Interface Designer: Report on metrics with a dashboard layout

Getting started

Creating an interface starts with choosing a base, and knowing the problem you’re trying to solve. Try asking yourself who your audience is and what information they need to view.

We want to build a dashboard to highlight major feature launches for our executive team in this guide, but keep in mind that the following steps can be applied to any dashboard use case.

Go ahead and click the “interface” button on the top left of your base to start building.

Naming & description

Don’t skip over the name! Taking the time to give your group of interfaces a name and description helps your collaborators understand how they should engage with it. 

In this example, we’ll assign the main title “Product Roadmap” and describe it as “Source of truth for upcoming launches and A/B tests.”

Select dashboard layout & connect a table

Every time you create an interface, you’ll be asked to select a layout. Select the dashboard layout, then select the table holding the information you want to display. We’re going to connect our dashboard layout to our “features” table, as it has most of the information we need to report on the status and timing of upcoming feature development.

Choosing the dashboard layout lets you jumpstart your interface with a simple toggle to add or remove summaries, charts, and graphs. If you see elements from your table that you don’t need, you can simply toggle them off. And if you change your mind? Don’t worry—you can add these back in once you dive into editing.

Customize your elements

The dashboard layout is meant to highlight key information, so definitely utilize Interface Designer’s most visual elements. Before going into editing mode, you can toggle a few elements that have been automatically connected to your table.

Number

For our product roadmap, we’re going to use the number element to keep the highest level metrics—the numbers the org cares most about—front and center.

When you select the number element, filter the release date field to “after yesterday,” meaning any day in the future, and select the summary type “earliest date.” When you add a date to be summarized in a number element, you’re given options for how you want to represent the data. You can summarize by the earliest or latest date, or by the number of months or days.

Let’s add two more number elements: one for the number of large features we’ve shipped this quarter, and another for any features at risk for our next release. You can add additional numbers depending on what’s present in your base, or you can remove some if three is too many.

Chart

Next, we’ll add a chart to highlight NPS scores over time to understand the relationship between feature launches and customer satisfaction. To set up a chart, you can add any necessary filterings, then select your X and Y-axis. Since we want to show our NPS score over time as it relates to the roadmap, the X-axis will be our dates and the Y-axis will be the average NPS score. We’ll name it “NPS Score over time” and keep the auto-generated labels for the X & Y axes.

You’re not limited to the elements that have been pre-selected for you, so feel free to add and remove them as you see fit after you’ve given your interface a name and description. The following are some elements you can add once you enter editing mode.

Timeline view

Let’s add the Timeline view element—this is a roadmap, after all! 

Timeline view will show all of the features that are launching on a neat timeline, making it easier for cross-functional teams to know what’s shipping when. 

Grid View

Grid view elements are ideal for scenarios where you want to display specific information from a table in your base. We’re going to add a grid view of prioritized customer feedback to further enrich the product roadmap and provide context on our priorities.

Incorporate design

Have you selected all the elements and fields you want to display in your interface? Great! Now, it’s time to add some design so your team can easily navigate the dashboard you’ve built.

We have a few design recommendations you can take or leave, like:

• Add text elements to create headers (this can give your information context)

• Keep your numbers together 

• Incorporate color to help break out information—we’ll add some color behind the customer feedback section

No matter which layout you’ve chosen, don’t add so many elements that your interface turns into one endless scroll of information. Feel free to move blocks around to cut down on all that space, too. You can always create multiple dashboards for different roadmaps if your single dashboard is getting too long.

Preview, publish, and share

Once you’ve added elements and arranged everything to your liking, use the “view as” toggle to see how everything will look to a designated collaborator. You can also click the preview toggle to see how the interface will look once published. When you’re happy with the final results, click publish. Congrats—you’ve just designed an interface! 

Sharing is caring, and we’ve made it easy to bring in your collaborators. Click the share button in the top-right corner of your interface to invite others via email or by creating a link. You have the granular flexibility to not only decide what level of permission your collaborators should have, but also whether they should also be allowed access to the underlying base.

What’s more, you can even create personalized experiences for collaborators coming to your interface with user-filters at both the page and element level.

Once you’ve shared your interface with your collaborators, it appears in their Airtable home screen, as well as becomes discoverable within the base using the “Interfaces” button. If your collaborator already has access to the base, you can also send them a direct link to the interface itself. For a deeper dive into sharing your interfaces with collaborators, be sure to check out our detailed help center article.

Cue the confetti. 🎊 Your organization now has a fleshed-out product roadmap they can quickly consult for goal and shipping updates.