How to Create a Susurate Dashboard

The Susurate feature allows you to set up initiatives, add impact indicators and visualisations, set up scorecards, and link all those elements together to organisations.

Most importantly, you can create a dashboard to provide you with an at-a-glance view of your indicators.

Please note that Susurate is a paid feature. If you want to activate this on your platform, contact hello@thesocialcollective.co.

How to Create a Susurate Dashboard

Follow these steps:

First off, you need to create an empty dashboard that would house all the visualisations you want to include.

1. Navigate to Susurate on your left-hand sidebar. Go to Dashboards and click the Add a non-associated dashboard button.

Think of a non-associated dashboard as an empty dashboard that's not yet connected with any initiative.

Give the new dashboard a specific name so you won't get confused in the future.

2. On the empty dashboard, click on the red edit button in the right corner.

3. Then, click the blue edit button beside the dashboard name.

You will then be able to enter a new name.

4. Once you're done, click on the check button to save the name.

Before we proceed with how to actually create the visualisations you can add to the dashboard, let's get to know first the charts and visualisations types available.

What are the available charts in Susurate?

There are 12 charts available in Susurate:

1. Stepped line: This chart is useful when you want to highlight irregularity in the changes of the indicators.

2. Stepped area: This chart looks is basically a stepped line chart with coloured areas and is also used to highlight the irregularity in the changes of the indicators.

3. Line chart: This chart is useful when you want to see and track changes over short and long periods of time.

4. Bar chart: This chart is useful when you want to see the distribution of data in the indicators or compare data of relevant indicators.

5. Area chart: This chart is useful in showing how the indicators change over time.

6. Radar: This chart is useful when you want to compare indicator data from various categories.

7. Treemap: This chart is useful when you want to show a hierarchical view of your indicator data to spot patterns.

8. Pie chart: This chart is useful if you want to show the contribution of each organisation that's taking part in the initiative on a specific indicator. 

Note that pie charts can not use custom fields that have multiple select options. This is only possible when the custom field selected only allows for one option.

9. Doughnut: This chart looks fairly similar to a pie chart and is useful when you want to show the proportion of the contribution of each organisation on a specific indicator.

10. Polar area: This chart looks similar to a pie chart and is often used to plot cyclic indicator data from different organisations.

11. Radial bar: This chart is useful when you want to show comparisons among categories with a circular shape.

12. Map: This chart is useful when you want to show data geographically.

How to Create Different Visualisations With Susurate

The first step you must do is to go back to the Susurate feature menu. Simply click the Manage dashboards link on the navigation bar from the dashboard.

Then, navigate to Initiatives on the left-hand sidebar and click the name of the initiative you want to create a dashboard for.

To create a new visualisation, simply go to the visualisation tool at the bottom of the page.

Currently, there are 8 visualisation types available:

1. Indicator(s) over time
2. Indicator(s) by organisation/category
3. Indicator overtime/aggregated by organisation/category
4. Comparable indicators
5. Indicator map
6. Organisation map
7. Opportunities attendance over time
8. Opportunities map

Indicator(s) over time

To create a visualisation that shows the indicator(s) over time, select it on the Choose visualisation type dropdown.

It won't show the chart types right away until you select a specific indicator or indicators to show.

After that, you can then select the type of chart you want to use:

• Stepped line
• Stepped area
• Line
• Bar
• Area

All the available charts except for the bar chart show similar customization options.

The chart options from left to right are:

1. Zoom in
2. Zoom out
3. Select zoom
4. Panning
5. Reset zoom

There is a box that indicators you can show targets. These help the users know how the initiatives are doing based on the data provided. If you want to read more about setting up Susurate targets, read this article.

In the example above, the box is actually greyed out because there were no set targets for the indicators.

Below is a different initiative where you can see that if you choose to show the indicators, you will see the target right on the chart as shown below:

You can also set the reporting period to show in the chart by month, quarter, or year.

To do so, simply click on the date grouping field and choose a period from the dropdown.

Notice how different the chart becomes when the date grouping is set to quarter.

You can also limit what to show in the chart (usually by an organisation).

To do so, simply indicate to limit the chart to an organisation and choose which organisation data you want to show.

Indicator(s) by organisation/category

To create a visualisation that shows the indicator(s) by organisation/category, select it on the Choose visualisation type dropdown.

It won't show the chart types right away until you select a specific indicator to show.

By default, the Categories selection is set to Organisation, but you can always choose another one.

The charts you can use to visualise the indicator or indicators by organisation/category include:

1. Line
2. Bar
3. Area
4. Radar
5. Treemap

If you choose to add a reporting period limit or include more indicators to visualise, the radar and treemap options disappear.

To set a period limit, click on the Limit to option and select the period to show.

You can also add more indicators to show by simply ticking their boxes right at the bottom of the visualisation tool.

Notice how the chart changes once you add more indicators.

You can also change the series displayed by:

• Organisation type
• Organisation country
• Organisation province
• Organisation district
• Organisation city/town
• Industry
• Focus area
• Country

To do so, click on the Series field and select from one of the options in the dropdown.

Notice how the chart changes when you change the series option.

Indicator overtime/aggregated by organisation/category

To create a visualisation that shows the indicator overtime/aggregated by organisation/category, select it on the Choose visualisation type dropdown.

It won't show the chart types right away until you select a specific indicator to show.

The charts you can use to visualise the indicator overtime/aggregated by organisation/category include:

1. Line
2. Bar
3. Area
4. Stepped line
5. Stepped area
6. Pie
7. Doughnut
8. Polar area
9. Radial bar
10. Treemap

You can also choose to display data on the chart (groups) by:

• Organisation type
• Organisation country
• Organisation province
• Organisation district
• Organisation city/town
• Industry
• Focus area
• Country

By default, the data shown are grouped by organisations.

If you want to change that, click on the Group by field and select how you want to group the data on the chart.

Notice how the chart and its legends change when you select a different group.

Comparable indicators

To create a visualisation that shows comparable indicators, select it on the Choose visualisation type dropdown.

It won't show the chart types right away until you choose the first indicator and select other indicators to show.

The charts you can use to visualise comparable indicators include:

1. Line
2. Bar
3. Area
4. Radar
5. Pie
6. Doughnut
7. Polar area
8. Radial bar
9. Treemap

By default, the chart shows data from the whole duration of the initiative.

To change that, click on the Limit to period field and select a specific period from the choices.

Similarly, the data shown on the chart is also limited to all organisations in the initiative.

If you want to show the data from a specific organisation, click on the Limit to organisation field and select which organisation to show.

Indicator map

To create a visualisation that shows an indicator map, select it on the Choose visualisation type dropdown.

You will then have to choose the indicator to show on the map.

A map will then show on the screen along with a zoom in/out control and some legends at the bottom.

By default, the data points on the map are from organisations.

On the other hand, you can always choose to group the data instead to:

• Organisation type
• Industry
• Focus area
• Country

To do so, click on the Group by field and select from the choices in the dropdown.

Organisation map

To create a visualisation that shows an organisation map, select it on the Choose visualisation type dropdown.

You will immediately see a map that shows the location of all the organisations linked to the initiative.

As with any other map, you will see a zoom in/out control on the upper-right corner.

By default, the data points on the map are in no way being grouped.

However, there is an option to group the data points by:

• Organisation type
• Industry
• Focus area
• Country

Simply click on the Group by field and select how you want to group the data points.

There is also an option that would allow you to cluster the data points.

Tick the box to enable clustering and notice how data points that are near each other become clustered, with a number signifying how many points were grouped.

Opportunities attendance over time

To create a visualisation that shows the opportunities attendance over time, select it on the Choose visualisation type dropdown.

You will immediately see a stepped line chart come to life.

The charts you can use to visualise opportunities attendance over time include:

1. Stepped line
2. Stepped area
3. Line
4. Bar
5. Area

By default, the chart shows the number of unique attendance.

To change that, click the Statistic field and choose from the options:

• Number of unique attendees
• Total (possibly duplicate) attendees
  
• Average number of attendees
• Total hours attended
• Average hours attended

You can also set the reporting period to show in the chart by day, week, month, quarter, or year.

To do so, simply click on the date grouping field and choose a period from the dropdown.

You can also limit what to show in the chart (usually by an organisation).

To do so, simply indicate to limit the chart to an organisation and choose which organisation data you want to show.

You can also split the data by organisation or activity type.

To do so, click the Split by field and select an option.

Opportunities map

To create a visualisation that shows an opportunities map, select it on the Choose visualisation type dropdown.

You will immediately see a map that shows the location of all opportunities.

As with any other map, you will see a zoom in/out control on the upper-right corner.

By default, the chart shows data points of all opportunities that existed in the whole duration of the initiative.

To change that, click on the Limit to period field and select a specific period from the choices.

Aside from limiting the data points to a certain period, you can also limit the opportunities shown in the map according to an organisation.

Click on the Limit to organisation field and select an organisation.

By default, the data points on the map are in no way being grouped.

However, there is an option to group the data points by:

• Organisation
• Activity type

Simply click on the Group by field and select how you want to group the opportunities in the map.

There is also an option that would allow you to cluster the data points.

Tick the box to enable clustering.

How to Add a Visualisation to a Dashboard

Now that you know how to create visualisations, it's time to learn how to add them to a dashboard.

Follow these steps:

1. After you create a visualisation, click on the Add to dashboard field and select the dashboard where you want to add the visualisation into.
2. Then, indicate the visibility of the visualisation to the public or admins only.
3. Click on the Confirm button to continue.

Right after hitting the Confirm button, you will be redirected to the dashboard page where you can see the visualisation you just added.

That's it! Simply repeat this process to add as many visualisations to a dashboard as you need.