Setting Up Dashboards

Dashboards are pages on which one or more windows (widgets) with different kinds of content are organized. They give users access to personalized pieces of information and links from one single view. The Dashboards perspective is a standard, integrated feature in the Automic Web Interface. If your company wants to use it, you must configure it and define the authorizations that users need to work with it. For more information, see Dashboards.

This page includes the following:

Overview

Users access the Dashboards perspective by clicking the home icon on the menu bar. This opens a page with a pane on the left hand side with two tabs, My Dashboards for the private, customized dashboards of the user who is logged on and Public Dashboards for those that are available to everyone. The main page displays the widgets that have been added to the dashboard that is selected on the left pane.

Dashboards (in the Dashboard perspective) and Dashboard (DASH) objects are related to each other. Dashboards are stored in the Automation Engine in the form of Dashboard objects. When a user creates a Dashboard, a Dashboard object is also automatically created. Depending on whether the dashboard is private or public, the following happens:

Authorizations

By default, users see the home dashboard that is delivered with the Automic Web Interface and its perspectives. As an administrator, you can define local default versions for your users. You can also grant them the rights they need to see and customize them as well as to define and wok with their own ones. You use the following combination of authorizations, rights and privileges to control the user access to dashboards:

Examples

For information on how to grant users authorizations and privileges see:

List of Authorizations for Dashboards

The following lists provide a short description of the authorizations and privileges that play a role in the dashboards:

Automation Engine Privileges

Authorizations

The following rights are required to perform the activities listed here:

Defining a Different Default Home Dashboard

If you want your users to have a customized default dashboard instead of the default version that is supplied with the Automic Web Interface, do the following:

  1. Create the new dashboard in the Dashboards perspective. For information see Creating Dashboards and Adding Widgets.
    • The dashboard must be public.
    • If you have a folder that you use for local default home dashboards, select it.

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

  2. In the configuration.properties file, in the defaultHomeDashboard specify the name of the Dashboard object that is associated to the dashboard you have just created. For more information, see configuration.properties.
    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 below.

Enabling Users to Customize Dashboards

  1. Define the folder on which the user versions of dashboards will be saved.

    In the configuration.properties file, add the customHomeDashboardsFolder parameter and specify the folder path. In this example, it is DASHBOARDS. For more information, see configuration.properties.

    • defaultHomeDashboard = COMPANY_DASHBD
    • customHomeDashboardsFolder = DASHBOARDS
  2. For the users to be able to customize the dashboards, they need the following rights:

    • Write rights to the associated Dashboard objects.
    • Write rights to the Folders on which they are stored.
    • At least Read rights to the objects they will use in the dashboards.

    To grant users these rights, do the following:

    1. Open to the folder in the Process Assembly perspective where the dashboards are stored and find the Dashboard object associated to the home dashboard. Alternatively, use the Global Search to find it.
    2. Open the Dashboard object and go to its Object Authorizations page.
    3. Activate at least the Read and Write checkboxes. For more information on how to define the Automation Engine authorizations see Granting Automation Engine Authorizations.

Restoring the Default Dashboard for a User

To allow users to revert the changes done to a dashboard, do the following:

  1. In the Process Assembly perspective, locate the Dashboard objects for the user's customized dashboard.

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

    defaultHomeDashboard.CUSTOM.UserName_Department

  2. Delete the Dashboard object that corresponds to the customized dashboard that you want to deprecate.