7 Signs Your Smartsheet Dashboard Is Being Ignored (And What Each One Means)
- Bowen Liu
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
Nobody tells you when they stop using your dashboard. They just stop.
There’s no email. No feedback session. The dashboard keeps pulling live data. The widgets keep updating. But the people it was built for have quietly worked around it.
I’ve seen this pattern hundreds of times. And the frustrating part is that dashboard abandonment is almost always predictable. There are specific signs, usually visible before the dashboard is even shared, that tell you exactly what’s wrong and what to fix.
Here are the seven I look for first.
Sign 1: People Only Open It When You Remind Them If your stakeholders need a nudge to check the dashboard, it is not part of their decision-making process. A dashboard that gets used every day answers a question people are already asking every day. If you have to create the occasion for them to look, the dashboard is answering a question they are not actually asking. |
What this means: The dashboard is not connected to a real decision. Go back to the brief: who opens this, when, and to decide what? If you can't answer that, the dashboard needs a purpose before it needs a redesign.
Sign 2: The Team Is Pulling Data From Source Sheets Instead Watch where people actually go to get information. If team members are opening the underlying sheets to find numbers instead of reading the dashboard, the dashboard has failed its core job. The data is there. The presentation of it is the problem. |
What this means: Something about the dashboard makes it harder to get the answer than going to the raw data. Usually this is a layout problem or a metric definition problem. The viewer doesn't trust that the dashboard number matches what they'd see in the sheet.
Sign 3: Every Time Someone Looks at It, They Ask a Clarifying Question "What does this number include?" "Is this as of today or end of last week?" "Does this count cancelled projects?" If your stakeholders are asking these questions repeatedly, the dashboard is creating more cognitive work, not less. |
What this means: The metrics are not self-explanatory and the dashboard has no context layer. Every metric widget should answer its own clarifying questions: what it measures, what timeframe, and what the target is. If viewers have to ask, the dashboard is making them work for information it should be giving them.
Sign 4: It Only Gets Referenced in Presentations, Not in Daily Decisions Some dashboards become presentation props. They look good on a screen during a review meeting. But between meetings, nobody opens them. This is a sign the dashboard has become a reporting artifact rather than a decision tool. |
What this means: The update cadence and the decision cadence are misaligned. If your stakeholders make decisions daily but the dashboard is formatted for a monthly review, it's not built for how they actually work. See the full guide on aligning dashboard design to how decisions actually get made.
Sign 5: Nobody Notices When a Widget Breaks This one is quiet but diagnostic. A metric widget shows an error, or blank, or a wrong number. Nobody says anything. That silence tells you the widget was not being read. If the dashboard were genuinely driving decisions, a broken widget would be reported within hours. |
What this means: The broken widget was decorative, not functional. People had stopped trusting or reading it before it broke. This is also worth reading in the context of data trust: one broken widget often signals a deeper data quality issue that is quietly undermining the entire dashboard.
Sign 6: The Primary User Has Changed But the Dashboard Has Not Dashboards have a lifespan. The project manager who needed weekly status updates left six months ago. The executive who replaced them has different priorities and a different cadence. But the dashboard is still answering questions for someone who is no longer there. |
What this means: The dashboard lost its audience. A good dashboard audit includes asking: who is this currently for, and is that person still the right primary user? This is one of the most common reasons legacy dashboards go stale. The data is still live. The purpose is not.
Sign 7: People Say It's Useful, But Can't Tell You the Last Time They Used It This is the most polite form of abandonment. Stakeholders will say the dashboard is great. They'll agree it's helpful. But press them on when they last opened it and the answer is usually "I'm not sure" or "a while back." Positive sentiment without engagement is courtesy, not adoption. |
What this means: The dashboard has goodwill but no utility. People like that it exists. They just don't need it. This usually means the problem it was solving has either been solved another way or was never the right problem to solve in the first place.
So, What Do You Do About It?
If you recognized your dashboard in two or more of these signs, the instinct is usually to redesign. Resist that.
Redesigning a dashboard that's solving the wrong problem just gives you a prettier version of the wrong solution. Before you touch a widget, go back to the brief:
• Who is the primary user?
• What is the one decision they make with this dashboard?
• What data does that decision require?
• Are those things still true today?
If the answers have changed, the dashboard needs a new purpose, not a new design. If the answers were never clear to begin with, start there.
The foundation for all of this is the same framework covered in why dashboards get ignored in the first place. If you haven't read that yet, start there.
Fix It From the Foundation Up
Dashboard abandonment is a symptom. The root causes are always in the design decisions made before the first widget was placed. The complete framework for building Smartsheet dashboards that actually get used is here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is my Smartsheet dashboard not being used?
The most common reasons a Smartsheet dashboard stops being used are: it is trying to answer too many questions for too many people, the data is not trusted because at least one metric has shown a wrong number, the layout buries the most important information, or there is no clear action the viewer is supposed to take. Dashboard abandonment rarely happens suddenly. It follows a predictable pattern of declining engagement before anyone says anything.
How do I know if my Smartsheet dashboard is working?
A working Smartsheet dashboard has a defined audience that opens it regularly without being reminded, answers a specific question the stakeholder cares about, and drives a consistent next action. If your dashboard is only opened when someone is preparing a presentation, or only after you send a reminder, those are signs it has become a reporting artifact rather than a decision tool.
What are signs of a bad dashboard?
Signs of a bad dashboard include: stakeholders open it only when you remind them, the team pulls data from the source sheets instead of reading the dashboard, viewers ask clarifying questions every time, the dashboard gets referenced in presentations but not in daily decisions, nobody notices when a widget breaks, the primary user has changed but the dashboard has not, and people describe it as useful without actually using it.
How do I get my team to use a dashboard?
Getting a team to use a dashboard starts before the dashboard is built. Define one primary audience, one question, and one action that question should drive. If the dashboard already exists and adoption is low, audit it against the 7 signs: reminder dependency, source-sheet bypass, question fatigue, presentation-only usage, broken widget silence, stakeholder drift, and polite praise with no engagement. Each sign points to a different root cause and a different fix.
What is dashboard adoption and why does it matter?
Dashboard adoption means stakeholders are regularly using the dashboard to make decisions, not just occasionally glancing at it. Between 60 and 80 percent of business dashboards go unused or underused, which means the data infrastructure behind them is also going unused. Low adoption is not just a UX problem. It is a sign that the dashboard is not connected to the actual decisions your team needs to make.
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