How do you let one dashboard serve every district and programme?

Add filters, so the viewer chooses the district, period or programme and every widget on the page responds. One maintained dashboard then replaces the set of near-identical copies that otherwise accumulate.

Video: Dashboard Slicers on YouTube

Why this matters

Copying a dashboard per district is the default path and it quietly becomes unmanageable: a change to the indicator definition has to be made twenty times, and inevitably is not. Filters keep a single definition of each number while still giving each district its own view. That is also what makes a national dashboard credible, because everyone is demonstrably looking at the same calculation.

How to do it

  1. Identify the dimensions people want to slice by, most often administrative region, time period and programme.
  2. Add filter controls to the dashboard for those dimensions.
  3. Check that every widget responds to the filter, including maps and tables.
  4. Set sensible defaults so the page is useful before anyone touches a control.
  5. Share the one dashboard rather than copies, and use permissions to control who sees which data.

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