pick the two or three metrics that answer it, choose the visualization that reads cleanest, and set the scope to the audience. A focused five-widget dashboard beats a cluttered twenty-widget one every time.