There is no right or wrong number of Widgets to include in a Metrics Dashboard. As a general rule, having less than 2-3 full rows of Widgets can appear as incomplete, and having more than 8-10 rows of Widgets can become lengthy to scroll through. It is also visually appealing to have Widgets fill all 4 areas of each row being used, and the size of each Widget can be adjusted to do this.
Ultimately, the number of Widgets to add your Dashboard will depend on the purpose of the Dashboard. Who is the audience? What questions are you trying to answer?
For lengthier Dashboards with many rows, it can be helpful to create subsections to the Dashboard by using the “Text” or “Simple metric” Widget types. Each subsection of the Dashboard can focus on a different theme or aspect of the data.
You can create multiple Metrics Dashboards that are connected to the same Data Table as a way to limit a Dashboard from becoming too big or cumbersome. For example, if an organization has demographic data and participation data in the same Data Table, they can create one Dashboard to analyze demographics and a separate dashboard to analyze participation. Because all of this data is in the same Data Table, the organization could still filter the “Participation” Dashboard by demographic variable collected in the linked Data Table.
When you generate a PDF export of a dashboard, every 3 rows of Widgets will display together on a PDF page. This means, if you have a widget that is 2 rows tall, you will want to check that it is not going to get cut in half by being on 2 rows that will be part of separate PDF pages.