Overview

This article covers how to create and manage dashboards and visualizations in Advanced Reporting in Submittable Next, including searching for your data, building and fine-tuning visualizations, and sharing or exporting your dashboards.

What are Dashboards and Visualizations?

In Advanced Reporting, a dashboard is a collection of related visualizations — charts, tables, and metrics — that you build and organize in one place. A visualization is an individual chart or table that lives on a dashboard. Think of the dashboard as the container and visualizations as the content inside it.

You can create dashboards from scratch, populate them with visualizations built from your Submittable data, and share them with teammates. Dashboards are live — they always reflect your most current data.

Who has access?

Advanced Reporting is available to customers who have it included in their subscription or have added it on. If you're not sure whether your organization has access, reach out to your Customer Success Manager to learn more.

Before You Begin

• You must have access to Advanced Reporting as part of your Submittable subscription.
• Navigate to Analytics from the Organization Level navigation to access Advanced Reporting and your custom dashboards.

Step-By-Step Instructions 

Creating a New Dashboard

1. Navigate to Analytics from the main navigation.
2. Select Create new dashboard in the top left corner.
3. In the dialog that appears, give your dashboard a name and a description.
4. Select Create. Your new empty dashboard will open with the message: Nothing to see yet! Search your data and pin visualizations here.

You're now ready to start building.

Optional: Style your dashboard

Once your dashboard is created, you can customize its appearance before you start adding visualizations.

1. Select Edit at the top right of the dashboard.
2. From the edit menu you can:
   • Select Styling to add a background color and give your dashboard a distinct look.
   • Select Add to choose what you want to add to your dashboard:
     • Note — a text tile useful for adding context, instructions, or a description to your dashboard or a specific tab.
     • Tab — creates a new tab to help organize your dashboard into sections. See [Adding Tabs to Your Dashboard] below for more details.
     • Filter — allows you to add filters to your dashboard. Note: this option will not be available until you have visualizations on your dashboard.
3. Select Save when you're done.

Create a Visualization

A visualization is an individual chart, table, or metric that displays your data. Visualizations live on your dashboard and can be created directly from your Submittable data.

⚠️ Set Your Data Source to Custom Model

⚠️ Important: When building a new report, you'll need to manually change the data source to Custom Model. This is a temporary issue that will be resolved within days — we'll remove this note as soon as it's fixed.

1. From your dashboard, select Add Visualization.
2. In the search bar, begin typing the data you're looking for — for example, "program name" or "award amount." As you type, relevant fields will appear as suggestions. You can also browse and select fields directly from the left-hand panel to add them to your search bar.
3. Select Go to run your search. Your data will open as a table or a suggested visualization and you can change the chart type.

Your data is organized into the following categories in the left-hand panel:

• Organization — organization ID and name
• Program — program name, program type, and program status
• Cycle — cycle name and status
• Round — round type, name, and status
• Applicant — applicant name, ID, and type (individual or organization)
• Round Response — reviewer name, completion %
• Budget Table — descriptions, line items, and project amounts
• Award — award amount and status (accepted, offered)
• Application — application status (draft, submitted, under review, selected, awarded)
• Amendment — status, created date, and initiated date
• Disbursement — status, name, and totals
• Progress Reports — progress report data
• Profile Data — address, tax status, and more
• Your active programs — listed individually at the bottom of the panel. Nested under each program name are the custom form field questions from that program's forms.

Fine-Tuning Your Visualization

Once your data appears, you can refine how it looks and what it shows before saving it to your dashboard. On the right side of your visualization you'll see a panel of icons for fine-tuning your chart. These include:

• Chart Type — switch between different chart types such as bar, line, pie, table, and more. Select the chart icon on the right side of the visualization to open the chart type selector. Chart types that work with your current data will be highlighted — grayed-out options are not compatible with your current data selection. See Chart types.
• Layout — adjust the layout and sizing of your visualization.
• Column — specify which fields appear on each axis, move items to the "Not visualized" section, or use the slice with color option to break data into subcategories. See Configure columns for the X and Y axes.
• Axis — adjust aggregation, filters, sorting, position, grouping, and formatting on your chart axes. See Change axis options.
• Data Label — control whether data values are shown on the chart and how they are formatted.
• Tooltip — customize what information appears when you hover over a data point.
• Legend — show, hide, or reposition the chart legend.
• Display — adjust additional display settings for your visualization.
• Query Details — view the underlying query behind your visualization.
• Custom Actions — access any custom actions configured for your environment.

To add calculated fields to your visualization using mathematical, date, text, or logical functions, see Understanding formulas in searches.

Note: Due to the technical nature of reporting we have linked directly to our vendor ThoughtSpot documentation. Not all features documented in the ThoughtSpot help center may be available in your Submittable environment. If you're unsure whether a feature is available, contact Support.

Saving a Visualization to Your Dashboard

Once you're happy with your visualization, you have two ways to get it onto your dashboard.

Save:

1. Name your visualization by selecting the title field at the top left where it reads Untitled visualization and typing your name.
2. Select Save.
3. If the dashboard has multiple tabs, you can choose which tab to pin it to.
4. Once placed on your dashboard, select Edit in the top right corner to drag, resize, and position your visualization.

Adding Tabs to Your Dashboard

If your dashboard covers a lot of ground, tabs are a great way to organize your visualizations into sections — for example, a tab for Applications, a tab for Awards, and a tab for Financials.

1. Open your dashboard and select Edit.
2. Select + Add tab in the top menu.
3. Name the tab and begin pinning visualizations to it.

Sharing Your Dashboard

You can share any dashboard you own with teammates. When sharing, you control the level of access they receive.

1. From your dashboard, select Share.
2. Search for the teammate or group you want to share with.
3. Choose their access level:
   • View only — they can see the dashboard and interact with it but cannot make changes.
   • Edit — they can add, remove, and modify visualizations on the dashboard.
4. Select Share to send the invitation.

Downloading and Exporting Your Dashboard

Download the full dashboard:

1. Select the three dots menu in the top right corner of the dashboard.
2. Choose your export format:
   • Dashboard (PDF) — downloads the dashboard as a static PDF.
   • Visualizations (PDF) — each visualization becomes a slide in a PDF presentation. Select all or just the visualizatins you need.

Export a single visualization:

1. Hover over the visualization and select the three dots menu.
2. Choose your format:
   • PNG — exports the visualization as it appears on screen.
   • XLSX or CSV — exports the underlying data as a table.

Exploring Your Data

Once your dashboard is built, you can continue to explore your data directly within any visualization without changing the dashboard itself.

• Drill down — click into any data point to get a more detailed view. For example, click on a program name in a chart to see application-level detail within that program.
• Cross-filtering — clicking on one visualization automatically filters the others on the dashboard to match. For example, selecting a specific program in one chart will update all other charts to show only that program's data.
• Hover for details — hover over any data point to see the values behind it.
• Explore within a visualization — add additional filters, bring in extra columns, or compare data within a single visualization without affecting the rest of the dashboard.

What to Do Next / User Experience

Now that your dashboard is set up, you may want to:

• Add more visualizations to build out a complete picture of your data
• Share your dashboard with your team or leadership
• Download or present your dashboard for a board meeting or program review
• Explore the Analytics (Standard Reporting) dashboards for pre-built views of your data

Additional Resources

For more detailed documentation on the underlying reporting tool, you can visit the ThoughtSpot Help Center. ThoughtSpot is the vendor that powers Advanced Reporting in Submittable Next.

Please note: Not all features and capabilities documented in the ThoughtSpot Help Center are available in Submittable's implementation. If you have questions about what's included in your plan or need help with a specific feature, reach out to Support.

Related Articles

• Using Analytics (Standard Reporting)
• What’s New in Reporting for Submittable Next

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