User Guide

About Dashboard

The Dashboard is the site landing page and the main visual overview for the current AlloyScan site. It brings together site health, audit freshness, inventory trends, and selected Analytics charts in dashboards that can be reviewed, customised, and saved.

How the Dashboard works

A dashboard is a saved layout of widgets. A site starts with one default dashboard, and Administrators can create additional dashboards with Save As.

  • A widget is a visual block on the dashboard, such as Site health or an Analytics chart.
  • The dashboard selector lets you switch between available dashboards.
  • The default dashboard is marked with a star and opens automatically when you navigate to Dashboard.
  • Dashboard actions let Administrators rename a dashboard, set it as default, or delete it when deletion is available.

Dashboard widgets read from the same audit data that powers Inventory, Software, Reports, and Analytics. When the underlying audit data changes, dashboard widgets update from the latest available data.

Working with widgets

Widgets can include the static Site health widget and Analytics widgets based on saved Analytics charts.

Administrators can enter edit mode to customise the current dashboard:

  • Add widgets from the widget palette.
  • Drag widgets to change their position.
  • Resize widgets in the layout.
  • Remove widgets from the current dashboard.
  • Open an Analytics widget's source chart when the widget provides that action.
  • Use Undo to discard unsaved layout edits.
  • Use Save to persist the layout.
  • Use Done to leave edit mode.
  • Use Save As to create another dashboard from the current layout.

The widget palette lists widgets that exist but have not been added to the current dashboard. Drag a widget from the palette to add it to the dashboard. You can also open an Analytics widget in Analytics directly from the widget palette.

Saved dashboard changes persist after reload. If the widget palette is empty, all widgets available for the current dashboard may already be in use.

Drill-down

Many dashboard widgets support drill-down. Click a slice, row, or counter to open the matching Inventory or Software grid with a filter already applied. The filtered grid reflects the same data selection that the widget represents.

Role differences

  • Administrators can view dashboards and customise dashboard layouts.
  • Users can view dashboards and switch between available dashboards, but cannot edit the dashboard layout.

Layout requirements

Dashboard editing needs enough horizontal space for the layout canvas and the widget palette. If the browser window is too narrow, AlloyScan disables layout editing and asks you to increase the window width before adding, moving, resizing, or removing widgets.

Key distinctions

  • Dashboard vs Analytics. The Dashboard is where you monitor saved visual summaries. Analytics is where you build and save charts that can later appear as Analytics widgets.
  • Dashboard vs Reports. Dashboard widgets are interactive, on-screen summaries. Reports are document-style templates intended for review, printing, export, or custom report design.
  • Dashboard vs widget. A dashboard stores a layout. A widget is one visual item inside that layout.