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Overview

The Dashboard provides a centralized view of your system metrics, activity summaries, and key performance indicators. This guide introduces you to the Dashboard interface and helps you customize your first view.

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Dashboard purpose

The Dashboard serves as your command center for:

Monitoring

Real-time visibility into system health, performance metrics, and operational status.

Analytics

Historical data analysis, trend identification, and performance insights.

Reporting

Automated reports and scheduled data exports for stakeholders.

Alerting

Proactive notifications when metrics exceed thresholds or anomalies occur.

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What you will learn

This exploration task teaches you how to:
  • Access the Dashboard interface
  • Navigate between different dashboard views
  • Customize widget layouts
  • Understand basic metrics and indicators
  • Set your default dashboard view

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Prerequisites

  • Valid user account with Dashboard access
  • Basic familiarity with web interfaces
  • Understanding of your organization’s key metrics (helpful but not required)
1

Access the Dashboard

Log into the system and click “Dashboard” in the main navigation menu.
The Dashboard link is typically located in the top navigation bar for easy access.
2

Explore the default view

Take a moment to observe the default dashboard layout. Notice the arrangement of widgets, charts, and summary cards.
The default view shows the most commonly used metrics for your role.
3

Interact with widgets

Try clicking on different widgets to see what happens:
  • Click chart legends to toggle data series
  • Hover over data points for detailed information
  • Click widget titles to expand or collapse
Most widgets are interactive and provide additional details on interaction.
4

Switch between dashboard views

Look for a view selector (usually a dropdown or tabs) and explore different pre-configured dashboard views such as:
  • Overview
  • Performance
  • Operations
  • Custom views (if available)
5

Customize your layout

Enter edit mode (usually via an “Edit” or “Customize” button) and try:
  • Moving widgets by dragging them
  • Resizing widgets to change their dimensions
  • Removing widgets you do not need
  • Adding new widgets from the widget library

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Dashboard components

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Widgets

Widgets are the building blocks of your dashboard:
  • Metric cards: Display single values with trend indicators
  • Charts: Visualize data trends over time (line, bar, pie charts)
  • Tables: Show detailed data in tabular format
  • Maps: Geographic visualizations of distributed data
  • Text blocks: Custom notes and documentation

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Time range selector

Most dashboards include a time range control that lets you view data for different periods:
  • Last 1 hour, 24 hours, 7 days
  • Custom date ranges
  • Real-time (auto-refreshing)

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Understanding metric indicators

Dashboards use visual indicators to help you quickly assess metric status.
  • Green: Metric is within acceptable range
  • Yellow: Metric approaching threshold, attention needed
  • Red: Metric exceeded threshold, immediate action required
  • Gray: Metric unavailable or not configured

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Troubleshooting

  • Check your internet connection
  • Clear browser cache and refresh
  • Verify you have permission to view the Dashboard
  • Try a different browser
  • Verify the time range includes periods with data
  • Check if data sources are connected and healthy
  • Refresh the dashboard to load latest data
  • Contact administrator if specific widgets remain empty
  • Ensure you have edit permissions for the dashboard
  • Some dashboards may be locked by administrators
  • Try creating a personal dashboard copy instead

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Next steps

Now that you are familiar with the Dashboard interface, proceed to Creating custom dashboard views to build personalized monitoring screens tailored to your needs.