Working with tabs

Tabs organise a large dashboard. They also hide things, which is sometimes the point and sometimes the problem.

Tabs organise a large dashboard. They also hide things, which is sometimes the point and sometimes the problem.

Use them

1. Open the dashboard for editing.
2. Add a tab and name it.
3. Move reports onto it.
4. Set the order so the most-read tab is first.

The first tab is the dashboard

Most readers never leave it. Put the overview there and treat the others as detail for people who go looking.

Name them for content

"Volume", "Times", "Satisfaction". Not "Tab 2", and not something so general that a reader cannot guess what is behind it.

Three or four

Beyond that they scroll or wrap, and a tab a reader has to hunt for is a tab nobody opens.

When tabs are the wrong answer

If two tabs are for two different audiences, make two dashboards. Tabs organise one person's view; they do not solve serving two people with different questions.

Filters usually span tabs

Check how the dashboard's filters apply, because a reader setting a date range on the first tab reasonably expects the second to follow. Verify rather than assume.

Anything important goes on the first tab

A number that matters, placed on the third tab, is a number nobody sees. If it belongs in the conversation every week, it belongs at the front.

See also

• Adding and arranging reports
• Dashboard filters that work
• Exporting reports and tabs