User Guide

The SE Capacity Dashboard provides real-time visibility into Solution Engineer workload across all clouds and teams. It answers the questions leaders ask every day:

Capacity scores are directional estimates, not gospel. They're computed from Deal Support Requests (DSRs), travel approvals, and configurable effort weights. Think of the dashboard as a signal to inform decisions — not replace manager judgment.

When you open the dashboard, the landing page gives you a bird's-eye view of the entire team.

Stats bar at the top:

Below the stats bar you'll see Cloud Summary Cards (one per cloud) and then the SE Card Grid showing every individual SE.

Each cloud (Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Revenue Cloud, DSE) has a summary card showing:

Clicking a cloud card filters the SE grid below to show only SEs in that cloud. Click again to clear the filter.

The card border color reflects the cloud's overall status — if the average utilization is high, the border will be amber or red, giving you an instant visual signal.

Each card in the grid represents one Solution Engineer and shows:

Click any card to open the full SE Detail View with a complete breakdown.

You'll also notice a small ⏸ button on hover in the top-right corner — that's the quick override control to mark someone as out (see Managing SE Overrides).

The filter bar sits between the cloud cards and the SE grid. You can combine multiple filters at once:

Sort Controls

Above the SE grid, three sort tabs let you reorder cards:

The stats bar at the top updates dynamically based on your filters. A “Reset filters” link appears whenever any filter is active.

Click any SE card to drill into their full detail page. Here's what you'll find:

Header Section

Name, title, cloud, sub-team, location, and manager. The status badge and a utilization bar showing their current week utilization. You can also mark the SE as out or active from here.

Key Metrics Row

Five metrics at a glance: Total Effort Hours, DSR Effort Hours, Travel Blocked Hours, Active DSR Count (with likely-dead and overdue sub-counts), and Total ACV.

3-Week Forecast

Three vertical bar charts showing predicted utilization for this week, next week, and in 2 weeks. Each bar is color-coded by status and shows an effort breakdown (DSR hours + travel hours). A trend badge indicates whether the SE is getting busier, freeing up, or stable. More details in the Forecast section.

Active DSRs

A rich list of all active Deal Support Requests. Each card is packed with intelligence — see DSR Card Anatomy for a full breakdown. You can sort by Timeline (due date) or Effort (hours), and filter by status (In Progress, On Hold, Dead Opp, Likely Dead, Active, Overdue).

Right-Side Panels

Travel — Upcoming trips with dates, account, travel days, and blocked hours. If the travel matches a DSR, a “Linked to DSR” badge appears.

Deal Contributions — Opportunity splits showing the SE's credited amount and split percentage.

Activity History — A stacked bar chart showing weekly hours logged over the trailing weeks, split between customer-facing and non-customer hours.

Opportunities Table

A full table of all linked opportunities with account, name, ACV, close date, and the SE's role.

Each DSR card on the SE detail page is organized into rows for fast scanning:

Row 1 — Account & Effort

Left: Account name (primary identifier), plus inline segment/vertical/industry chips derived from the Account Owner Role (e.g., ENT, MFG).

Right: Effort hours in large monospace font, color-coded (red = 20h+, amber = 8–19h, green = <8h), ACV below, and an effort label (Heavy/Moderate/Light).

Activity Progress Bar

Below the effort hours, a thin progress bar shows activity hours logged ÷ classified effort hours. This tracks real work done against the system's effort estimate — no SE input needed. Colors: green at 100%+, blue at 50%+, gray below 50%. Hover for exact hours.

Row 2 — Engagement & Metadata

If a Specialist Forecast Record (SFR) exists, the SE Engagement stage (Discovery, Demo/Solutioning, etc.) is shown first — this is “what the SE is actually doing.” Then the classified type, a separator, and a clickable DSR ID that links directly to the record in Salesforce.

Row 3 — Signal Badges

A row of compact signal badges that give you health-at-a-glance:

Row 4 — SFR Comment Preview

When collapsed, if the SE has comments in the Specialist Forecast Record, a single-line italic preview is shown with a timestamp. A green timestamp means fresh (≤14 days), gray means stale (>14 days).

Expanded View (click to toggle)

Clicking a DSR card expands it to show five detail sections:

The dashboard integrates data from the Specialist Forecast Record (SFR) — the record where SEs log their engagement stage and comments on each opportunity. This provides “current-state ground truth” about what the SE is actually doing.

Three SFR fields

How SFR affects effort scoring

When an SFR exists with a valid engagement stage and the SE comments were updated within 14 days, the SFR engagement weight overrides the keyword-based classification. This means if an SE sets their engagement to “Demo/Solutioning” and keeps their comments fresh, that weight takes precedence over what the system would otherwise infer from the DSR text.

If the comments are older than 14 days, the SFR data is considered stale and the system falls back to keyword-based classification. This encourages SEs to keep their forecasts up to date.

Where SFR data shows up

The capacity score on the landing page shows this week's utilization. But an SE who is green today might be slammed next week because of a POC due date — or someone at capacity might free up because their DSRs close out.

The 3-week forecast addresses this by computing utilization for this week, next week, and 2 weeks out using the same scoring formula.

How it works

For each future week, the engine looks at every active DSR's due date and distributes its effort hours across the weeks leading up to that date. Travel blocked hours are similarly projected based on travel approval dates. This means a DSR due in 2 weeks will start showing effort in next week's forecast.

On the SE Card (Landing Page)

If the forecast trend is not stable, you'll see two things:

On the SE Detail Page

A full 3-column visualization shows each week with a vertical utilization bar, percentage, status badge, and a breakdown of DSR effort vs. travel hours. The peak week (highest utilization) is highlighted with a ⚡ badge.

Trend Logic

Each SE gets a weekly utilization percentage:

Step 0 — SE Estimated Hours (Highest Priority)

If the SE has filled in their own SE Estimated Hours field on the DSR, that value is trusted above everything else. All keyword logic, SFR overrides, and base classification are bypassed — only status modifiers still apply (Declined → 0h, On Hold → flat 3h). This gives SEs direct control over their workload signal.

Step 1 — DSR Effort Classification

If no SE estimate is provided, every Deal Support Request's Request Type Detail field is mapped to a default number of hours:

Step 2 — Keyword Modifiers

The system scans the DSR's “Reason for SE Involvement” text for keywords that adjust the effort:

Step 3 — SFR Engagement Override

If the SE has a Specialist Forecast Record (SFR) with a valid engagement stage (Discovery, Demo/Solutioning, etc.) and their SE comments were updated within the last 14 days, the configured engagement weight overrides the keyword-based classification. If comments are older than 14 days, the SFR is considered stale and the system falls back to keyword classification. See SFR Intelligence for details.

Step 4 — Travel Cross-Reference

If a travel approval exists for the same opportunity as a DSR, it confirms on-site classification. Travel days block time at 16 hours per day (default). Standalone travel approvals (no matching DSR) are added directly as blocked time.

Step 5 — Weekly Distribution

DSR effort is spread across weeks based on due dates. A DSR due within 1 week lands entirely in the current week. One due in 2+ weeks is split across the 2 weeks before the due date. DSRs without due dates are spread evenly across the current + next 2 weeks.

Step 6 — Overdue DSR Labels (Informational)

All DSRs count at full effort regardless of how overdue they are. There is no time decay or effort reduction. However, the dashboard shows informational staleness labels to help you spot DSRs that may need attention:

These labels are a signal for SE data hygiene. If a DSR shows as Stale or Expired, the SE should update its status in Salesforce — close it if completed, set it to On Hold if deferred, or extend the due date if still active.

Activity Detection

The dashboard cross-references logged activities against each DSR. If there's been recent activity (last 14 days) on the same account or opportunity — by the assigned SE or a teammate — a blue 🔄 Active badge appears on the DSR card, signaling that someone is still working on it despite the overdue date.

Special Cases

When a DSR is attached to an opportunity whose stage is Dead, Lost, or Closed Lost (stage 09+), the dashboard flags it with a ☠️ Dead Opp badge and zeros out its effort — it no longer counts toward the SE's capacity.

Why it matters

Dead-opp DSRs are noise. They inflate an SE's utilization with work that will never happen. By zeroing them out, the dashboard shows the SE's real forward-looking load — and the ☠️ flag makes it easy to spot DSRs that need to be closed or reassigned to a new opportunity.

Where you'll see it

A DSR is flagged as “Likely Dead” when it meets all three conditions:

In other words: the DSR expired and nobody is working it. It's likely abandoned and should be closed or reassigned.

Where you'll see it

Relationship to Staleness

Likely Dead is a subset of Expired. All Likely Dead DSRs are Expired (30+ days overdue), but not all Expired DSRs are Likely Dead — an Expired DSR with recent activity shows the blue 🔄 Active badge instead, meaning someone is still working it. Both still count at full effort — the labels are informational.

The SE Detail page includes a Pipeline Summary section showing key deal metrics computed from the SE's active (non-dead-opp) DSRs:

Pipeline is computed from DSR opportunity amounts — not the SFR — so it reflects what the SE is actually working on. Dead-opp DSRs are excluded.

Press ⌘K (or Ctrl+K on Windows) to open the global search overlay. You can search across:

Search is case-insensitive and debounced (250ms). Results link to the relevant SE's detail page. DSRs and Opportunities include ↗ deep links to the Salesforce record.

Sometimes an SE is unavailable for reasons the data can't capture — maternity/paternity leave, ramping as a new hire, medical leave, sabbatical, or extended PTO. The override system lets you account for this.

Three ways to mark someone as out

Restoring an SE to active

On the dashboard, hover over the out SE card and click ✓. On the detail page, click “✓ Mark Active”. On the admin page, click “Remove” next to their override entry.

What happens when someone is marked out

The dashboard supports two ways to refresh data: automated Salesforce sync (recommended) and manual CSV upload.

Automated Salesforce Report Sync

The dashboard can pull data directly from Salesforce reports via the API. Go to Admin and click “Sync from Salesforce”. This fetches the latest data from all configured Salesforce report IDs and refreshes the dashboard automatically — no CSV exports needed.

Manual CSV Upload

Alternatively, go to Admin → Upload CSV Data and upload CSV exports from Salesforce.

Expected CSV Reports

How to upload

Drag and drop your CSV files into the upload zone, or click “Choose files”. The system auto-detects which report each file is based on column headers — you can upload them in any order and upload any subset. Click “Upload” to process.

After a successful upload, you'll see row counts for each imported table. The dashboard will immediately reflect the new data.

Go to Admin to configure the capacity scoring engine. Changes take effect immediately — saving reclassifies all DSRs with the new weights.

Capacity Thresholds

Adjust the percentage boundaries between green, yellow, and red. The defaults are green ≤ 60%, yellow ≤ 85%, red above 85%. If scores feel too aggressive or too lenient, adjust these first.

DSR Effort Weights

Set the default hours for each DSR request type. If POCs in your org tend to be heavier than 25 hours, bump it up. If Workshops are usually light, lower the weight. The keyword modifiers will further adjust individual DSRs based on their text.

Keyword Modifiers

Override and reduction multipliers applied when specific keywords are detected in DSR text. For example, “on-site override” overrides to 40h regardless of the base type. “Discovery reduction” at 0.5 means discovery calls get 50% of the base weight.

SFR Engagement Weights

Set the effort hours for each Specialist Forecast Record engagement stage (Preliminaries, Discovery, Demo/Solutioning, Supporting Closure). When an SE has a fresh SFR (comments updated within 14 days), these weights override the keyword-based classification.

Other Settings

Data Status

The admin page shows when data was last imported, the import status (success/error), and row counts per table. Use this to verify your data is fresh and complete.

The Ask PACE chatbot is a floating AI assistant available on every page. It can answer natural-language questions about your team's data — DSRs, activities, opportunities, travel, and more.

How to use it

Click the chat bubble in the bottom-right corner. Type a question in plain English and hit Enter (or click the send button). The AI will query the database and return a concise answer.

Example questions

How it works

Ask PACE converts your question into database queries, executes them, and summarizes the results in plain English. It understands work types (RFP, On-site, SIC), business segments (Enterprise, Commercial), industry verticals (Manufacturing, Retail, AUE), and cross-table relationships (like DSRs with no logged activity).

Tips