Custom Dashboards

Custom Dashboards lets you build your own analytics view by mixing KPIs and charts from across FlowAnalytics. The data, the filters and the metric definitions are the same as on the pre-built dashboards; what you decide is which figures sit together on one page.

Select FlowAnalytics in the left menu, then Custom Dashboards.

When a custom dashboard is worth building

The pre-built dashboards each answer one question well, and most work needs nothing more. A custom dashboard earns its place in three situations:

• A recurring meeting. The same figures every month, in the order you present them, so the meeting does not start with somebody navigating between four tabs.
• A question that crosses dashboards. Room fit next to occupancy and utilization, for example, which live on different pages but answer one question about meeting space.
• A narrower view. One office, one asset type, a handful of charts, for a specific piece of work.

The case against is worth stating too. A custom dashboard is a fixed layout that nobody maintains, and a page of charts assembled without a question tends to be read differently by everyone who opens it. If you cannot say in a sentence what the dashboard is for, the pre-built ones are the better choice.

The dashboard list

The Custom Dashboards page lists every dashboard you can see, with tabs for All, My dashboards and Shared with me, each showing a count. Use the search field to filter by name.

The columns are Name, Description, Owner, Last edited, Visibility, Saved filters and Actions. Saved filters shows your own count for that dashboard rather than anybody else’s, and a dash where you have none.

Select Create dashboard to start a new one. Where no dashboards exist yet, the page invites you to create the first.

Viewing and editing

Selecting a dashboard name opens it in view mode, marked VIEWING in the header. View mode is the normal way to read a dashboard: the filter bar, saved filters and the selection summary all work as on any other dashboard, and Edit, Settings and Export sit at the top right. Widgets cannot be moved or removed here.

Select Edit to switch to edit mode, marked EDITING. Edit mode adds the widget panel on the right, the grid slots on the canvas, the drag, resize and remove controls on each widget, an editable name and description, the visibility control, and Save. Select the cross at the top left to leave.

Leaving edit mode with unsaved changes raises Save changes to dashboard?, offering Save, Discard to return to the last saved version, and Cancel to stay where you are.

Create a dashboard

1. Select Create dashboard. The builder opens with an empty canvas named Untitled dashboard.
2. Enter a name, and add a short description saying what the dashboard is for.
3. Drag widgets from the panel on the right onto the canvas.
4. Arrange and resize them.
5. Set the filters at the top to try the dashboard out against real data.
6. Select Save.

The description is worth the thirty seconds. A dashboard called "Utilization" tells the next person nothing; one described as "desks only, working hours, for the monthly property review" tells them whether it answers their question.

The widget library

The panel on the right holds everything that can be placed on the canvas: every KPI and every chart from the eleven pre-built dashboards, plus two elements for structuring the page.

There are two ways to narrow the list, and they work together:

• Category. The categories are the FlowAnalytics sub-menus, so Portfolio, Office, Rooms, Department, User and Climate. The quickest way to find a widget is to pick the category you saw the figure in. A widget can belong to more than one category where the same figure appears on more than one dashboard.
• KPIs, Graphs and Layouts. The tabs below the category filter, for narrowing to a kind of widget. All shows everything.

You can also search by name. Each entry has an icon, a name and a one-line description, and a widget already on the canvas is marked In use.

KPI widgets

A KPI widget is a single figure with its target and the change against the previous period, the same cards that head the pre-built dashboards. The number scales with the widget size, and utilization KPIs come in two forms, plain and gauge, where the gauge draws the target band as an arc.

Every key figure in FlowAnalytics is available, so the library spans portfolio area and rent cost, the three utilization figures, potential savings, room fit and occupancy, seat counts, no-show and late cancellation rates, recovery rate, attendance, the climate figures, and the department and user figures.

The user KPIs are subject to the same restriction as the User page itself. A widget showing individual behavior does not bypass the FlowAnalytics User Behavior role or the identification level, so a dashboard built with them will be empty for anyone without both. See About FlowAnalytics.

Chart widgets

A chart widget is one of the charts from the pre-built dashboards, unchanged, and keeps its own controls such as granularity and sorting where it had them.

Every chart is available, so the library spans utilization over time and by hour, weekday, zone, floor and room size; room fit and occupancy trends and rankings; the no-show trend and its breakdowns by type, detection source and department; attendance by day and weekday; department patterns; the buildings map and the portfolio breakdown table; and the climate charts.

Because the widgets are the same components, the definitions in Metrics reference apply unchanged, and the utilization charts use the same four-part stack of booked and used, used without booking, booked but unused and booked with no sensor data.

Layout widgets

The Layouts tab holds two elements that carry no data:

• Header. A heading to separate dashboard sections.
• Divider. A separator line between widgets.

These are what turn a grid of charts into something somebody else can read. A dashboard covering desks and then meeting rooms is far easier to follow with a header above each group than with eight widgets in a row, and it also survives being exported to PDF and handed round a meeting.

Build the layout

The canvas is a four-column grid. Empty slots are shown while editing so you can see where a widget will land.

• Add. Drag a widget from the panel onto the canvas. KPI widgets take a single cell by default; charts start larger.
• Move. Drag a placed widget. It snaps to the grid and stays within the four columns.
• Resize. Drag the handle at the bottom right corner. Each widget has a minimum size, and width is capped at the grid edge.
• Remove. Select the cross on the widget.

The controls to the left of the canvas manage rows. Each plus sits between two rows: select it to insert a row there. Select a minus to delete the row beside it. A row can only be deleted when it is empty, so move or remove its widgets first.

Overlapping widgets

A widget that overlaps another turns red. While anything is red the dashboard cannot be saved, so if Save is not doing anything, look for a red widget rather than for a fault.

Resizing is the usual cause: dragging a widget wider pushes it into the space its neighbor occupies. Shrink one of the two, or move it to an empty row, and the red clears.

Editing a header or divider

Hover over a placed layout widget to bring up its menu at the right of the widget. A Header can have its font size changed, and a Divider its line thickness.

Font size is what makes a long dashboard navigable: a larger header for each main section and a smaller one for subdivisions inside it gives a reader the structure at a glance.

Making a layout readable

Two things do most of the work: put the figures somebody needs first at the top, and keep each row about one thing. Headers and dividers then mark where one subject ends and the next begins. A dashboard that reads top to bottom needs no explanation.

Filters on a custom dashboard

The filter bar applies to the whole dashboard. Two filters are always present and cannot be removed:

• Office, floor, zone
• Time period

Select Quick filter to add others to the bar. The menu offers Asset Type, Capacity, Days and Time, and shows the two mandatory filters as Required.

In edit mode a note points out that the filters are there to try the dashboard out. In view mode the bar behaves like any other dashboard, with Advanced, the saved filters row and the assets selected summary, all described in Filters, targets and exports.

The filters in force when the dashboard is saved become its defaults. Someone opening the dashboard for the first time sees the figures under those filters; after that, FlowAnalytics remembers each person’s own last selection. So a dashboard you built for desks during working hours opens that way for a colleague, but their later changes stay with them.

This is the reason to set the filters deliberately before saving. The defaults are part of the dashboard, and a dashboard saved with an unintended office selected will present the wrong figures to everyone who opens it first time.

Dashboard settings

Select Settings to open Dashboard settings, which holds the target ranges for the KPI widgets on this dashboard. Each KPI has its own entry with the fields, a slider and the recommended value, plus Reset to restore that one and Reset all for every target. Select Apply to keep the changes, or Cancel to discard them.

Targets set here are specific to this dashboard, and the dialog says so: the changes become the dashboard defaults when the dashboard is saved. A target you set on a custom dashboard does not affect the pre-built ones.

Sharing and visibility

While editing, the control in the header shows who can see the dashboard. Select it to open Dashboard visibility:

• Only me. Nobody else can see it.
• Everyone in my organization. Others can view the dashboard and duplicate it.

Select Save visibility to apply. The list shows the result in the Visibility column.

Sharing a dashboard does not widen anybody’s access to data. A person who cannot see an office on the pre-built dashboards will not see it through a custom one, because office scope is set on their user account. See About FlowAnalytics.

Editing stays with the owner. Everyone else can view a shared dashboard and duplicate it, and a duplicate is owned by whoever made it, which is the way to build a variant of somebody else’s dashboard without touching theirs.

Managing dashboards

The actions menu at the end of each row in the list offers:

Which actions appear depends on ownership. Edit, Share and Delete belong to the owner; on a dashboard shared with you, Duplicate is the way in.

When an owner shares a dashboard with the organization, it appears for everyone who opens Custom Dashboards, which is why the list separates All, My dashboards and Shared with me.

Export

Select Export in view mode to produce the dashboard as a PDF, as described in Filters, targets and exports. Set the filters and check the selection summary first, since the export follows them.

Quick filters and advanced filters

The owner decides which quick filters the dashboard carries, and those are the pills a viewer sees in the bar. Nobody is limited to them, though: Advanced opens the full filter panel, so a viewer can filter on fields the owner did not put in the bar.

The panel covers office, floor and zone, asset type, time period, days, time, assets, capacity, purpose, sensor and booking state, with Apply Filters, Reset All and Cancel. Two of those are worth knowing about because they answer questions the pre-built dashboards make harder:

• Sensor. Limit the dashboard to assets with a sensor, or to those without one. This is the quickest way to see how much of a figure rests on measured presence rather than bookings alone.
• Booking state. Separate bookable assets from blocked ones, so assets taken out of service are not diluting a utilization figure.

So the choice of quick filters is about making the common case fast rather than about restricting anybody. Put the two or three filters the dashboard is really about in the bar, and leave the rest to Advanced.