Streamline participant dashboards with 5 essential dashboard parts

Dashboards are important tools for ETO software users as they are the first thing users see when accessing ETO and provide instant access to navigation shortcuts and reportable information.

The Participant Dashboard is one of many types of dashboards in ETO, and like all ETO dashboards, its parts or sections are highly customizable. You can streamline and improve the user experience of the Participant Dashboard by using these five Dashboard parts.

1. Touchpoint Details Part

The standard Touchpoint dashboard part displays the five most recent Touchpoints created for a participant. You can do a few things to improve this Dashboard part:

Increase the number of recent Touchpoints

The five most recent Touchpoints are often not enough to give users a clear picture of a single participant’s history, so you can edit the Touchpoints dashboard part to show more than five Touchpoints.

It is recommended that the Touchpoint dashboard part show the fifteen most recent Touchpoints. Although you can add more than fifteen, adding more can slow the refresh time of the dashboard. Fifteen is a good amount that doesn’t drastically impact the speed of the ETO Participant Dashboard.

Add customized Touchpoint parts to the dashboard

Users can customize the Touchpoints that are visible in each Touchpoint part as well as filter the Touchpoints that are shown.

For example, case managers often want to review recent case notes in a quick view rather than open each case note one by one. Case managers also want to quickly determine the status of a participant. A Touchpoint dashboard part can be customised to show recent case notes in chronological order and the participant’s status so that a user doesn’t have to dig through the participant’s whole record to find this information.

2. Participant Information Part

The Participant Information dashboard part isn’t customizable. It only shows the default participant demographics. This is unfortunate because users often want to quickly view customized participant demographics that are specific to an individual site or program.

However, there is a solution! You can display customized demographic fields on the dashboard using the Touchpoint dashboard part mentioned earlier by doing the following:

1. Build a Touchpoint as an intake or supplementary demographic form
2. Add the fields to be visible on the Participant Dashboard to the Touchpoint
3. Add a Touchpoint dashboard part to the Participant Dashboard for the new form

You can further streamline this workaround by programming the supplementary demographics Touchpoint to automatically load data (auto-populate) from participant demographics when completing an intake Touchpoint.

3. Action Links List Part

The Action Links List dashboard part includes over fifteen navigation shortcuts that you can add to the Participant Dashboard, however some of these shortcuts do not apply to all users.

It is recommended to streamline this dashboard part to show only shortcuts and navigation links that apply to your users. This creates a cleaner, more usable dashboard, and decreases the refresh time of the Participant Dashboard, as too many links can make the Dashboard confusing and slow.

4. Report Part and Dashboard Message Report Links

ETO reports can generate valuable information for users that access participant information on a daily basis, enhancing the work of a case manager or any user working with participants. There are two ways to add reports to the Participant Dashboard.

Add a Report part

Most ETO reports can be added to the Participant Dashboard with a Report dashboard part. Build and save each report before adding it to the Participant Dashboard. However, it is important to note that Report parts can load slowly and impact the refresh time of the Participant Dashboard. You can minimize the impact of this by testing each Report dashboard part before assigning it to dashboard templates. It is  also recommended that you minimize query prompts for each dashboard report.

Add a Dashboard Message with a report link

An alternative to using Report dashboard parts is to add a Dashboard Message to the Participant Dashboard with an embedded link to a custom report. This option sends users to the link for the actual report, rather than loading the report in the Participant Dashboard, minimising the impact on loading speed of the dashboard.

5. Special Function Parts

A few dashboard parts aren’t included in the standard, default Participant Dashboard but can be added if they are valuable to your users.

• Caseworker Part:This part shows all Caseworkers assigned to a participant. This is a great snapshot of assignments and roles for a single participant on the Participant Dashboard.
• Family Membership Part:This part shows the members in a participant’s family. This dashboard part includes direct links to a family member’s dashboard.
• Collection Membership:This part shows all collections a participant is part of. This dashboard part also includes direct links. Clicking on a collection link navigates to the collection dashboard.

Final tip – Find the right balance with ETO dashboards

Although ETO dashboards are extremely useful in that they help users navigate to information quickly, it is important to find the right balance between the amount of information you add to a dashboard and the functional value of the dashboard to your users. Presenting too much information might make the dashboard overwhelming and slows down the time it takes for a dashboard to refresh. So keep this in mind when creating dashboards.