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Step 6: See Your Data on a Dashboard

A dashboard shows your data as charts, tables and counts. It updates as new records arrive.

3D dashboards are built in Metabase, an analytics tool that is part of 3D. An analyst on your team builds a dashboard in Metabase from the project's tables, and then adds it to the project. This guide does not cover building one. It shows what you do with a dashboard once it exists. See Dashboards for the full picture, including how a dashboard is added to a project.

For the example, the analyst has built a Farm Visits dashboard. It shows the number of visits, visits by crop condition, visits by village, and visits by month.

Before this step

Ask your system administrator for an analyst with Metabase access. Give them the project name, Farmer Training 2026, and the table name, Farm Visit. Ask for a Farm Visits dashboard with a count of visits, visits by crop condition, visits by village and visits by month, and a Village filter. When the tab appears on the Dashboards page, continue.

Open the dashboard

  1. In the main navigation, click Dashboards.
  2. The page shows one tab per dashboard. Click the Farm Visits tab.

The dashboard loads inside the page. The approved visit from step 5 is already counted.

Filter the dashboard

Most dashboards have filters at the top. Choose a value, and every chart on the dashboard changes to match.

Choose a village in the Village filter. The visit count and the charts now show that village only. Clear the filter to see everything again.

Share the dashboard

The Actions menu in the top right corner of the dashboard has three options.

Action What it does
Copy Public Link Copies a link to the dashboard. Anyone with the link can open it, without a 3D login. The link expires after a set time, so copy a new one when you need it.
Schedule Email Sends the dashboard as a PDF by email, daily, weekly, every two weeks or monthly, to users of the project that you choose.
See Scheduled Emails Lists the schedules for this dashboard, so you can check or remove them.

Tip

A scheduled email is the easiest way to keep a stakeholder informed. Give them a 3D account with a read-only role such as Coordinator, schedule the email, and they get the dashboard in their inbox every Monday without ever opening 3D.

What you have

You have been through the whole cycle. You created a project and added a colleague. You built a form with a link to reference data. You collected data on the web and in the app. You reviewed the submissions, and you saw the result on a dashboard.

Where to go next