How to create a dashboard in Notion
With its customizable interface and flexible features, Notion is a go-to tool for many teams and individuals looking to stay organized and productive. However, until recently, Notion has lacked the ability to create visual representations of your data. That's where GRID comes in. GRID seamlessly integrates with Notion, so you can create charts and interactive dashboards that help you stay on top of your tasks and goals.
In this blog post, we'll show you how to create a dashboard in Notion using GRID for a streamlined workflow and better productivity.
Connecting your Notion database
First, you’ll need to connect your Notion account to GRID. It’s a really simple 3 step process:
1. Go to My connections in the top left on your Notion page. Find GRID and click connect. If you don’t already have an account, you’ll need to create one.
2. Next, go to GRID and create a new document. Click ‘Add existing data’ and click the Notion logo. Select the pages you want, and then the database you want to sync with GRID.
3. Now your database should be visible in the data panel. Note that your database appears in alphabetical order in GRID except for the first column, so it might look a bit different than it does on your Notion page.
To create a chart directly from your Notion database, you can use our Chart Builder. You’ll be given the option to use the chart builder when you connect your Notion database. You can also access it from the plus menu when adding one of the four supported chart types: Column, Bar, Area or Line. Once activated, the chart builder will be visible in the bottom right corner of the data panel.
Creating a dynamic sales dashboard
Now that we’ve connected a Notion database, we can create our sales dashboard. You can access the Notion database here and the GRID document here. The dashboard will include four charts displaying the following information:
Total sales this quarter shown by month
Total sales by each salesperson
The commission for each salesperson
The distribution between enterprise and residential sales
Our first chart is a column chart showing total sales per salesperson. In the chart builder, select ‘Salesperson’ on the X-axis, then ‘sum’ and ‘Price’ on the Y-axis. To customize the chart (add a title, change colors, or adjust sort order) click More options in the bottom right corner of the chart builder. You can also double click on the chart to open the editor panel.
For our second chart, we need to create a helper column in our Notion database to show the total sales for each month. To do this, we add a new formula column and insert the following formula:
formatDate(prop("Date of sale"), "MM")
This column will give us a number from the date column. For example, January 5, 2023 will become 1 in the helper column. Now we can create the chart for Total sales by month. Select ‘Month helper’ on the X-axis, then ‘sum’ and ‘Price’ on the Y-axis. To change the labels, click ‘More options’ and input the desired labels in the X-axis labels field in this format: ={"January";"February";"March"}
You can learn more about the chart builder in this short tutorial:
For our final two charts, repeat the process described above, and choose your X and Y-axis categories and the desired aggregation for the data. The chart on the bottom right includes interactivity with radio buttons, which can be added by following the instructions in this help guide.
There might be specific cases where more aggregation of your data is needed than the chart builder offers. In those cases you can use the Query function. Yep, we’ve got a quick tutorial video for that too:
Finalize layout & enable embedding
Once the charts are arranged, go ahead and add column elements from the insert menu. This’ll position multiple charts side by side. With your charts arranged, embed them back into Notion by pasting the link to your document onto your Notion page. Alternatively, use the /embed function in Notion by making your GRID doc embeddable. Just go to ‘Share’, ‘More options’ and toggle ‘Embed’.
Dynamic dashboards are a strategic way to track important data, keep your team aligned on important KPIs, and help clients more easily navigate their options.