All About Dashboards

All about Dashboards
The Dashboard feature has been a part of ACT! since ACT! 2008. Since then, I have loved it. There are very few ACT! users that use the Dashboard, even the experienced ones. By default, the ACT! Dashboard will report on Activities and Opportunities. ACT! 2010 also has the ability to report on limited history and some other cool features. For this entry, I am going to focus on the Activities Dashboard. Before the Dashboard was available, I mostly lived on the Task List. This was the place where I went to organize what I was going to do for the day. I do still use the Task List, but really only to print out a list of things I have to do for the day.
When I am at my computer, I work from my customized Dashboard. I have my Activity Dashboard set up into 6 different panels. Here is basically what it looks like:

Today’s High Priority Phone Calls & To-Dos // Today’s Medium and Low Priority Calls

Today’s Meetings // Today’s Medium and Low Priority To-Dos

Today’s Personal Activities // Current Month’s Birthdays

Setting it up this way has made it so I am more productive and can see immediately what I need to get done. In order to have Birthdays in a separate panel, you would need to set up a Activity Type called Birthday. I can explain that in another post, but that is another one of my most favorite, small changes that you can make so that you work more efficiently.