Saving and Sharing Views
Saving and Sharing Views
Every user opens the same dashboard and immediately does the same thing: applies the same four filters. Their region. Their team. This quarter. Open opportunities only. Every single morning.
Views remove that ritual.
What a view is
A view is a saved set of dashboard state — the selections, filters, and choices you've made — stored under a name and attached to the dashboard. It is not a copy of the dashboard. There's one dashboard; a view is a bookmark into a particular position within it.
- 1
Set the dashboard up the way you want it
Apply your filters and selections until the screen shows your slice — your region, your team, your date range.
- 2
Save the view
Open the view menu at the top of the dashboard and save the current state with a clear name: 'West — Open Pipeline', 'My Team This Quarter'.
- 3
Switch between views any time
The view selector lists every view available on the dashboard. Pick one and the dashboard jumps straight to that state.
The default view
You can mark one view as the default — the state the dashboard loads in when you open it, instead of the designer's original starting position.
This is a small feature with an outsized effect on adoption. A dashboard that opens on "everything, all regions, all time" makes every user do work before they see anything relevant. A dashboard that opens on their numbers feels like it was built for them.
Sharing a view
Views connect back to the sharing lesson in a neat way. When you're looking at a view and copy the dashboard's URL, the link carries the view ID. Your colleague opens it and lands not on the dashboard's default state but on your view — the same filters, the same selections, the same cut of data you were discussing.
That turns a link into a complete piece of communication. Instead of "open the pipeline dashboard, filter to West, then Q3, then closed-won", you send one URL.
Two caveats to keep in mind, both about security rather than the view itself:
They still need dashboard access
A view URL doesn't grant anything. If the recipient hasn't been given access to the dashboard, the link gets them a permission error, not a preview.
They still see their own rows
Row-level security and any security predicate apply to them, not to you. They land on the same filters — but the numbers underneath are theirs. Two people can open the identical view URL and legitimately see different totals.
That second point is the one to be careful about in conversation. If you and a colleague are looking at "the same view" and quoting different numbers at each other, you're probably both right — you're seeing different data through the same lens. Confirm the security context before assuming something is broken.
Views vs. lenses vs. subscriptions
These three get confused constantly, so it's worth a clean separation:
A view
Saved state on an existing dashboard. Same design, your filters.
A lens
A saved exploration of a dataset, created via Explore. Your own analysis, independent of any dashboard.
A subscription
A scheduled email of widget results. You don't open anything — it comes to you.
That last one is where we go next. Views make the dashboard convenient to open; subscriptions and watchlists make it show up whether you open it or not.
Discussion
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Self-Service Explore
Let CRM Analytics users open a dashboard widget in a lens, change the grouping or chart type, and answer their own question — and learn how to switch it off with the show widget actions and show explore actions properties.
Subscriptions & Watchlists
Schedule CRM Analytics widget subscriptions as recurring emails, combine widgets from multiple dashboards, use table subscriptions for real CSV attachments with their own permission, and pin trending metrics to your home screen with the watchlist.