Using Learning Zone Dashboards

Learning Zone Dashboards allow you to create overview pages to support decision-making by managers and stakeholders in the organization.

To help make the most of it, this article describes some guiding principles and examples for using Dashboards.

The article has the following sections:

• What are Learning Zone dashboards and what can you achieve with them?
• What information can be shown in dashboards?
• Tips for using dashboards effectively

What are Learning Zone Dashboards and what can you achieve with them?

The dashboard feature allows you to display relevant and concise information for the managers and users you decide to build the dashboard for. This information can support decision-making and actions - such as controlling and promoting learning in various parts of the organization.

Before you start building a dashboard, it is important that you plan its purpose & content - considering what would be valuable to the target audience. Here are some of the questions and options you may want to consider:

1. Is the dashboard meant to provide a high-level overview or to capture the status of a specific topic: for instance - is you goal to present information and comparisons regarding a specific Certification and its completion status in various parts of the organization, or do you want to provide an overview of several certifications across the entire organization? Another example - is the dashboard meant to review several aspects such as Instructor-led training, E-learning completions, Assignment submission, etc. - or is it focused on one form of learning and dives deeper into analyzing it?
2. What is the most important information that would help the dashboard viewers: too much information may be overwhelming, and may distract viewers from the core insights. When you plan a dashboard, think of its users, and even talk to some of them, so that you may figure out what's the most critical information they need. Remember you can always create more dashboard variations and split the information between these to allow a different focus.
3. What data should be shown in the dashboard: when you later add the graphs to the dashboard, you can define it so that the viewers see data regarding all the users, data relating to their direct or indirect reports, or data regarding people in their organizational hierarchy. It's important to be aware of how your hierarchies and manager reporting is defined so that you may make a sensible choice on the data to include. For example, if you're preparing a dashboard for a corporate Safety manager, you may need to display data and graphs about people across units and not their own reports.

What information can be shown in dashboards?

In principle, dashboards allow you to include any kind of content block. But as they are meant to support critical and decision-support data, we recommend using the following types of blocks:

• Report Graph: these blocks allow you to display various graphs you created (pie, bar, line) and present all or selected data according to saved searches you created (for example - data regarding a specific certification, or data of seminar enrollments by a date range). Here are some examples:
  
  
• Report Table: this block allows you to display a specific report table - with or without a filtered search applied. Here's an example.
  
  
• HTML block: a block that allows you to add text and image content in parts of the dashboard. You may want to use it to describe the dashboard and its purpose, to add details on the displayed graphs and reports, to link to addition reports and dashboards, or to include notifications and important messages (for instance - a management target date for achieving compliance training).

Tips for using dashboards effectively

Here are some useful tips for effective use of Dashboards in Learning Zone:

1. Use comparisons: you may display side-by-side the status of those reporting to the viewer, against those status of the entire organization - in order to motivate managers that are not doing as well as others to reach the standard.
2. Limit the amount of data: it is best to include 3-5 graphs in a dashboard, and possibly one report table.
3. Use clear block titles: add clear titles to the blocks so that managers easily understand what the data shows them - e.g. "My unit Safety Certification Status".