At Countly we know that data is the most important basis for actions to be taken and should not be displayed randomly. Each product manager’s business requirements are different and so are their key metrics and performance indicators. To help with this, the Dashboards plugin allows them to display the most crucial piece of information they need to track, all in customizable dashboard. 

Countly Dashboards Essentials

Here is a short video explaining why dashboards are important for your business and how Countly can help in this manner:

What are some of the reasons that dashboards are important for your business?

• They help you manage visually the complexity of running your company.
• They allow consolidating information from your organization or department.
• You can display crucial information from all applications (mobile, web, desktop, IoT, etc.) into one place.
• They allow you to get instant access to critical information, in real-time.
• They give you a clear picture of how your key projects are doing.
• They ultimately help you make the customer-driven development and make your customer happy.

For example, if you want to see the crash rate you are currently dealing with in your applications and the effected users, you can simply add a few widgets to the dashboard and see that information instantly:

Applicability

Depending on which events you track and which key metrics are critical for your business, practically there can be dozens of dashboard layouts to efficiently track your data. We prepared a couple of examples below.

Example: Mobile Application Dashboard

In this dashboard, you can instantly see how many push notifications you sent from your mobile app are turned into action, number of fatal crashes, and how many users are lost. In addition to this, you can instantly track the changes in the paying users and discover if there are any actions to take.

You can track the usage of your app drilled down by countries so you can manage your marketing activities more efficiently. As shown in the example above, this application is very popular in the US; therefore, you can increase your campaign effort in that region.

Example: Web Application Dashboard

This dashboard shows what is happening on your website and you can start taking actions aligned with this information.

In this specific example, you can track the users who have logged in, paid money, and successfully completed an event you have defined, all in a single graph. You can also see which languages your users use in their browser. Hence, if you have to localize to a particular language, you can kick-start this process right away.

You can track which pages are most viewed by visitors, the average view time for each page, and measure which pages get more new visitors.

Using Dashboards

Creating a Dashboard Step-by-Step

1. In order to create a dashboard, click Dashboard on the homepage and select + Create a Dashboard.

2. On the next screen, define the new dashboard's name and user permissions. You can control who can make changes on this dashboard and who can only view it.

You can also choose the theme you like from 7 different themes prepared by default.

3. Next, you will see the your new dashboard screen. On this screen, from the buttons in the top-right corner, you can:

• Create a new widget
• Manage permissions
• Delete or duplicate the dashboard
• Create an email report for the dashboard
• Edit the dashboard's settings

You can also select the date range for which the information in the dashboard gets to be shown.

Adding a New Widget

Clicking on Add widget will let you choose from 14 different widgets types. Each widget type has different widget settings that you need to select. The first five widget types -Time series, Bar chart, Number, Table, and Note- are the default widgets offered in Dashboards. All the other widgets are plugin-based widgets and are only visible in Dashboards if the related plugin is enabled.

The widget type can be a time series chart where you can see changes in the last day, today, 7 days, 30 days, or a custom date range. Similarly, you can use choose to visualize data as:

• bar charts (most effective view for events, users, and sessions);
• number (most used for real-time data visualization); or
• table (good for viewing a long list of items).

You can either select a single app or multiple apps — in the latter case, you can select up to 4 applications so that those apps can be compared side by side.

After you create your widget you can experiment and change its size and position within the dashboard however you like!

Sharing a Dashboard with Your Colleagues

Dashboard not only lets you keep track in real-time of all the summary information you need about your product from a single screen. It also lets you share this information with your colleagues at your organization.

In order to share your dashboard, click on the icon next to the dropdown menu on the top-right, next to the Add widget button, and click Edit name, sharing and theme. Here, you can set users who can either make changes to your dashboard, or who can view them without the possibility of making any changes. All you need to do is enter their emails in the fields provided.

Giving Restricted Access

In order to give custom dashboard access to a user but not allow them to see other parts of the main user interface, follow those steps:

1. Create a user which will have custom dashboard access.
2. Upon creating, give that user access to the applications you want to see dashboard data for.
3. From Restrict Sessions (on the same page), restrict all menu sessions so when the restricted user logs in, custom dashboards will be the only feature available.

Display Options

Countly Dashboards on a TV Screen

There are a few methods to view the Countly user interface on a TV, which is visible for team members to check anytime.

1. Connect an simple PC or laptop to your TV. You can connect several monitors, including USB Type-C to your computer. This process is explained here in detail.
2. Another method is to use a new generation smart TV, which includes a Chrome browser, either when you buy it or installed afterwards. New Samsung and LG Smart TVs are well known in this regard — you can directly install a Chrome browser on most of those smart TV sets, and your chances are higher if they run on Android.
3. The third method is similar to first, with a small enhancement — it’s possible to use a wireless connector between your  TV and your computer, like a Chromecast. This small and inexpensive device can easily stream your computer screen to a TV since it is directly plugged in to your TV’s HDMI port. For older TVs in particular, this is quite an inexpensive (about USD 35) method of streaming.

Using Different Colors for Dashboards

Dashboard colors can also be customized to make it easy to match your brand colors, or directly distinguish different dashboards when you hang several TVs on a wall.