Building Dashboards

A dashboard is a set of widgets for particular roles and clients, shown on a page in your portal. This guide covers making new dashboard pages, linking them from your menus, and asking the assistant to build a dashboard for you.

How Dashboards Reach People

Three settings decide who sees a dashboard and where:

  • Roles — which kinds of users get it, for example Client Admin and Client Billing.
  • Clients — optional. Limits a dashboard to the users of certain clients.
  • Pages — the dashboard pages it is shown on. Your home page is the usual one.

When someone opens a dashboard page, they see the first published dashboard assigned to that page that matches their role (and, for client users, their client). Drafts are never shown.

Creating a Dashboard Page

You can add more top-level pages for dashboards, such as /billing/ or /reports/. Go to Dashboards and click New page. You can also click New page next to Show on page when adding a dashboard, or open a dashboard's Settings → Page Assignment and click New page for this dashboard.

  1. Type a Page title. The address fills in from the title; you can change it.
  2. The address is checked as you type. If another page already uses it, or the portal uses it itself (for example /projects/ or /invoices/), you are told why and offered one that is free.
  3. Click Create page. The page is published straight away. If you started from a dashboard, that dashboard is assigned to it.

Adding the Page to Menus

After the page is created you are asked which menus should link to it, with one checkbox per menu. Menus that match the dashboard's roles are already ticked. The link is added at the end of each menu; drag it into place in Settings → Menus.

  • Only administrators can add the page to menus. Editors can create the page and are asked to have an administrator add the link.
  • Clients that have their own custom menu don't get the link automatically. Add it to their menu in Settings → Menus if they need it.

Balance Due Widget

Balance Due shows what is still owed on open invoices as one number, with how much is overdue and how many invoices that is. Add it from the dashboard builder, or ask the assistant.

  • Client users see only their own company's balance, and only if they may see invoice amounts. By default that is Client Admin and Client Billing; other client roles don't get the card at all.
  • Staff who manage invoices see every client's total, or one client's if you pick a client in the widget's Client setting.
  • Open means Sent, Viewed, Overdue or partly paid. Drafts, Paid, Cancelled and Refunded invoices never count. Overdue means marked Overdue or past its due date.
  • Invoices in different currencies get separate totals.

To-Do Center Widget

To-Do Center lists everything the signed-in client needs to do — invoices to pay, contracts to sign, tickets to reply to, stages to approve, forms to fill in — each with a button to do it. Clients also see this list wherever a dashboard has an Action Center. To put it first on a client dashboard, click Lead with To-Do Center under the dashboard's name in Manage Dashboards. See The Client To-Do Center.

Today Widget

Today shows the top of the signed-in person's Today list: the counts, the first few things to do with their reasons, a line to Actions when something is waiting, and how much is due tomorrow. Its one setting is how many items to show, from 3 to 8. It is for your team only: clients see nothing, so don't add it to a client dashboard. New sites start with it on the admin and staff dashboards.

Building a Dashboard with the Assistant

Administrators, editors and system admins can ask the assistant to build a dashboard, for example:

  • "Build a billing dashboard for client admins with their outstanding invoices and recent tickets, on the billing page."
  • "Add a tickets chart to the client dashboard and make it full width."
  • "Create a /reports/ page for the reports dashboard and add it to the admin menu."

The assistant chooses real dashboard widgets and their options, the roles and clients, and the page. Every change shows a summary and waits for you to reply YES.

  • A dashboard the assistant creates is always a draft. Review it in the dashboard builder, then publish it by pressing Save there or by asking the assistant. When you publish from chat, the confirmation names the page and who will see it.
  • Client users and portal agents can't build or change dashboards.
  • Custom HTML widgets can only be added in the dashboard builder.

Notes & Gotchas

  • A new dashboard made from Dashboards → Add Dashboard goes live as soon as it is created. Show on page starts at "Not on a page yet". If you choose a page that already shows a dashboard for the same roles, people may start seeing the new one instead.
  • If the dashboard builder is open on a dashboard while the assistant changes its widgets, pressing Save in the builder replaces the assistant's changes with what the builder shows. Reload the builder first.

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