R10 Sales Dashboard

Have you checked out the new sales dashboard in Oracle Sales Cloud R10?  I do not know who came up with this new concept, but I find it FANTASTIC !

A lot has changed compared to the dashboard in the previous release:

• The new dashboard is part of the homepage and can be reached by clicking on the round dots on the top of the homepage screen.  If you do not see them, they can be activated under the ‘Structure’ tool, under system settings.
• We can put as many infolets on there as we want !
• Infolets can be of various sizes !
• Infolets can be flipped !  On the backside of each tile, we can put another related tile, containing another KPI’s !  And the little flipping animation just makes the dashboard come alive.
• Infolets can be expanded!  Once flipped, tiles can be expanded showing more detail related to the KPI’s shown in the smaller version of the infolet !
• As was previously already possible, infolets still can be drilled down upon in order to show a detailed report, covering the entire screen.
• The role-based infolet repository allows every user to fill up their dashboard that are most of interest to them.

This now allows us to build amazing reporting flows, where a user discovers a KPI value on a tile, he can flip the tile to learn more, or even enlarge the KPI to maybe see a summary graph.  From there the detailed report can be seen to really understand all the details behind the KPI and eventually a user can drill from the detailed report into the application to make changed to the data that formed the initial KPI value.   Once you set these up, going through them feels so natural, I do not understand why nobody ever thought of this before !

How to define an infolet

Adding a new infolet is actually quite simple.  As an administrator, whilst being in a sandbox, after having chosen ‘Customize Workpage Area’ from the ‘Settings and Actions’ menu (unfold arrow next to your username), the infolet repository gains an entry called ‘Create Infolet’.

The definition of an infolet is quite sophisticated, but in return, you get a REALLY fancy dashboard back.  Every single infolet is defined by:

• a name
• a front view and its dimensions
• a back view, using the front view dimensions
• the expanded view and its dimensions

Notice how we can create infolets of different sizes for both the standard and the expanded infolets.

Once the infolet is created, an option on each of the different views become available to put a report on it and to link the report that needs to be opened when users are drilling down on the infolet.

You definitely have to try this out as it will change the reporting experience of end-users completely!