A home screen that says what needs you

Most business dashboards are built the way a report is built. Somebody asks what we should show and everybody names their favourite number. The result is twelve panels of equal importance, which means none of them matter.

You can tell the difference in how people use it. A report gets opened when somebody has a question. A home screen gets opened first thing, every morning, and it only survives that habit if it answers the morning question: what needs me today?

Sort by urgency, not by subject

The usual arrangement groups by topic. Sales here, jobs there, money at the bottom. It reads like a filing cabinet, and it forces the reader to scan all of it to find the one thing that is actually late.

Urgency makes a better grouping. In Diract, Quick Glance uses four sections for most businesses: Needs attention, Today, Money and Others. A cafe gets Needs attention, Today, Team, Customers and Others. A section with nothing in it is not shown at all.

Within a section, a widget with something overdue or waiting comes before one that is all clear. So the screen re-sorts itself as the day changes, and the thing that needs you rises without anybody dragging it. The count beside a section's name, such as 3 items, adds up everything in it that is overdue or waiting on somebody.

The test of whether this is working: when nothing is wrong, the page should say so. Quick Glance opens with Nothing needs you right now when no section has anything waiting. A home screen that can never be clear is a home screen people stop reading.

Colour has to mean one thing

The fastest way to ruin a home screen is to colour things because they look better coloured. Once green means both "paid" and "this is the sales panel", the reader checks the label to tell which. The colour has cost them time rather than saving it.

One rule, applied to every number, is the answer. The rule worth copying is that colour describes the value, never the widget.

• Red is late and needs acting on today
• Amber is due soon, or waiting on somebody else
• Green is done or paid
• Blue is under way
• Grey is a zero, always

That last one matters more than it sounds. A zero drawn in red is a false alarm, and a zero in green is a celebration of nothing. Zero overdue invoices and zero invoices at all look identical in colour, and only one of them is good news. Grey says the same thing in both cases. Nothing here needs you.

A zero is still a number, so keep the card

The opposite mistake is hiding a widget when its numbers are all zero. It seems tidy, and it quietly breaks the habit. The reader learns that a missing card means nothing rather than zero, so they check the underlying list anyway.

The card stays, the zeros draw in grey, and the card shrinks. A widget with nothing in it belongs on one line, such as 0 dormant. Not a tall card with a centred message about having nothing to show.

Three views of one arrangement

People read differently, and the split is roughly between wanting to see everything at once and wanting one line each. Rather than making that a setting nobody finds, put it in the open: Cards, List and Canvas, beside Edit layout at the top right.

Cards and List show the same widgets in the same sections. List puts each on one line, and clicking the line opens its detail. Canvas shows them where you arranged them, with tables, charts and reports at full size.

The choice is saved to the person rather than to the workspace, and follows them to every device. That is the part most tools get wrong: the layout is the business's, but how you read it is yours. Two people can share a home screen without arguing about it.

Every number is a door

A number nobody can open is a number somebody hunts for on another screen. The home screen has then added a step rather than removed one.

On Quick Glance, Unpaid invoices gives the count outstanding and the total due. Then Outstanding, Overdue and Over 60 days, and the five oldest with their matter, amount and issue date. One click opens its invoices in a panel on the right, ready to record a payment or void one without leaving. View all 9 opens the full report.

Trust works the same way. Trust balance opens the Trust Account page, and Dormant trust opens it at the dormant balances report, which is the one you actually wanted.

Building your own

1. The question the screen answers goes on paper first. If it is not a question somebody asks every morning, it is a report, not a home screen.
2. List what could be late in your business. Those are your Needs attention widgets, and everything else is below them.
3. Each number needs a written rule for when it turns red. If you cannot, the number does not belong on the home screen.
4. Every number opens the list behind it, at the filter the number described.
5. It deserves a look on the day nothing is wrong. If it looks broken when everything is fine, it is the screen that is wrong.

For the numbers themselves, replacing spreadsheets with a dashboard covers their source. The lists underneath sit in build a table for anything you track.