I wanted to share our success story implementing a custom client-side sales forecasting dashboard that dramatically improved both forecast accuracy and team adoption. Before this implementation, our sales team relied on static reports that were often outdated by the time they reviewed them, leading to poor forecast accuracy and low engagement with the forecasting process.
We built a custom dashboard using the ZAF SDK and Chart.js that provides real-time visualization of pipeline health, win probability trends, and forecast vs actual tracking. The key was making it mobile-friendly so reps could update and review forecasts from anywhere, which was critical for adoption.
The dashboard integrates live API data from Zendesk Sell to show up-to-the-minute pipeline changes, uses interactive charting to let reps drill into specific opportunities, and works seamlessly on mobile devices. After six months of use, our forecast accuracy improved from 67% to 89%, and dashboard engagement went from virtually zero to daily use by 95% of the sales team.
The 89% forecast accuracy improvement is remarkable. How much of that do you attribute to the dashboard itself versus the increased visibility driving better rep behavior? Also curious about the interactive charting implementation - are you using Chart.js plugins or custom event handlers for the drill-down functionality?
How did you approach the mobile-friendly UI design? We’ve tried building mobile dashboards before but struggled with chart readability on small screens and touch interaction for drill-downs. Did you use responsive design or build separate mobile/desktop layouts?
I’d love to understand more about your Chart.js configuration for real-time updates. Are you destroying and recreating charts on each data refresh, or using the update() method? We’ve had performance issues with frequent chart updates causing browser lag, especially on mobile devices. How did you optimize for smooth real-time visualization?
We track weighted pipeline by stage, week-over-week movement (deals progressing vs stalling), at-risk opportunities (deals that haven’t been updated in 7+ days), and forecast vs quota attainment trending. For live data integration, we use the ZAF client to poll the Deals API every 60 seconds when the dashboard is active, with WebSocket notifications for immediate updates when deals change.
We used responsive design with Chart.js’s responsive configuration options. The key was simplifying the mobile view to show only the most critical metrics (current quarter forecast accuracy, this week’s pipeline movement) with larger touch targets for drill-down actions. We also implemented swipe gestures for navigating between time periods, which felt more natural on mobile than dropdown selectors.