The Executive summary is designed for everyone, which means it is not designed for you specifically. A custom view is where you build the screen you actually check. This guide is for anyone using the board daily. It covers what you can place on a canvas, how to decide what belongs there, and the mistake that makes custom views useless.
What a custom view is
A canvas you arrange yourself, holding any metric the board carries, placed either as a single figure or as a small chart.
A single figure is right when the number alone answers the question, such as yesterday’s revenue or current cash margin. A small chart is right when the shape matters more than the value, which is true of anything you are watching for a trend rather than a level.
Once built, a custom view can become your default landing screen, so the board opens on your numbers rather than the standard set.
Decide what belongs by asking what you would act on
The mistake is treating a custom view as a place to collect everything interesting. That produces a screen with thirty tiles that takes longer to read than the sections it replaced, and it gets checked less rather than more.
A useful filter: for every metric you are about to add, name the action you would take if it moved. If you cannot name one, it does not belong on your daily screen. It is still available in the section it lives in, on the day you have a question about it.
Most people end up with between six and ten items. That is enough to cover a business and few enough to read in the time you actually have.
Build it around a rhythm
Different rhythms need different screens, and trying to serve all of them with one is what makes custom views cluttered.
A daily view answers whether anything needs attention today. Yesterday’s revenue against plan, spend, any exception raised, orders flagged on contribution. Short, and mostly a check that nothing is wrong.
A weekly view answers whether the trend is holding. Seven day rolling efficiency, conversion rate, new against returning customers, repeat rate. Slower moving, and more useful for deciding what to change.
If you find yourself wanting both, build two views rather than one that does neither well.
Keep the comparison consistent
Every metric on a custom view inherits the date range and the comparison you have set at the top of the board.
That is a feature and a trap. It means everything on screen is describing the same window, which is what makes the tiles comparable. It also means changing the range changes everything, so a tile that looked alarming may simply be showing a different period from the one you had in mind. Check the range before reacting to a tile.
What to do first
Build a daily view with no more than six items, use it for a fortnight, and note which tiles you never look at. Remove those. The view that survives that pruning is the one worth opening every morning, and it is almost always smaller than the one you first built.