Adding and organizing content on a dashboard

• Add a viewlet
  
  1. Selecting the link Add Viewlet in the upper right corner of the dashboard. A chooser will open showing you the available viewlets grouped in categories. When a viewlet is selected, a description and a preview image will be shown.
  2. Once you find the viewlet you want to add, select the Add viewlet button. The viewlet will be added at the top of the leftmost column.
     

• Configure the viewlet preferences
  

  Most viewlets in the dashboard can be configured using preferences. The actual preferences are viewlet-dependent.

  1. To open preferences for editing, select Edit Settings from viewlet drop down menu.
  2. Once the preferences have been set, select Save button to store them and return to the normal state.
  The effect from the change will be immediately visible.
• Edit the content of a viewlet
  

  Some viewlets allow you to directly edit the content (for example, Bookmarks or HTML).

  1. To directly edit the content, select Edit Contents from the viewlet drop down menu. The actual editing steps depend on the way viewlet has been designed. For example, HTML viewlet allows you to directly edit HTML markup.
  2. When you are done changing the content, select the Save button at the bottom of the viewlet to store the content and return to the normal state.
  The effect of the change will be immediately visible.
• Changing the appearance of a viewlet
  

  You can change the following aspects of a viewlet:

  • the title;
  • the viewlet color trim; and
  • the matching background color.

  To change these parameters:

  1. Select Edit Settings from the viewlet dropdown menu
  2. Click the Appearance tab. Color trims allow you to color-coordinate viewlets based on the content they show and on the intent of your dashboard. Note that the last choice in the list is no trim which is particularly useful for the HTML viewlets where free-form HTML can be used in various creative ways.
• Changing the scope of a viewlet
  

  Some viewlets are sensitive to the context in which they appear (scope). For example, "Iteration Plans" viewlet shows different content when appearing in the project dashboard than in the team dashboard. Scope setting is automatically computed based on the dashboard but can be overridden in the Scope tab.

  1. To change this setting, select Edit Settings.
  2. Click the Scope tab. Note that only viewlets sensitive to the scope will have this tab shown.
• Moving the viewlet
  

  Viewlets can be repositioned within the dashboard using direct drag and drop.

  1. To move the viewlet, move the cursor over the title area until the cursor changes to indicate that you can move it.
  2. Drag the viewlet and follow the dotted outline until you find the new location. Other viewlets will move to fill in the vacant spot.
  3. You can also drag the viewlet into a different page. To do so, drag the viewlet and drop it onto the desired page tab. After that, select that page tab and continue to move the viewlet into the final position.
     

• Zooming in the viewlet
  

  Some viewlets can be zoomed to show more detail. Zoomed viewlets will partially overlap their neighbors. If a viewlet can be zoomed, a + sign will show up in the lower right corner when the mouse is over the viewlet area.

  Once zoomed in, the viewlet can be restored (zoomed out) by clicking on the – sign in the lower right corner or clicking anywhere outside the viewlet.

• Removing the viewlet
  

  To remove a viewlet from the dashboard page, click the X sign in the upper right corner of the viewlet.

• Organizing page tabs
  

  New dashboards are initially created with a default page tab General. At any point new tabs can be added.

  1. To add a new tab, select a link Add New Tab to the right of the last page tab in the dashboard. The newly created tab will be empty (no viewlets) and will have a generated label.
  2. To change the tab label, click in the label area and type the new name.
  3. To exit the edit mode, type the Enter key or click anywhere outside the tab title area.

     Currently selected page tab has a drop-down menu that controls its settings. You can delete the page, or change the number of columns between 1 and 3.

     Relative order of the page tabs can be changed by dragging the tab and dropping it in a new location along the tab row. Tabs will wrap into multiple rows when single row placement is not possible.

• Editing a shared dashboard
  

  Shared dashboard (project, team, profile) are visible by other users. As a result, it is not advisable to save them until the dashboard modification is complete.

  When you are done changing a shared dashboard, save it by selecting the Save button in the upper right corner. Upon saving, your changes will be visible to other users when they refresh the browser.

  Tip:

  Unlike shared dashboard, modifications of the personal dashboards are instantly saved because only you can see them. This behavior can be achieved with shared dashboards as well if Auto save checkbox is selected in the upper right corner:

  

• Refreshing Dashboard Content
  

  Dashboards are sophisticated Web UI applications that may be expensive to refresh by simply reloading the entire page using the browser's Refresh button. A much faster and more selective alternative is to refresh individual viewlets or the entire dashboard pages.

  • To refresh a single viewlet's content, select the drop down in the viewet's title area and select the Refresh action from the menu.
  • To refresh all the viewlets on the currently visible dashboard page, select the Refresh action from the page tab drop down. Alternatively, select the Refresh tool bar button from the dashboard tool bar (upper right corner below the title area).
  Note: Viewlets also refresh themselves periodically. Each viewlet has auto-refresh configured with accordance to the content it shows. Viewlets showing content that changes often will refresh more frequently than viewlets whose data that rarely change on the server.

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