Previous Article: The Custom Dashboard Workspace
Now that you are familiar with the dashboard workspace, let's go ahead and add some widgets to your newly created dashboard.
The Edit button
First, make sure you are in Edit Mode by clicking on the Edit button in the header. Once you are in Edit Mode, you will see a toolbar just below the header.
The Toolbar
The first widget we are going to add to our dashboard is a metric widget. A metric widget shows metric data for a specific plan item using either a gauge, line, column, or label chart.
Click on the "Metric Widget" button in the toolbar and then select a drop-zone where you would like to put your widget. The drop-zones will appear as horizontal blue bars, indicating where you can place a widget. Click on the drop-zone to place your metric widget.
A Widget Drop-zone
The Add Metric Widget Window
After selecting a widget drop-zone (i.e. where you want to place your widget), you will be prompted with a window titled "Add Metric Widget". This window will walk you through the steps necessary to create your metric widget.
Step 1: Select Data Source
In order to populate your widget with data, you must first select the source that you want to pull data from. In the case of the metric widget, we want to select a plan item to pull data from. First, let's select the plan in which our preferred plan item resides.
The Plan select
Next, select the plan item in the grid below. You will notice that there is some important information shown for each plan item including the plan item order, name, current metric value, and a description of the metric. You may also see a yellow plan item row with an icon to the right; the icon and yellow color indicate that this plan item does not have a metric. You can still set up the widget to use this plan item's data, but it won't any data in the chart until data is provided for the plan item's metric.
The Plan Item grid
Once you have selected your plan and plan item, you will see a preview of the widget on the right side of the window.
The Metric Widget Preview
If you are happy with your data source, you can move on to the next step by clicking on the "Next" button in the bottom right corner of the window.
If at any point in time you want to stop the creation of the widget and discard all of your setup, you can click on either the X button in the top right corner of the window or the Cancel button in the bottom right corner of the window.
Step 2: Choose Chart Type, Name, and Style
On the second step of the metric widget creation window, you can set the following information for your widget:
- The Widget Name
- The Widget Header Styling: Background and Text styles
- The Widget Chart Type: Gauge (Default), Line, Column, or Label
Play around with the settings to see what works for you. In this case, we are going to keep all of the default settings.
Step 3: Set Timeframe
Your charts can show data for an extended time range (or limited, if you would prefer). By default, the "All Time" option is selected, where the chart will show data for the entire lifetime of the plan item's metric data. This means that if you have 2 years of data, the chart will show 2 years of data automatically.
If you would prefer, you can select the "Specific Time Period" option in the toggle in Step 3 and choose exactly what time range you would like your chart to show data for. The options shown are different for each chart type:
- Gauge / Label
- Last: Month, Quarter, or Year
- Custom Date Range (You can select both the start and end date for the range)
- Line / Column
- This: Month, Quarter, or Year
- To Date: MTD, QTD, YTD
- Trailing 30 days, 90 days, 6 months, or 12 months
- Last: Month, Quarter, or Year
- Custom Date Range
Selecting a Custom Range for a widget's time frame
Creating the Widget
After filling out steps 1-3, you are now ready to create your widget! Click on the "Add" button in the bottom right corner of the window and your widget will be added to the dashboard in the drop-zone you selected previously.
A newly created metric widget
Congratulations! You have successfully created your first widget. Let's move and add each type of widget to our dashboard.
Next Article: Adding a Progress Widget