When you group a set of activities together for a team and track their statuses, we call that collection a dashboard. Dashboards can be used to track projects, employee training, department skills, information gathering, and anything else you choose to group together. Dashboards consist of activities (things that need to get done), team members (the people who need to do those things), and the statuses of each team member for each activity.
Activities are what we call tasks or to-do items. You can create as many activities as you want, group them into categories and even add due date notifications. You can view them in a calendar, print them and share them with non-Statdash users. You can schedule when you want your team to receive an email requesting updates of their status.
Team members do not need an account on Statdash. They are simply the people that will receive an email asking "What's the status?" In their email, they'll simply click a link, choose their status on each activity from a drop down list and then click a button to finish. That's it! Nothing to learn, no password to remember.
You can customize your own statuses for each dashboard, so they will always be relevant to the activities you are tracking. You can choose your own colors. You can choose to show the team member's comments instead of the actual status. And you can choose whether or choosing a certain status means not to ask for the status again.
Team members simply click the link in their email, update their statuses and leave a comment if desired, and click the save button. Their statuses are immediately viewed in the dashboard along with the rest of the team.
Use the "Create Dashboard" link to start a dashboard from scratch, choose from one of our pre-defined templates, or use our wizard to get started quickly. Think of a dashboard as a collection
of related activities. For example, it could represent a project with tasks, a program with projects, a sales funnel with prospects or a department with training objectives.
Activity categories are a great way to group activities (or tasks) into meaningful groups for display on the dashboard. You could group activities by priority (high, medium, low) or even by client if you are creating a dashboard that lists all of your projects for all of your clients.
You can click the plus sign at the top of the grid to add an activity and choose which category it belongs to. Or you can click the plus icon in the category row to quickly add an activity to that category.
Team members are what make up the columns of the dashboards. You can also think of them as "roles", meaning you can show a particular role in the column heading instead of a name.
Statuses are color-coded and dashboard-specific. Think of them as your visual indicator that helps you see the big picture of your team's status.
Use the Email button to send an email to the team to get them to update their status. Or use the scheduler to automate the process so your dashboard is always up-to-date.
