Dashboards are the “showoffs” of your database. They take your hard-earned database to a more sophisticated level by displaying an analysis of data and maybe even a bar chart or other data visualization. You’ll want to make it easy for users to access these displays by allowing them to go directly to the form where the dashboard appears. Here’s how.

Make a table for your dashboard and start creating your dashboard on a blank form. Before you get too far along, do this: Make a form-style view and name it something relevant. For this example, let’s say you call it “My Dashboard”. After creating the new view, move to the view that shows all the records in the table (usually named “All”) and remove it. Finish creating your dashboard. Now when your users go to the table, they’ll immediately be presented with “My Dashboard” in all its glory. They won’t need to open form view from the table view and they won’t wonder which record to open. Want to make the dashboard the first thing users see when they open the database? While in administrative mode, open the Options tab on your desktop. Then select Trigger After Open. In the code window, type: