Previous Article: Creating a Custom Dashboard
After creating a dashboard, you will be taken to the custom dashboard workspace. There are several key areas within the dashboard workspace:
The Header
The first thing you will see in the dashboard header is the dashboard name. If you are a dashboard editor, you can edit the dashboard name by clicking on it, editing the name, and then clicking on the green checkmark to the right of the field.
Editing a dashboard's name
To the right of the header, you will see a few buttons: The PDF Download and the "more options" dropdown menu (denoted by an ellipsis, ...)
The header buttons
If you are a dashboard editor, you will also see a blue Edit button. Clicking on this button will put the dashboard into edit mode. You can find more information about Editing a Dashboard in this article: [LINK EDITING ARTICLE HERE]
Once in edit mode, these 3 buttons are replaced with 3 others: Close, Save, and another "more options" button. These 3 buttons allow you to save and/or close the dashboard in a couple of different ways. Using these buttons you can:
- Save the dashboard
- Close the dashboard
- Discard changes and close the dashboard
- Save and close the dashboard
The Save and Close buttons
The Toolbar
If you click on the Edit button and enter edit mode, a toolbar will appear below the header. This toolbar has all of the buttons necessary to add widgets to your dashboard, turn on and off Page Breaks (more on these in a later article!), and change the PDF page orientation of your dashboard between landscape and portrait.
The edit dashboard toolbar
The Dashboard
The dashboard canvas is shown in the center of the window. The dashboard canvas mimics the size of a normal 8.5x11 sheet of paper, however it extends vertically to fit all of your widgets. The width of the dashboard is determined by your PDF page orientation, however in view mode this doesn't matter too much as both portrait and landscape look very similar. Try out both options to see which works best for your use case.
The dashboard canvas
The Footer
As you fill out more of the dashboard, more and more of the dashboard will be hidden off of the page, below the footer. In this case, you can use the zoom controls to see more of the dashboard. By using the + and - buttons to zoom in and out (or directly typing a zoom percentage in the field) you can effectively see more or less of the dashboard at any given time.
You can also click on the "Fit to Window" button, to the right of the zoom controls to fit the dashboards width to the width of your window. In the "Fit to Window" mode, the dashboard will zoom to fit the entire window, even if you resize it. This is a great option for those who need to share a dashboard during a meeting or over video-conference calls; just share the window and the dashboard will take up the entire presentation area.
The Zoom Controls
In edit mode, the footer also shows the current editors for a dashboard. To the left side of the footer you will see a row of colored circles with initials in them. Each circle represents a current editor of the dashboard, with that user's initials in the circle.
An current editor circle
In the next article, we will take a look at adding your first widget to your dashboard: A Metric Widget.
Next Article: Add a Metric Widget