Setting Up Home Dashboards for Users

This topic covers all setup considerations related to the home dashboards in the AWI. For information about the rights needed for the Dashboards perspective, see the information about Rights for Dashboards in Authorizing Users to the AWI.

Home dashboards are an integrated feature in the AWI. When you install the AWI and its perspectives, the Automic default dashboards are automatically available to their users.

This topic contains the following information:

Background: How AWI handles home dashboards

By default, users see the Automic default home dashboards that are delivered with the AWI and its perspectives. As an administrator, you can define local default versions for your users. You should also give users authorizations to be able to save changes to the home dashboard objects, so that they can customize them as they would like.

To manage the different setup scenarios, when a user opens a home dashboard, the AWI looks for the version of the home dashboard to display in the order described in the following table.

Search Sequence

 Home Dashboard Version

Origins
1

The user-customized version.

Defined by the user.

The custom DASH object is stored in the folder specified in the customHomeDashboardsFolder parameter of the configurations.properties file.
2

The company default defined in the login client.

Defined by an administrator of the login client.

The custom DASH object is specified in the defaultHomeDashboard parameter of the configurations.properties file of the login client.
3

The company default defined in Client 0.

Defined by an administrator of Client 0.

The custom DASH object is specified in the defaultHomeDashboard parameter of the configurations.properties file of Client 0.
4

The Automic default that came with the your installation.

Part of the downloaded installation package for the AWI or the related perspective.

Configuration options for custom home dashboards

The following parameters in the configuration.properties file allow you to configure how home dashboards are managed.

Parameter Description
defaultHomeDashboard

The name of a locally customized home dashboard to be used instead of the Automic default

This parameter can be used for the AWI Home dashboard. For more information, see the steps that follow in Steps: Defining a different local default home dashboard.
customHomeDashboardsFolder

The folder for user-customized versions of home dashboards

Users need to be authorized to write to the related objects and folders. For more information, see the steps that follow in Steps: Enabling users to customize their own dashboards.

Steps: Defining a different local default home dashboard

Use these instructions when you want your users to have a customized local default dashboard instead of the Automic default version.

  1. Create the new dashboard in the Dashboards perspective. For information, see the AWI User Guide or user help. Make sure to do the following:
    • Make it a public dashboard
    • If you have a folder that you use for local default home dashboards, select that folder.

    You will need privileges to the Dashboards perspective and the perspectives that are related to the widgets that you want to add, as well as the authorities to DASH objects.

  2. In the configuration.properties file, add the parameter "defaultHomeDashboard" and specify the name of the related DASH object. In this example, the DASH object name is COMPANY_DASHBD.

    ...

    defaultHomeDashboard = COMPANY_DASHBD

    customHomeDashboardsFolder = DASHBOARDS

    ...

  3. Optionally, enable users to customize their own dashboards as described in the next steps.

Steps: Enabling users to customize their own dashboards

  1. Define the folder that the user versions of home dashboards should be saved under.

    In the configuration.properties file, add the parameter "customHomeDashboardsFolder" and specify the folder path. In this example, it is DASHBOARDS.

    ...

    defaultHomeDashboard = COMPANY_DASHBD

    customHomeDashboardsFolder = DASHBOARDS

    ...

  2. Define related authorizations.
    1. Give user authorities to write to the related DASH objects and their folders.
    2. If you have defined local default home dashboards and you have set up the Dashboards perspective, you should prohibit users of the Dashboards perspective from modifying the new default dashboard.

      Users who open this as a home dashboard, as intended, will not be able to overwrite the original. However, this is a public dashboard, so you need to prevent users of the Dashboards perspective from changing it.

Steps: Restoring a default dashboard for a user

Use the following steps when a user has customized a home dashboard and wants to revert to the default:

  1. In the Automation Engine, locate the objects for the user's customized home dashboards.

    When a user saves changes to a home dashboard, the changes are saved as a new dashboard with the following folder and name structure:

    If no folder is designated in the configuration.properties file, then the user dashboards are stored at the "no folder" destination with the rest of the naming pattern.

  2. For each default dashboard that you want to restore for the user, delete all the objects related to the home dashboard for the user name.