Dashboards

Introduction

Wiki page has been the primary tool to organize information in an easily editable format within the system until now. It offers a range of options to edit the content of the page including a WYSWYG-style editor, comprehensive permission management, import / export to other formats, large number of different Wiki plugins and many more. As Wiki page represent a general tool for organizing information it might not be the best choice for some specific scenarios.

This is why codeBeamer 8.0 introduces Dashboard, a new tool to create expressive and informative "boards". Dashboards inherit many features from Wiki pages, like permission management, or the ability to export the content or the possibility of having child pages. However, it focuses more narrowly on visualization. Unlike Wiki pages, users don't have to type in content, but rather they can choose from available Widgets, which form the basis of all Dashboards. These Widgets are rendered using user-selectable layouts; all of them supports drag&drop operation to simplify arranging the widgets within the layout.

Managing Dashboards

Basic options

Starting from codeBeamer 8.0 the root Wiki page in any project or personal Wiki space is a Dasboard instead. The following image shows the most important options in the action bar:

1. New Child Page: Creates a new child Wiki page.
2. New Child Dashboard: Creates a new child Dashboard.
3. Add Widget: Opens the Widget popup, adds a Widget to the current Dashboard.
4. Select Layout: Changes the layout of the current Dashboard.

As mentioned earlier Dashboards inherit some of the features from Wiki pages. These can be accessed from the more menu:

Adding Widgets

The Widget popup shows all the available Widgets in a tabbed interface. Filtering by name is possible using the fitler box in the right side.

thumbnailImagesInitialized

Clicking on a Widget brings up the Widget's editor page. Here you set the initial configuration of the Widget. There are two common attributes at the time of writing, which is the title of the Widget (shown in the header) and the color of its header. Rest of the attributes depend on the Widget type you chose.

thumbnailImagesInitialized

After hitting the Save button, the Widget will appear as the last element of the first column.

You can also launch the Widget popup using the button located at the end of each column. Widgets created this way will be added to the end of that column.

Changing layout

Dashboards can render widgets in grids. You can choose from a couple of predefined configurations with different number of columns and sizes. The options at the time of writing are:

• 1: One column it uses the full with of the screen.
• 1:1: Two columns, each one is 50% width of the screen.
• 1:2: Two columns, first is 33%, the second is 66% of the screen width.
• 1:3: Two columns, first is 25%, the second is 75% of the screen width.
• 2:1: Opposite of 1:2 configuration.
• 3:1: Opposite of 1:3 configuration.
• 1:1:1: Three columns, each one is 33% width of the screen.

Pinning a Widget

You can easily pin a widget from the widget context menu. This will move the widget to the top of the dashboard and it is set to full width. A pinned widget cannot be moved only after you unpinned it from the widget context menu.

Widget Copy / Cut / Paste

It is possible to copy / cut individual Widgets by using the right action link in the widget context menu:

Switch to the target Dashboard, and use the Paste menu from the more menu:

Please note that if you want to paste widget into the same Dashboard, then you have to refresh the page before this menu option appears. (Just hit F5)