Dashboards & widgets

A dashboard is an arrangement of tiles: the panels the home page has always shown — the headline counts, the worklist, expiries, payroll, hiring and the rest — and any saved report drawn as a number, a chart or a short table. Your home page is one such dashboard; you can also build named ones, and Admin or HR can share theirs with everyone.

Whoever is looking, a dashboard shows them only what they could open themselves. A shared layout with the payroll panel on it simply has no payroll panel for a viewer without pay access, and a report tile is re-run under the viewer's own permissions every time the page loads. Sharing a dashboard shares the arrangement, never the data.

Open the home page and select Customise, top right. The editor opens over the page exactly as you see it — the built-in layout, or the company default if one is set — so every change starts from something familiar. Nothing is saved until you press Save; Cancel leaves the page as it was.

Reset my home to the default, under the editor, throws your arrangement away and returns you to the page everyone else who has not customised sees. It is also on the Dashboards page. Your layout follows your account, not your browser: the same home on the office machine and the phone.

The editor draws the page as the grid it will become: a top band that runs the full width, then a wide left column and a narrow right column side by side. On a narrow screen the three stack in that order. Each tile shows its name and kind, not its contents — you are deciding where things go, not reading them.

• Drag a tile up or down its column, or drop it into another one.
• Or use the buttons on the tile — Up, Down, Top, Left, Right, Remove. They do exactly what dragging does, work from the keyboard, and each move is read out to a screen reader.
• Add widget opens the catalogue: the built-in panels you may see and have not placed yet, and the saved reports you can open. A new tile lands at the bottom of the right column; move it from there.
• A tile for a panel you cannot see — its module is switched off on your instance, or your role lacks the permission — is greyed with Not available to you, and Remove is the only thing you can do with it. It is not drawn on the page either way.

A dashboard holds up to thirty tiles; the counter beside Save says how many are placed. Leaving the editor with unsaved changes asks first.

Every panel the home page ships with is a widget: the headline counts, Needs attention, expiries, the recruitment pipeline, staff by series, leave returns due, the week ahead, hiring, payroll, discipline, safety, fleet, facilities, clocks not reporting — and a small My approvals count that is not on the default page. Each one can be on a dashboard once.

The panels keep their own rules: the week ahead and the quiet-clocks panel draw nothing when there is nothing to say, the attention list only ever counts what you are cleared to act on, and a panel that belongs to a module your instance does not run is not offered at all. Removing a panel from your home does not stop its alerts or its notifications — it changes what you see on this page, nothing else.

Any report you can open in the report builder — your own, or one shared with you — can be a tile. Add it from the editor's catalogue, or from the report itself: open it and select Add to dashboard, pick your home page or one of your dashboards, and how to show it. The same report can be on a dashboard twice, as a number and as a table, say.

• Number — the report's headline figures as large cards. A number tile report gives exactly its figures; any other report gives its row count, which makes "how many staff on probation" a one-minute widget.
• Chart — the report's chart, for a grouped report that has one. A report with nothing to chart falls back to its table.
• Table — the first ten rows and an Open report link for the rest.
• Automatic — the number for a number tile report, the chart where there is one, the table otherwise.

A report tile is run for whoever is looking, under their permissions, with the page: columns they may not see are dropped exactly as in the builder. A report that is later deleted or un-shared leaves a placeholder saying so, never the figures; the tile's heading reads Report rather than a name the viewer is no longer allowed to see.

Insights ▸ Dashboards lists the dashboards you built and the ones shared with you, and says what your home page currently is. New dashboard opens the same editor with a name and a description; a named dashboard starts empty, so Add widget is the first thing to press. Open shows it, Edit rearranges it, and a dashboard is deleted from its own page.

A named dashboard is for a question the home page is not: the pay and hiring panels for a monthly review, or three saved reports about one department. It is not a second home — but any dashboard can become your home in one step, below.

Someone in the Admin or HR role can tick Shared with everyone who can open reports in the editor, and the dashboard appears under Shared with me for everyone with report access. Only its owner and Admins can change it; others see it as it is. Un-ticking takes it off everyone else's list, and the home pages of anyone who copied it are unaffected — a copy is theirs.

Use as my home, on any dashboard you can see, copies its arrangement into your home page. It is a copy, not a link: you can then customise it freely, and later changes to the original do not follow you. The same button on your own named dashboard is how you promote a layout you built on the side.

One shared dashboard can be the company's starting home page: Admin or HR picks Set as company default beside it on the Dashboards page. From then on, everyone who has not customised their home sees that dashboard on the home page, with a line saying so and the Customise button beside it. There is only ever one; setting another replaces it.

• A viewer still sees only the panels and reports they are cleared for. Putting payroll on the company default does not show payroll to anyone it would not show anyway.
• Customise on the company default copies it into your own home; Reset my home takes you back to the company default, not to the built-in page.
• Clearing the default, un-sharing it or deleting it means there is no company default: the uncustomised see the built-in page again. People who customised keep what they have.
• Setting a new default never rewrites a home page somebody already arranged.

• Customising your home needs no permission — any staff login can arrange the panels it already sees. The employee portal's own home page is not customisable.
• Reports · View — the Dashboards page, named dashboards, and saved reports as tiles (the same permission the report builder needs).
• Admin or HR role — sharing a dashboard, and setting or clearing the company default. The same people who can share a saved report.
• A dashboard carries its tiles, not its data. A report tile is run fresh under the viewer's own permissions on every load — there is no copy of the figures to leak.
• Custom dashboards are a module your instance switches on. With it off the home page is the built-in one for everybody and the Dashboards page is absent, but nothing is lost: saved layouts stay where they are and come back when it is switched on.