Notion is an easy-to-use project management tool that helps you organize your life and work. And that means managing a million items, and that can get messy, even on Notion. There are too many moving pieces, but you can declutter your space with a Notion dashboard.
By creating a Notion dashboard, you decide what is important and what action items you want to give the most attention to. It helps you identify critical and time-bound tasks and keep a close eye on them.
The dashboard can take any shape or form based on your life goals, business niche, and style. In this article, we will create a Notion dashboard for a content marketing agency - but it will cover all steps to creating dashboards for any niche or industry.
Here are the four simple steps to creating a Notion dashboard:
1. Create a rough spreadsheet for visual guidance
This step is not a prerequisite, but it simplifies and speeds up the process. It makes for the perfect blueprint that can be morphed quickly into a functional Notion dashboard.
This rough representation allows you to focus on the finer details of your dashboard without worrying about the high-level view.
The blueprint of a content marketing agency’s dashboard, for example, would look like this:
We have divided the dashboard into three vertical sections.
- Focus: This section captures all imminent tasks internal and external to the agency.
- Client-Related Activities: It captures all client-related tasks.
- Internal Activities: This section captures everything related to the internal functioning of the agency, right from marketing to invoicing.
Each section has a list of tasks and subtasks. With a clear blueprint, now it’s going to be much easier to create your dashboard on Notion.
2. Create a blank page and set up your preferred layout
You can add a simple image and an icon to make the dashboard look more aesthetic. Alternatively, you can add plain colors or gradients - whatever works best for you.
We also added the three columns introduced in the previous section - Focus, Client-related activities, and Internal Activities.
Each of the three is tagged as H1 to give them a larger font size.
With that, the skeletal structure of your dashboard is ready.
3. Add all tasks and subtasks to the Notion Dashboard
We will stick to the blueprint created in Step 1 and fill out the columns with tasks and subtasks.
Each task in the above image is a Toggle Heading 2 block. You can view the subtasks by expanding the tasks as well.
All the subtasks are individual pages. They can take the shape of tables, databases, landing pages, or any other page style that Notion offers.
Clicking on one of the subtasks takes you to the pertinent page where you can use Notion blocks.
Pro tip: You can directly link your content calendar on Notion. In this instance, clicking on the SEO Content Calendar item under Internal > Marketing subtask would take you to the agency’s content calendar.
The calendar can be further arranged in different views as highlighted in the above image.
Similarly, you can create new databases or boards for each subtask in the calendar. Alternatively, you can link existing databases to the subtask.
How can you do that? On clicking on the Social Media Marketing subtask, you will see a new page. Create a table view block there.
Notion will ask you to select a data source. Over here, you can find all existing databases.
In this example, we will import the Social Media Calendar database into the Social Media Marketing subtask.
And that’s it! Your existing dashboard is available in the subtask.
4. Design your dashboard
Setting up a dashboard is one thing, but creating one you want to visit and use daily is a whole different ball game. With Notion, you can build aesthetic dashboards in no time.
You get many design features that transform your dashboard into a page your team loves.
Consider adding these design items to make your dashboard appealing:
1. Jump links section for mobile phone users
Notion creates responsive pages to ensure that they render well on smaller screens. When you access your dashboard on your mobile phone, all the columns align into a single vertical file. The three sections that appear parallelly on a desktop screen will appear in a serial pattern on a mobile phone.
This means, mobile viewers do not have the complete dashboard in their visual space. They need jump links at the top to take them to the section they want to see.
A good practice is to add a table of contents block right after the page title with in-page links to all the major sections on the page.
2. Add emojis to tasks and subtasks
This optional step adds flavor to your dashboard. Emojis break the monotony of text and act as a subtle visual guide. They also appear in the table of contents block as seen in the previous image.
You can use the Emoji block to add an emoji right before a subtask. Type /emoji and click on the only option that appears or hit the colon key also works to populate the complete list of emojis.
Continue typing to find the emoji of your choice. For example, on typing ebook, you will find emojis that look like an ebook.
Here is what your dashboard will look like with the jump-links and emojis.
3. Add quick-access links
Quick access links are any links that your team accesses frequently. It could be your team’s project board, community page, leave application portal, salary slip portal, etc.
4. Embed your Google Calendar
Embedding Google Calendar in Notion is a simple two-step process. It will help you show all the important events in a calendar view. Your team can block their calendars accordingly.
Here’s what the updated version of the dashboard looks like with the calendar and quick access links in place.
It’s much easier to create, maintain, and design dashboards on Notion than on spreadsheets. You get sleek design capabilities combined with unlimited customization potential.
But Notion is not limited to creating dashboards or taking notes - You can create aesthetic websites for your business in no time. When combined with Super, your Notion website can turn into a well-designed, fast, and SEO-friendly lead-gen engine.
Use Cases of Notion Dashboards
1. Project Management Dashboard
A Notion project management dashboard offers a centralized space to oversee tasks, deadlines, and progress. You can set up the dashboard so that it gets automatically populated with tasks nearing the deadline. This way, the whole team can track priority tasks. Furthermore, your team can easily collaborate in real-time by using features like commenting and mentioning team members.
2. Content Calendar Management
Notion is a highly functional tool for managing content. Notion dashboard is one of the many tools it offers to make the job easy. You can structure the content dashboard to highlight imminent tasks such as writing a blog post or publishing a post on LinkedIn.
3. Sales and CRM Tracking
For sales teams, Notion dashboards serve as a centralized CRM system. You can manage leads by setting up lead stages in the Notion dashboard and tracking the position of each lead inside your pipeline.
4. Personal Productivity Dashboard
You can leverage Notion dashboards for personal productivity, setting and tracking both personal and professional goals. The dashboard can become a hub for habit formation, allowing users to establish and track their daily routines. Additionally, users can curate reading lists and track learning goals, making it a versatile tool for personal development.
5. Team Knowledge Base
Notion dashboards can serve as a robust knowledge base for teams. The documentation hub centralizes project documentation, SOPs, and team guidelines, fostering a collaborative environment. You can compile FAQs and essential resources within the dashboard for quick and easy reference.
6. Event Planning and Coordination
Event planning becomes more efficient with Notion dashboards. They facilitate the management of guest lists, invitations, and RSVPs, providing an organized space for event coordination. The dashboard aids in overseeing logistics, including venue details, schedules, and necessary supplies.
7. Hiring and Recruitment Dashboard
Notion dashboards can come in handy while managing the hiring and recruitment process. The dashboard can facilitate candidate tracking, allowing teams to monitor candidate information and document interview feedback. Job postings, applications, and candidate profiles are efficiently recorded, and an onboarding checklist ensures a smooth transition for new hires.
FAQs
How do you make an aesthetic Notion dashboard?
Notion dashboards look aesthetic when you use colors that blend with each other. By using a color palette that perfectly aligns with the mood you want to set for your dashboard, you can make it look easy on the eyes. Notion fonts also play an important role in making the design stand out. You can also make use of visual Notion blocks like horizontal divider, quote block, headers, toggles, images, icons, etc., to make your dashboard look more professional.
What should your Notion dashboard contain?
Your Notion dashboard can have items such as — a task overview section, to-do list, calendar, Spotify playlist, health tracker, etc. However, the list may vary with the purpose of the dashboard. For example, a personal Notion dashboard may have health trackers, reading lists, weekly planner, etc. On the other hand, a professional Notion dashboard may record client escalations, current projects, priority tasks, etc.
How to embed a dashboard in notion?
You can easily embed a dashboard by pasting its public link inside the “Embed” block. In fact, you can embed any public link in Notion by simply pasting it in a Notion page.
How to link a page to your Notion Dashboard?
You can link a page to your Notion dashboard by using the “Embed” block. Type “/embed” anywhere inside the dashboard and click on the “Embed” option. Notion will prompt a pop-up where you can paste the link to the page you want to embed. Finally, click on “Embed” to display your page in the dashboard.
How to make columns in a Notion dashboard?
You can use the “columns” block to create columns in your Notion dashboard.
This block allows you to select anywhere between 2-5 columns. Another way to add columns is by doing it manually - by dragging around empty blocks and dropping them next to each other - but that’s a slightly more tedious method.
