Custom dashboards

A custom dashboard is a screen you assemble yourself from the numbers you care about. Instead of opening a standard report that someone else designed, you pick the metrics, choose how they are charted and set filters such as date range or channel. For example, a marketing lead could build one page in Looker Studio or Mixpanel that shows sign-ups, cost per lead and revenue by channel side by side.

Fixed reports rarely match how a particular business is run. Without custom dashboards, people export data to a spreadsheet each week to get the view they need, which is slow and easy to get wrong. A custom dashboard keeps one agreed set of numbers in front of the team. It matters when several people need different views of the same data. If you only check a handful of standard figures, the built-in reports are usually enough.

• Check whether non-technical colleagues can build and edit a dashboard, or whether it needs an analyst.
• Ask whether a dashboard can combine data from more than one source.
• Test whether dashboards can be shared by link or scheduled by email.
• Ask if there is a limit on the number of dashboards or viewers on your plan.