Is your 17hats dashboard crammed with any of the following: new lead notifications (that are actually old)... undone to-do items and workflow tasks… or emails and documents from old projects? If yes, a) you’re not alone; and b) it’s time to clean up 17hats so that you can make the most of this powerful tool!
Why you may need to clean up your 17hats dashboard
This commonly happens when you’re still figuring out how to incorporate and use workflows to their fullest. Unfortunately, once those dashboard lists start getting longer and longer, not only is it hard to know where to start, but it’s almost impossible to log in and feel inspired by what you see. (Am I right?!) So let’s look at how we can clean up your 17hats dashboard and turn it into the place you go for helpful direction in your business each and every day…
Do your workflow steps match your process?
First, take note of what workflow steps are left undone and examine why. Are they not needed? Does your workflow ask you to send a document before you have all the information you need for the document? Maybe a certain to-do task is completely unneeded and holding things up?
See what you can do to fix the underlying issue(s) that cause your dashboard to get cluttered so that it is less likely to happen again.
Now that you’ve taken care of some potential causes, it’s time to clean up!
Clean up old 17hats projects
Navigate to your PROJECTS tab on the far left. And so we can select multiple projects at once, change the view to the list view if needed. Now start checking the boxes to the left of those old 17hats projects that you know can be archived (the project date column is likely a huge help in this).
After you’ve selected multiple projects, use the new “Bulk Actions” button that appears in the top right of this section to archive them.
Depending on the number of active projects you have open, you may need to repeat this process until you no longer see pages to scroll to at the bottom of the screen.
After you’ve archived as many projects as you feel comfortable through that method, hopefully you can already see some progress on your dashboard.
"Clean up your 17hats dashboard and turn it into the place you go for helpful direction in your business each and every day."
At this point, you may need to click into each project to refresh yourself on its status. Review the Important Documents section and the email exchanges to figure out what action needs to be taken next.
Perhaps you’ve skipped over some of the workflow items for this project and you can either delete or mark those steps as completed. Or maybe you simply need to execute the workflow task that’s been prompted for you.
Now that you’ve clicked into each project and properly executed the next step, your dashboard should be looking even more friendly. But let’s talk about two more sections that might be loaded up with clutter.
Get document reminders to help you clean up your dashboard
For each of the past due document sections, setting up your automated document reminders will help! Navigate to Account Settings > Email Settings > Reminders tab to turn on reminders for the documents you’d like.
There are a ton of options for the timing and frequency of these automated reminders (before and after the document due date), and you can customize your message using tokens as well. Just keep in mind that these are global, automatic messages that will apply to every live document in your account.
Clean up your email section
Ok final section (that may or may not be populating to your dashboard): the Emails To Reply To section. Here is where emails from your 17hats contacts may populate if you have that setting turned on (Account Settings > Email Settings > “Show emails on dashboard” checkbox).
I find this can be helpful, just for an extra reminder to address the email and make sure it doesn’t get lost in the inbox of your email service provider. But chances are, if this section has that “50+” count on it, it’s not serving you.
Use the navigation above to uncheck that box and continue using your email service provider to communicate back and forth with emails (unless, of course, your next step in that project is to send a 17hats template!)
Conclusion
I really hope this guide has helped you clean up your 17hats dashboard so that it can be the helpful resource it’s meant to be when you log in each day!
If you’re finding that you just can’t get your workflow steps to match your process like you need - I’m here to help! Let’s hop on some Zoom calls or work together for a customized setup that suits you and your customers.