Hubsessed Office Hours: Reporting and Dashboards · Every clip

Prove it before you promise it

Joshua Oakes · Wednesday, November 11, 2026

A stakeholder hands you a request you don't fully understand, and the easy answer is yes. In Reporting and Dashboards Office Hours I said "prove it before you promise it" is one of my catchphrases. I'm not going to say, "absolutely, we'll get it done and then come back with questions later." Knowing how dashboards, reports, filters and segments work together is a good skill, and Breeze can help you there. What you really need to work on is answering their question with a question that doesn't seem combative. Mine is usually about the calendar: "How often do you need to look at that data?" Or, "I know you've got the board report in two weeks. Is it for that?" Then you can say you want to build the right thing at the right level. That's a very different framing than, "okay, tell me what you want to see in that report." I wouldn't even say I'm good at it. I'm less bad at it than I used to be. But with the email question I raised earlier, or the way Casey's client framed theirs, there isn't a way to solve the problem without a better understanding of what they need. The full session: https://www.hubsessed.io/office-hours/reporting-dashboards/2026-11-11