We have been working on some big improvements to the dashboard and we are so excited that they are now live for you to use.
The developments focus on:
- making the dashboard more interactive and tailored to individual users
- making it easier to understand and interpret the data.
This blog is here to give you a rundown of all the changes including:
- Creating your own custom dashboards
- How the colour scales work
- Using the national comparator
- Improved metadata
- Tailored data exports
For step-by-step guidance, please read through the Dashboard section on the Knowledge Base.
This functionality was voted a priority at the 2018 Local Insight user group. The developments & design were improved through the user testing period so a big thank you to everyone who spent the time providing us with valuable feedback.
Creating your own custom dashboards
Build custom dashboards on a per user basis
Using the Areas and Data buttons (see below) you can now edit which indicators and areas populate the dashboard from within the dashboard page. This enables any user to create multiple dashboards that explore different themes for different areas, rather than using a dashboard preset by the Group Admin.
Choose a preset theme and build a dashboard in seconds
Local Insight has preset themes (the themes that are shown on your Maps page). These have been set by the Group Admin in your organisation. You can now select to view all indicators in one particular theme on the dashboard.
Build your own custom dashboard from all the indicators in Local Insight
Local Insight has over 900 indicators. Use the custom dashboard builder to search through those indicators and find the ones that are most important to you. This enables you to create dashboards which reflect your strategic priorities or the priorities of individual projects. This is made much easier through the new search bar.
Choose which areas to compare data for
The core functionality of the dashboard allows you to see how your areas compare to multiple indicators. However, we know that you may not always want to compare all of your areas at the same time. You can still select which areas you wish to display on the dashboard, however, now when you select areas, the dashboard will recalculate the colour bands so it is comparing only those areas you have selected to view.
How the colour scale works
We have simplified the colour scale on the dashboard so that it is easier to see patterns and identify issues across your areas. The areas are now shaded in three colours which represent high, medium or low values. The methodology used to distribute the areas into the colour bands takes the highest and lowest value across your custom areas and then create 3 bands which equally span that range.
Take the example below, looking at Cancer prevalence. The highest value in the table is 3.3 and the lowest is 1.5.
Therefore the value bands are as follows:
Note that these are equally sized bands so the difference between the lower and upper threshold of each band is 0.6 in this case.
As mentioned in the previous section, when you change which areas are displayed, the colours will also update to reflect how the selected areas compare against each other. The figure for the national average is not included in the creation of the value bands.
Please note: in cases where there are decimal figures involved, the figures in the dashboard are rounded to 1 decimal point.
Using the national comparator
The colours on the dashboard allow you to see how your areas compare against each other. However, you can now look at the national average along the top of the dashboard as a benchmark for how your areas fare compared to the national picture.
Improved metadata
The dashboard is designed to show lots of data at once in a clear and concise manner. We also want to ensure that it is quick and easy for you to understand what the numbers show. Introducing:
- Metadata on indicator headers
- More info on what the data represents when you hover over a data value
Tailored data exports
The Export button allows you to export your dashboard to Excel, so that you can do further analysis or share with colleagues. We have made the export functionality more intuitive, so now when you export – the file will include the areas and the data you are currently viewing on the dashboard. The export also contains the data at a more granular level with the full decimal figure.
Please note:
- As part of our work to make the dashboard simpler and more intuitive to use, we’ve decided to remove the charts tab. Our research tells us that the charts were not widely used and charts are accessible within the reports for those people who do want to see them.
- For those organisations who have a Public facing site, individuals accessing this will not be able to edit which indicators appear on the dashboard. Instead, they will see the default dashboard as set by the Group Admin. All of the other improvements will be visible (colour scales changes, the national comparator, improved metadata and tailored data export). We took the decision to prevent public access users from editing the dashboard as we know some organisations upload their own data to Local Insight and would rather this data not be publicly accessible.
Feedback
Once again, thank you to all those users who took part in beta testing to help us develop this. We are always looking for more feedback so whether you love the dashboard or if there are a few tweaks and tidies that you’d like to see, please let us know on support@ocsi.co.uk
