# Using the Opportunities Board The **Opportunities Board** lets you visually track how many **Open** Opportunities are in your Sales Pipeline, see where each of your Opportunities are in the process, and helps you easily prioritize your most urgent or valuable Opportunities first. The Opportunities Board for Mac is located in the Sidebar under Objectives. It is comprised of: 1. The **Pipeline** Filter. 2. The **Opportunities and Total Value** Count. 3. **Filters**. 4. **Sort** and **View Options**. 5. **Stages**. 6. **Opportunities**.

The Opportunities Board for iPad and iPhone is located under the Objectives tab, with the same components as above.

The Opportunities Board lets you see at a glance where there may be gaps in your current Pipeline process. This view can help identify areas of concern, such as deals that are stuck at a particular stage, so you can focus on moving them along. In the example below, there is only one Opportunity under **Inquiry**, meaning this may be an area you want to focus on to increase the number of Opportunities in this Pipeline.

This Pipeline is better weighted, with more Opportunities in the **Inquiry** stage, and fewer in Opportunities in the other Stages.

{% hint style="info" %} **Pro Tip:** Boards only show Opportunities with the status of **Open**. Opportunities assigned a status of Lost, Abandoned or Suspended will not be shown. {% endhint %} ### Viewing Pipelines The **Opportunities Board** can show only one Pipeline at a time, since the Stages for each Pipeline are different. Select the Pipeline you would like to view by clicking the **Pipeline** filter.

To ensure that your Boards are working correctly and all of your Opportunities are showing, there are two very important things to look out for: * Opportunities with no Pipeline * Opportunities with Pipeline but no Stage selected If you create an New Opportunity without applying a Pipeline, it will not display in the Opportunities Board. To prevent this from happening, and potentially missing or losing Open Opportunities, you can set up a default Pipeline that gets applied to to all Opportunities that are created. Choose the most commonly used Pipeline as the default and then change the Pipeline at any time as required.

{% hint style="success" %} **Pro Tip:** If you have more than one user in your Daylite environment you can either set a global Default Value for all users, or you can change the settings on an individual user basis. For example, a user in the Sales department may use a different set of Pipeline Stages than someone in the Marketing Department. {% endhint %} ## Starting a New Opportunity in the Opportunities Board An Opportunity **must** have a Pipeline assigned for it to be included in the Opportunities Board view. Click **New Opportunity** in the Opportunities Board and select which Pipeline you wish to assign the New Opportunity to.

The Opportunities Board shows a column called **Not Started** for any New Opportunities. Opportunities stay here until moved to a Stage in the Pipeline. {% hint style="info" %} **Pro Tip:** If all of the Opportunities on a Board have been allocated a Stage, then the **Not Started** section is no longer displayed. Check that all of your Opportunities have been given a Stage that represents their current status. {% endhint %}

## Moving Opportunities to the Next Stage As you review your Opportunities it is easy to move their progress along to the next Stage in your Pipeline by dragging them from one Stage to the next.

Dropping the Opportunity onto a Stage's title prompts an **Advance Stage** window that lets you verify or change the Start Date, create Tasks and Appointments, and leave Notes.

## Updating an Opportunity's State The Opportunities Board only shows Opportunities that are in an **Open** state. Opportunities in any other State will not be shown here, but are viewable in the Sidebar under **All Opportunities**. That is also why Opportunities disappear from the **Opportunities Board** when you change the State to **Lost** or **Abandoned** for example. As you begin to move your Opportunity from one Stage to another, there are four different **States** that appear at the bottom of the Opportunities Board. These States are: * **Lost** * **Abandoned** * **Suspended** * **Won**

Dropping an Opportunity onto any of these States prompts a window at the bottom of the Board to appear, which lets you verify or change the State as well as select a reason.

The state is automatically updated to **Won** in the Details and Activity View.

## Filters ### Filtering Opportunities by Owner This option filters Opportunities by sales person, or account holder. You can filter by individual Owner, or view All Owners at one time. As you know, every Object in Daylite is assigned to a specific user called an Owner. The default view is to show all Owners, but it is possible to select different users. It is only possible to filter by a single user at a time. When an Opportunity is first created, a **Create Date** is applied; but at the same time a **Created By** field is also added to the record. You cannot change the Create Date field or the Created By field, but you can change the Owner field. The parentheses after a user's name is an indication of the number of Opportunities owned by that user. Other active users are displayed below but if they do not have brackets after their name, then they do not own the current set of Opportunities that are listed in the selected Pipeline.

### Filtering Opportunities by Forecasted Close Dates This option filters Opportunities by the date the deal should close by. You can look at forecasted close dates up to a year, both past and future. **All Forecasted Dates:** This default view means that all Opportunities that have a forecast close date will appear here. It should be noted that this filter will also include Opportunities where a forecasted close date has not yet been set. If you want to filter Opportunities that do not yet have a forecast close date, you can use the **none** option at the bottom of the drop-down list. There are three filter groups to consider: * Current: Today, this week, month, quarter, year * Past: Yesterday, last week, month, quarter, year * Future: Tomorrow, next week, month, quarter, year

### Filtering Opportunities by Create Date This is the date that the Opportunity was created. Unlike Forecast Close Date, it is not possible to edit/change the Create Date. All Opportunities have a create date.\ The filtering options are slightly different this time: * Current: Today, This week, month, quarter, year * Past: Yesterday, Last week, Month, Quarter, Year

### Filtering Opportunities by Category This option filters Opportunities by Categories, which can be designated in Daylite Preferences. It is not possible to filter by more than one Category at a time. New Hire, Silver, Gold and Diamond Services have been created in this example.

### Filtering Opportunities by Type This option filters Opportunities by how they were acquired. You can choose to filter by Cold Calls, Trade Shows, Referrals and many more. These options can be set in Preferences.

## Sorting Your Opportunities You can change how you view Opportunities by clicking **↑↓ Sort** and choosing from the following: * **Forecasted Close** organizes each Opportunity in their Pipelines, so you can see when a sale is scheduled to wrap up. * **Created** organizes each Opportunity by the date you created it. * **Name** organizes your Opportunities alphabetically. * **Priority** organizes your Opportunities by priority. * **Total Value** organizes your Opportunities by their total value. * **Probability** organizes your Opportunities by the likelihood they will close. This percentage can be assigned to the Opportunity under Details and Activity. * **Next Activity** organizes your Opportunities by next scheduled Task or Appointment. * **Days in Stage** organizes your Opportunities by the number of days they have remained in one Stage.

## Viewing an Opportunity Card ### View an Opportunity Card's Linked People and Companies You can view an Opportunity's **Linked People** and **Companies** here.

Double click the Opportunity Card, then select **edit** to change this value.

You can view an Opportunity's **Value** and **Probability of Closing** here.

Double click the Opportunity Card, then select **edit** to change these values.

### View an Opportunity Card's Upcoming Tasks and Appointments If an Opportunity has an upcoming or past due Task or Appointment a notification will appear here.

Double click the Opportunity Card, and select **Tasks and Pipelines** to view or change the due dates.

### View an Opportunity Card's Forecasted Close Date If an Opportunity has a **forecasted close date** it will appear here.

Double click the Opportunity Card, select **Details and Activity** to view the forecasted close date, or select **edit** to change this value.

### View the Number of Days an Opportunity Stays Within a Stage The Opportunities Board tells you how many days an Opportunity has been at the current Stage. This feature helps identify which Opportunities may be getting bottlenecked, and how best to move them along to the next Stage. Moving the Opportunity to the next Stage resets this number.

### Setting an Opportunity's Priority On a scale of 1-10, how important is this Opportunity? You can quickly view the Opportunity's **Priority** here.

Double click the Opportunity Card, select **Details and Activity** to view the priority, or select **edit** to change this value.

### Who Owns This Opportunity You can quickly see who owns or is assigned to an Opportunity by looking at the bottom right side of the Opportunity Card. If applicable, a small photo of the owner will show.

## View Options **View Options** allows you to hide or show certain information from an Opportunity's card, to help you focus on what is most important to you.