So one of the biggest confusions I’ve seen in reporting on the Salesforce platform is the difference between Dashboard Filters and Running Users. These two features are very similar.
In fact, I’m sure there’s a way to use a dashboard filter to create a faux running user.
Tangent: You’d likely create a filter and do it by created by [insert role or user].
But the main differences are criteria vs. user. For a running user, you’d narrow things down by the user and what data they have access to, per the security setup.
For filters, you’d use some type of criteria like created date or last modified date. That’s just a basic overview.
A quick note on dashboards
Typically when you are on a report it will automatically update when you load the report. So refreshing the browser or hitting the refresh button on the report viewer allows you to see the most current data.
With dashboards it’s a little bit different. Because a dashboard is made of many individual reports each source report needs to be refreshed with in the dashboard. So simply accessing the dashboard will not refresh it for you.
You need to manually refresh the dashboard using the refresh button, when you want to see the most up to date data.
Dashboard Filters
So dashboard filters are a great way to narrow the whole dashboard and all of it’s components down by the same criteria, rather than doing it individually on the source reports. This can save loads of time especailly if you have a reporting and dashbaording road map!
This is what salesforce has to say about dashboard filters:
“Dashboard filters make it easy for users to apply different data perspectives to a single dashboard. Filtering rules apply to fields from the dashboard’s source reports. After filters are defined, a user viewing the dashboard can select a filter to visualize the data of most interest. The filtered view is remembered – the next time the user visits the dashboard, the same filtered view is shown.”
So essentially you can filter a dashboard like you would a report, but on the dashboard level for all components. Rather than for the individual source reports.
Running Users
Next let’s move on to running users. Running Users allow you to see the dashboard as another person and through the lens of their secuirty.
The secuirty features that might affect the data you see, are roles, the persons role heirarchy, the org wide defualts, and their profile to name a few.
Running users is apart of the greater functionaly of dynamic dashboards.
This is what salesforce has to say about dynamic dashboards:
“Say that your sales people can only view their own opportunities, but you’d like to review all opportunities closed in the last quarter. Create a dashboard and let people view the dashboard as you (or anyone else who can see all opportunities). When your sales people open the dashboard, they see info about all opportunities instead of only their opportunities. (Their data access in Salesforce remains unchanged. They can only see more data in your dashboard.)”
Conclusion!
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