Dashboard Pages

A dashboard page is a page that is not about a specific table, but rather it contains summary data about many tables in your application. The page your sales manager sees when he logs in that shows the current status of each sales person for the week, month, and quarter is an example. A page that shows graphs pertaining to the health of all of the servers running in a data center is another example.

Since dashboard pages typically contain summary data about many tables, they aren't created about any one table; but instead about the application itself. Since the page won't be about a particular record in any table, your queries will need to start on the current User, Application, or as a Search of records in a table.

Creating a dashboard page is easiest to do while also creating the way to get to that page. You will launch a dashboard page one of three ways :

  • When a link is clicked on
  • Under a Application Navigation Tab
  • When you login, it's the first page you see.

Start this process by clicking the orange plus on an existing form, or “Create a Field” from the tool bar. Attach this field to the Application, choosing “Current Application” if it asks you for a query to an Application to render about. When you choose Link as the type of field to create, you will be guided through additional questions for setting up your link. It will ask you about style, and appearance of the link and then about what you want the link to do.

Here, you would choose “Open a Page”.

It will then ask which Table the page is on. Change this to “Application” if necessary. It will then reload the list of pages on the right to show all of the pages associated with the Application.

To create a new page click “Add a New Page” at the bottom of the list. When it asks what you want the page to do, choose “Dashboard” on the right. Complete this wizard, and click on your link!

This will bring you to a dashboard page that's almost completely blank. A menu form has been added for your convenience in case you want to add menu item links to your dashboard, but that form can be removed, and the page icon and title changed to suite your needs.

If you are already using application navigation tabs, you can easily create a new dashboard by clicking the blue plus icon to the right of the tabs in the header. It will ask for a name, and create a brand new page, in view mode, ready for your dashboard content.

If you aren't already using applicatin navigation tabs, and you'd like to start, then open the Application Navigation Tabs configuration area by clicking the blue “Tabs” icon at the top of any page. This will bring up the Tab's configuration. You can create a new dashboard by filling out a row of this list with the name, choose “Application” as the table for the page, and then choose “Add New Page” at the bottom of the drop down for which page to show. Give the page a name, enter any security query you'd like, give the tab a sequence number, and you're all set.

Setting a Dashboard as the first page you see when you login

Once you have your dashboard setup, the easiest way for a user to set it as the page they see when they login is to :

  1. Login
  2. Navigate to the page.
  3. Select “Favorites” from the top right corner.
  4. Create a Favorite for this page, and choose “Make Default Login Page”.
best practices - dashboard.txt · Last modified: 2016/09/14 18:19 (external edit)
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