We can email reports using the download button when viewing, or set up a regular schedule for the email. How can we do the same with dashboards??
Hi telam. From my experience, I don’t think you can email dashboards directly from Phocas (somebody please correct me if I’m wrong). I prefer to use the external link function in the Sharing options. That way the user has access to the dashboard at any time, too.
If you don’t want people to slice/dice data, you can make all of the widgets un-filterable. Although people could still “Focus” on individual rows of table widgets, it would not allow the data of the other widgets to update to reflect numbers of that “Focus”-ed entity:
Hope this helps!!
3 Likes
Yes that is helpful, thank you. Coming from MITS where we had the ability to email any dashboard to any email address. With Phocas everyone needs an account… 
@telam - with external links like Tim mentioned, the recipient does not require a Phocas license to view the dashboard. We can review these next week when we chat.
1 Like
Yes, that works fine. I was more referring to the fact that it’s not in their inbox, they have to go to an external link to view the report. Not as convenient, but it handles the task.
Ah I see, ready to consume in one click less. If they save the link in their browser favorites, you could eliminate the email altogether. Self service!
Ahhh, then comes the “user adoption” portion of the equation. If it’s not readily available (and in their face/inbox) they quickly lose the ambition to seek that info out. Even if it is extremely valuable information towards their livelihood. I would LOVE it if there was an option to somehow get the dashboard as a pdf to their inbox. Then I’m putting it as close to their mouth as I can get it. they don’t even need a fork…
Let’s talk next week about the most efficient way to provide salespeople with their personal dashboards without creating 50 instances of the same thing :)
If you guys figure out another option, please let me know! Always nice to know alternative options, though I do like the browser favorite AND desktop shortcut. I’ve gotten pretty quick adoption using those. I just recently trained managers over the past two weeks - they’re very curious.
We also came from MITS - I think the positives far outweigh any differences 
1 Like
will do. Another thing that would be nice - retain the format of the dashboard when you export to pdf. Currently it reformats to 8.5x11 and doesn’t resize to fit. It just puts the window on the next line if it doesn’t fit.
If you are using Chrome browser, you can save as a pdf instead of printing and then email. Just adjust the widgets to make sure the print format looks the way you want.
Question for everyone on the emailing the Favorites - is there any way to set it up so that you are able to email to multiple people or will it only allow you to email yourself?
I’m finding that we are missing this convenience from MITS.
Hi Amber,
I came from MITS, too, so I know what you’re talking about. I don’t think there’s a way to email a subscription to anyone but yourself, however my two solutions would be:
- Give external link access to those who you want viewing the report
- Set rules in your email inbox to forward specific reports to people by subject line, text, etc.
You CAN send one-off reports to multiple people by using semi-colons between email addresses.
Tim
1 Like
You can only “subscribe” to a favorite if you want it delivered on a schedule. And in that case, you can only have it delivered to your own (or the person that is logged in) email address. What Tim said about rules in your inbox is a real solution.
If you are viewing a report (not a dashboard), you can email that report to whomever you like.
1 Like
Thank you. I will work with that.
As an admin you can subscribe other people to favourites, I do that for all our staff so they don’t have a choice but to not receive the reports I want them to get. 
1 Like
@ShaneAngel You can only do that if they have a user license on your Phocas environment though, correct? Anyone without a license/login can’t be subscribed. Though I agree with your statement!
1 Like
Hey everyone! New to Phocas here and I was reading through this post and it mentions a few things I have been trying to figure out.
-
If I have a sales manager looking though all his salesman’s metrics on his dashboard is there any way he can send a dashboard to his sales guys that is pre-filtered or are my choices:
- Create a separate dashboard for every sales person with the filters I want (which could be 100’s)
- Give a login to every sales person and filter their access on the adminstrative level allowing them to view the dashboard but it has now been autofiltered by their access restrictions.
If those are my only choices than is there any way to duplicate a dashboard and have the new dashboard take on the filters as properties? Or do I have to edit every query on the new dashboard to include the filtered properties I want to show? For example it would be nice to filter a dashboard to show a specific sales person’s metrics and than maybe “Save as new” to a new dashboard that would apply those filters permanently and then creating multiple dashboards would be able to be done quickly.
Thanks for you help!
1 Like
Excellent point. We are also looking into viewer licenses at the moment, does anyone know if they can receive email subscriptions?
1 Like
My advice is to buy a viewer license and try it. We found viewer licenses quite limited.
We are sending emails to a generic email inside our organization and then using outlook rules on that generic mailbox to route emails to users. That does not require a license.
We are currently trying to standardize on just publishing web pages which require no license.
Steve Shuman
262-504-3617
1 Like
This is how I handle this. I constantly get requests to subscribe people to favorites and I just came to the conclusion its easier to forward it on to people from my inbox then try and round everyone up and make sure they each subscribe individually.