Pros and Cons of Dashboards in CRM 2011

Roshan Mehta, 11 October 2012

Dashboards are a very popular feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and allow users to analyse data quickly through visualizations. These visualizations include charts, lists (views), web resources, and iFrames. In this blog, we will take a look at some of the pros and cons of dashboards and their components in CRM 2011.

One of the major advantages of dashboards is that you don’t need to be a system administrator to create them. Users can create their own personal dashboards which can then be shared with other users or teams. System administrators can create system-wide dashboards which can be used by all users in the system, provided they have the appropriate security roles.

The availability of charts within dashboards is restricted based on the type of dashboard and the type of chart. If you are an administrator creating a system dashboard, you will find that only system charts can be added to it whereas personal dashboards can include both system and personal charts provided you are the owner of the chart or it has been shared with you.

The same applies to views. System dashboards can include only system defined views but personal dashboards can include both system and personal views. Again this depends on whether you are the owner of the view or it has been shared with you.

If you’re familiar with iFrames, you should also be familiar with cross-frame scripting. This concept prevents iFrame scripts from messing with CRM 2011. When creating system dashboards, the customizer can choose whether or not to prevent cross-frame scripting. However, cross-frame scripting is disabled for personal dashboards and cannot be changed.

Lastly, only form-enabled web resources can be added to a dashboard. Examples of web resources which are not form-enabled include CSS, XSL, and XML formats. Users will be able to add all other types of web resources such as HTM, Silverlight (XAP), and Jscript, images (PNG, ICO, JPG, GIF).