Manage dashboards

Update your dashboards as your needs change over time and share your dashboards with your team for easier collaboration.

After you create a dashboard, other actions become available. These actions require additional user permissions.

Administrators with the Dashboards permission can access the Dashboards page, where they can manage all the dashboards in your organization’s Phocas site.

Edit a dashboard

User permissions: Save Dashboards to edit your own dashboards; Manage Dashboards to edit dashboards shared with you.

There are several ways to change the look and feel of a dashboard. If you create a dashboard, you customize it to suit your needs at the time, but you can come back to make changes later. You can make changes at the dashboard, line, and widget levels. If you are viewing a shared dashboard, some of these customization options might be unavailable.

Edit a dashboard's name, description, or owner

You might want to change the name or description of one of your dashboards or transfer the ownership so that another user can manage it. Changing the owner is especially important if you leave the business because if your Phocas account is deleted, the dashboards you created will no longer be available to other users.

You can quickly edit a dashboard's name, description, and owner from your homepage. Locate the dashboard and click its menu button, then click Edit. Make your changes and click Save.

You can also edit these details from within the dashboard. In the dashboard toolbar, click the Share button, edit the name, and click Save.

Change the way widgets display in a line

Hover over the line and click the Edit button, then on the Line screen, select one of these Display options:

Stack: Stack widgets vertically when they will not fit on a line horizontally.
Equal width: Set all widgets to the same width, filling the line and adjusting to the browser window's size. This is useful when a dashboard is going to be viewed using different screens and devices. The minimum widget width is 200 pixels, after which the line will scroll horizontally. The height of all widgets can be adjusted by clicking and dragging from the bottom of any of the widgets in the line. In the image below, three different-sized widgets have been automatically resized to be of equal width.
Horizontal scroll: Allow the widgets to take up as much space as they need, next to each other on the line. Users must scroll to see them.
Flex: Allow the widgets to be resized (see below). This option is also responsive, for different window sizes or devices.

If you have a dashboard that updates frequently, you can add details of exactly when a widget was updated. This is particularly useful on dashboards that contain widgets from multiple sources.

Hover over a widget and click the Edit button, then on the Widget screen, add the [updateDelta] placeholder in the Description box and click Save.

Rearrange widgets

Click the widget and drag the toolbar to a new position on the dashboard.

Resize widgets

To temporarily minimize the widget, hover over the widget and click the Minimize button.

If the Flex option is enabled in the line settings (above), you can permanently change the widget's size: Click and drag the Re-size button in the bottom right corner of the widget. The size appears in pixels as you drag.

Widget types that can be selected and filtered have the filter option switched on by default. You might want to turn this off, for example, to compare the whole company to just one sales rep, or just one branch. So you might have two identical widgets, one that filters and the other that does not.

Hover over a widget and click the Edit button. Then, on the Widget screen, select Is Filterable > No and click Save. You can turn the filter back on in the same way.

Set the filtering order

You can determine whether to apply a dashboard filter before or after an existing widget filter, such as an advanced search filter. The order in which the filter is applied affects the results.

Hover over a widget and click the Edit button, then on the Widget screen, if the widget has a filter applied, you will see an option to select either Filter applied first or Filter applied last. Select the required option and click Save.

For example, the image below shows the different results returned depending on the filter order.

Link dashboards

You can link dashboards to each other. You select a link within a widget in one dashboard to open up in another dashboard. You can also choose to filter the data shown in the second dashboard. Only grid widgets (not charts) can be linked.

You can select the dashboard you want to link to when you create a widget or go back and edit a widget’s configuration. From the Link To Dashboard dropdown list, select the dashboard you want to link to and click Save.

Each data item in the Code column of that widget turns blue, indicating there is an active link.

User permissions: Collaboration > Share with Folders and/or Share with Users.

Read the Sharing and folders page to learn about how sharing works.

There are multiple ways to share your dashboards. Typically, you share a dashboard when you create it. At the bottom of the New Dashboard window, select the checkboxes for the required folders and users, then click Save.

Other ways your dashboards to share are outlined below.

On your homepage, locate the favorite, dashboard, or alert you want to share, then click its menu button and click Share. In the Share window, select the required users and/or folders, then click Save.

You can remove your shared dashboards from one or more users or folders in a similar way to how you shared them. On your homepage, locate the item, click its menu button, and click Share. In the Share window, the X for the required users and folders, then click Save.

User permission: Dashboards > Subscribe

Subscribe to dashboards to receive email notifications whenever they're updated. See the Subscriptions page for steps.

Delete a dashboard

User permissions: Save Dashboards

You can delete the dashboards that you create (own) in two ways:

On your homepage, locate the dashboard, click its menu button, and then click Delete > Delete.
Open the dashboard, then click the Delete (button in the top bar above the widgets) > Yes.