How to Create and Use Dashboards in MSPbots

 You can create dashboards with specific data to highlight action items and metrics that help achieve and measure goals specific to your business needs. Once created, you can stream your dashboard on a screen, use the snapshot function, and send the data as a report based on a schedule, among others. 

What's on this page? 

What are MSPbots dashboards? 

The MSPbots dashboards are centralized and visual representations of key metrics, data, and performance indicators for your company, allowing managers and stakeholders to gain insights, make informed decisions, and take appropriate actions. These dashboards have widgets for quick views of actionable data and filters for interactively selecting and viewing specific subsets of data based on predefined criteria or parameters. View the available templates or create your dashboards for your specific business needs.

Why should I create a dashboard? 

Creating dashboards helps in the analysis, communications, and monitoring of data that aid in decision-making and reaching targets across different areas of your business. 

Service Delivery - Dashboards help track response times, service availability, and customer satisfaction allowing service teams to identify bottlenecks, address issues promptly, and ensure service level agreements are met.

Support Service - Dashboards display real-time incident data, response times, and customer feedback to help support teams identify and prioritize critical issues, prioritize tickets, effectively manage resources, and address recurring issues. 

Leadership  - Dashboards facilitate data-driven decision-making, performance evaluation, and organizational strategies. 

Project Management - Dashboards are essential in tracking and communicating project progress, milestones, and deliverables. These also help identify potential risks, allocate resources, and ensure projects are on schedule.

Remote Management and Security Monitoring - Dashboards give real-time visibility of the overall health of your IT assets and ensure systems remain compliant with security policies, vulnerabilities are mitigated, and automated tasks are done without issues. These also help in security management, like threat detection and response, data policy, access control and authentication, and security incident response. 

Peer Groups - Dashboards are helpful in trend analysis, benchmarking, goal tracking, and knowledge-sharing.

Relevant applications and permissions 

You can set up dashboards for all MSPbots apps, BI packages, and applicable integrations. Only users with admin permissions can create dashboards and reports. If you don't have enough permissions, contact your administrator for help. 

How to set up a dashboard

Do the following to make your dashboard: 

1. Open the MSPbots app as administrator.
2. Navigate to Dashboards on the menu and click the New Dashboard button.
   
   
   
3. In the Dashboard window, select Dashboard.
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4. When the Add New Dashboard window opens, do the following:
   1. Enter your dashboard's name in the Name field. 
   2. Click the Role dropdown menu and select the roles that will have access to the dashboard. 
   3. Click the Tag dropdown list and select one or multiple tags to label your new dashboard.
   4. Next, provide a Description for your dashboard.
   5. Click Continue. This opens the tab for your new dashboard.
      
5. The window for your dashboard opens with a message saying, "Your dashboard is empty!" Click the Add Widgets button.
6. When the Add Widget window appears, click Widgets List.
   
7. Select widgets for your dashboard and click the Add Selected button. The widgets you selected should appear in the dashboard you have just created.
   
   
   
8. Click the Save Dashboard button when done. 
   
          _{*The asset in the image is for demonstration only.}
   
   If you do not want to save this dashboard, click Cancel.
   
   

How to modify the widgets in my dashboard  

Do the following steps to add, edit, remove, or move the widgets in your dashboard: 

Adding more widgets to the dashboard

1. Open the dashboard you want to configure and click the Design button. 
   
   ^{*The asset in the image is for demonstration only.} 
2. When the Clone window opens, review the required details and click Continue to open your dashboard. 
    
   

   You need to clone dashboards and widgets before you can edit and customize these assets. 

3. Click the Add Widget button. 
4. Go to the Widgets List and select the widgets for adding. 
5. Click Add Selected.
   
6. Click Save Dashboard to save the settings. If you do not want to save the changes you made, click Cancel.
   

Moving widgets in the dashboard 

1. Hover the cursor over a widget to show the move, edit, and delete icons. 
   
2. Click and drag the widget to another place in the dashboard. 
3. You can also hover the mouse over and select Move to Top, Move Up, Move Down, or Move to Bottom.
   

   • Move to Top - This option moves the widget to the top of the dashboard. 

   • Move Up - This option shifts the widget one level higher than its current placement.

   • Move Down - This option shifts the widget one level lower than its current placement.
   • Move to Bottom - This option moves the widget to the bottom of the dashboard. 
     
4. Click Save Dashboard to save the settings. If you do not want to save the changes you made, click Cancel.
   

Editing a widget in the dashboard

1. Hover over a widget to show the move, edit, and delete icons. 
   
2. Click  .
   
   
3. Edit the widget settings in the Widget Builder.
4. Click Apply > Close when done editing.
5. When back in your dashboard's window, click Save Dashboard to save the settings. 
   

Removing a widget from the dashboard

1. Click and Confirm.
    
   
2. When back in your dashboard's window, click Save Dashboard. 
   

Other options in widgets

1. Hover the cursor over and select Edit, Filter, Refresh, Copy URL, Clone to, or Full screen. 
   • Edit - Edits the widget 

   • Filter - Adds filtering conditions to the widget 

   • Refresh - Refreshes the data on the widget 

   • Copy URL - Copies the URL address of the widget 

   • Clone to - Clones the widget and has options to Clone to "My widgets", Clone to existing dashboards, and Clone to new dashboard.

   • Full screen - Displays the widget in full screen
     
     
2. After you have finished configuring, click Save Dashboard to save the settings.