Giving better results with the dashboard

February 22, 2011 posted by Bruce

The Stacks dashboard is meant to offer a guiding overview of the current task assignments and team workload. Currently we do this by offering data such as: how many tasks a given group of people has, how many are due today, and how many are overdue. Alongside this we provide a quick way to see each user's Stack chart. Now, while this information is greatly helpful in analyzing the workload of specific groups it is less helpful if you want an overall view of workload in relation to a specific client or project. Sometimes it's not good enough to see how busy a group is, instead you'd like to see how busy everyone is with a certain client.

So, we find ourselves spending much more time in the task view than on the dashboard. This is probably because: one, we are trying to complete our tasks, and two, the task view provides filtering and sorting options unavailable on the dashboard.

To rectify this we've been working on a method that will allow the dashboard to be sorted and filtered just like the task list. Henceforth offering information in broad or refined instances. The kinks of this view are still in a design phase as we want to make sure the implementation is successful. That said, the end goal is a toggleable group or individual view that provides sorting just like the task list. Further, we plan to increase the graphic chart to show dates beyond the current 12 day cap.

We're hoping this new view will come as a relief to project managers. Especially ones who are sick of constnatly using the task view to get a basic overview where the dashboard falls short.