Syncrofy 101: Working with Syncrofy Dashboards

We want to make it simple for you to learn about the power of Syncrofy’s features and all the ways it can help you get the most out of your EDI data. That’s why our “Syncrofy 101” series of posts will highlight a specific task in Syncrofy and illustrate how easy it is to carry out. In this post, we’ll examine how to work with Dashboards, the different types of visuals you can build, and how to get the most out of them.

Previously, we took a closer look at all the ways you can find your data in Syncrofy. But what do you do once you’ve found that information? The easy answer is that  you’re going to want to extract some insight from it. You’ll need a way to visualize it so you can gauge the overall health of your business, because—let’s face it—data is useless if you can’t get anything out of it.

Which brings us to Syncrofy Dashboards.

With Dashboards, you can build dynamic visuals with your data based on the business goal you’re trying to accomplish. It’s a convenient way to obtain a real-time, big picture overview of your entire business.

Determining the Business Question You Want to Answer

The key before starting to build a dashboard is thinking about the business question you want to answer and what visuals would be the best at helping you achieve that. For example, you may be wondering, “Am I getting paid on time?”

By leveraging the power of Syncrofy,  there are several ways to figure this out:

• Percentage of unacknowledged invoices – If they didn’t receive it, they can’t pay it.
• Number of remittance advice (820) docs you’ve received – Sometimes the check isn’t always in the mail.
• Exceptions that have occurred in all your docs by type; SLA or Value – How are partners performing against your own user-defined exception criterias?
• Exceptions per day or per week – Don’t get caught off guard by missing docs or rejections.

Once you determine the ways you can answer the question, then you can get into creating your dashboard to visualize those ways and draw conclusions.e

How to Build Your Syncrofy Dashboards & Using Charts

Building a dashboard in Syncrofy is simple, easy, and can be done with a few clicks of the mouse. For a complete step-by-step overview, check out our Help page on Dashboards.

To build a dashboard you need to first add a widget. There are six primary widgets (chart types) in Syncrofy with each serving its own unique purpose. Each one is listed below with an example of how you might use it.

1. Vertical Bar:  Total invoice amounts by day.
2. Horizontal Bar: Total number of purchase order amounts by month. This is great for when you have a large number of values to display on your screen because it allows you to scroll up and down.
3. Line: Number of Purchase Orders (POs) processed by week.
4. Percent: Percentage of invoices that were marked as “Acknowledged.”
5. Pie: Volume of EDI documents by partner.
6. Summary: Ideal for when you have a specific value or KPI in mind.

You would then select a widget for each of the ways you determined you could answer your business question. When configuring your widget, you have the ability to split the data many different ways.

For example, let’s say you want to see your purchase orders over time but want five different lines in your line graph that show five different business partners so you can see how they’re performing against one another. Or you may want to see purchase orders over time compared to the last two years. The choice is yours and you can split your data up in the ways that best fit your purpose.

Managing Your Syncrofy Dashboards

Even with all the possibilities, your dashboard shouldn’t just be a hodgepodge collection of widgets. You have UNLIMITED dashboards, so take advantage that. There’s no reason to try and squeeze all of your data onto one dashboard.

Dashboards give you the option to “Share” and “Save as Copy” for many different instances, including when you want your entire team to be on the same page. You can share the dashboard with your entire team and ask them to copy it so they’re working out of the same view.

You also have the option to see all of the data that comprises a single chart by utilizing the View Underlying Data button in the upper right-hand corner of the widget. This is useful for troubleshooting purposes or if you just need to cross reference some data.

For example, let’s say you’ve created a summary widget that is displaying the number of unacknowledged invoices from the previous week which happens to be two. You would click the View Underlying Data button on the widget to see the invoices in question. From there you could click on the “Partner Contact” and give them a call to find out if they received the invoice. If they did, you can ask them to resend the functional acknowledgement (997) and that summary widget will turn from a “2” into a “1.” In essence, resolving your issue from right within your dashboard.

With Syncrofy, all of your data is interactive. If you see a discrepancy, you have the tools to solve the problem, right then and there.

Additional Uses

You also have the ability to build dashboards using exceptions, which can come in handy when evaluating the workload of your team.

For example, you can create a pie chart of all your team members to view how many open exceptions are assigned to each person. You may find that one team member has a high number or exceptions assigned to them disproportionately to the rest of the team. You can then go back to the Exceptions screen and reassign some of them.

These are just some of the ways you can get the most out Dashboards. They are a powerful tool but you need to have an organized approach and specific business goal if you want to get the most out of them.

To learn more about Dashboards, including a step-by-step instructions on how to create and manage them, visit our Help site. To discover the power of Syncrofy, visit www.coenterprise.com/syncrofy.