Generic Inquiries and Dashboards in Acumatica Make It Easy to Identify Exceptions
One of the best ways to keep your business tasks manageable is to use Generic Inquiries and dashboards in Acumatica to maintain full visibility into potential issues and exceptions in your business’s financial or operational data. After all, if you know where you might have problems brewing, you can avoid having to put out fires at the last minute when you are on a deadline.
To help you stay ahead of the curve in your business, the experts at PC Bennett have released an in-depth webinar that helps you understand how to create dashboards you can use to proactively identify all those “things that should never happen” in business. Watch the webinar now.
Video Summary – Skip Forward to the Parts that Matter to You!
In this video, PC Bennett’s COO and multiple award-winning Acumatica expert Tim O’Sullivan walks you through every step it takes to modify Generic Inquiries and create dashboard widgets in Acumatica. Feel free to skip forward to the parts that matter most to you.
How to Use Generic Inquiries and Dashboards in Acumatica to Prevent Potential Business Issues
In his last in-depth webinar on this topic, “All About Generic Inquiries and Dashboards in Acumatica,” Tim explained all the details you need to know to create General Inquiries in Acumatica and turn them into dashboards. In this webinar, he helps you use your skills to create a “Things That Should Never Happen” (TTSNH) dashboard.
What Is a “Things That Should Never Happen” Dashboard?
Simply put, this is a dashboard that helps you quickly identify where your data has issues, so you can fix those problems immediately. In this webinar, Tim walks you through creating a dashboard that gives you insight into:
- missing phone numbers and email addresses for customers
- missing websites and email addresses for vendors
- emails that failed to send or took too long to send
As you can imagine, it can be a headache to have to track down data when you are trying to answer a customer query or market a complementary product. That is why having missing data is a “thing that should never happen” in your business.
Your Step-by-Step Guide to Creating and Filtering Generic Inquiries and Crafting Dashboard Widgets
The 3 steps it takes to use Generic Inquiries and dashboards in Acumatica to create a “Things That Should Never Happen” dashboard (or any dashboard) are:
- Set up Generic Inquiry data classes
- Filter Generic Inquiry data
- Create a dashboard widget
Tim shows you how to build a working dashboard from a completely blank slate, and then he repeatedly performs the 3 steps above to bring in the data he wants. Tim’s repeated steps help you practice as you follow along in real time.
First, Set Up Your Dashboard Screen
Learn how to invent a dashboard from scratch and make it visible across a range of devices, then see how to add headers and create the design for your dashboard.
- How to build a dashboard from scratch (watch)
- Create a framework that sets the stage for General Inquiry KPIs (watch)
- Tip: figure out how Acumatica names the data you want to add to your dashboard (watch)
Next, Set Up Targeted Data Classes on Your Generic Inquiries
The latest versions of Acumatica have streamlined the process of adding data classes by automatically building necessary table relationships for you. This makes it easy and fast for you to add your own data classes.
- Add a new data class to your Generic Inquiry (watch)
- Tip: want more info on how data classes work and relate to each other? Watch this tip on the online schema wiki. (watch)
- Add data to fields (watch)
Next, Filter Data for Your Generic Inquiry Outputs
To capture specific data from your Generic Inquires on your dashboards, you will need to set up precise data filters and make sure those filters display properly on your Generic Inquiry readouts.
- Create filters for your Generic Inquires that display the data you want to know about (watch)
Finally, Create Dashboard Widgets That Display Your Data
Now that you have created your filters, it is time to make them shine by collecting all the data you want to see onto a single, at-a-glance dashboard that provides great visibility.
- Create a widget and put it on your dashboard (watch)
- Tip: view the list of dashboard widgets available in the newest versions of Acumatica (watch)
- Fill in your widget details to get the readout you want (watch)
Practice!
After demonstrating the basics with missing customer data, Tim continues the lesson by showing you exactly how to add vendor data and systems data so you can craft your own fully working, useful “Things That Should Never Happen” dashboard. Reviewing these steps helps you practice and put your learning into action.
- Set up General Inquiry data classes for vendors, so you can track missing website and email address data (watch)
- Filter General Inquiry data for vendors (watch)
- Create dashboard widgets for vendors (watch)
- Set up General Inquiry data classes for systems, so you can track pending and failed email sends (watch)
- Filter General Inquiries for systems (watch)
- Create dashboard widgets for systems (watch)
After following along with each of these steps, you will have your own working “Things That Should Never Happen” dashboard, customized for your business.
Q&A
Wondering how to build financial widgets? Tim walks you through how to add more detailed data to your dashboards in the Q&A section.
- How to Build a General Inquiry to Track Unreleased AP & AR Transactions (watch)
Final Notes
As you can see, this webinar from PC Bennett holds a lot of information.
If you liked this webinar and you want to watch more in-depth “How To” videos that will help you become an Acumatica master user, check out our videos page. Don’t forget to register for upcoming webinars too!
Watch the “How to Set Up Generic Inquiries and Dashboards in Acumatica” webinar
PC Bennett Solutions offers a personalized, full-service experience for customers by implementing business management technology. Through a hands-on approach, PC Bennett Solutions helps companies get the most out of their software system. The team provides training, implementation and customization of Acumatica. Headquartered in the Seattle area, PC Bennett Solutions is one of the largest exclusive Acumatica resellers. Want to learn more about Acumatica? Check out our Acumatica resources page.
