Creating a Dashboard
A dashboard is a grid of widgets that you assemble in the dashboard editor and publish to your Organization. This guide walks the whole path once: create the board, learn the editor, add and size two widgets, publish the change, and open the result the way everyone else in your Organization will see it.
What you will build
You will build a board called Building Operations for a facilities Organization: a full-width heading that labels the board, a note card that explains what the board covers, and a graph plotting a power reading from one of your Devices.
The heading and the note render static content, so those steps work on a brand new Organization that has no Devices reporting yet. The graph binds a Device Variable, so it needs a Device with readings; if your hardware is not online yet, skip that step and come back once data arrives.
Before you start
Creating a dashboard requires the Create Dashboard permission, which the Administrator role has by default.
Widgets that plot values need the earlier stages of the workflow finished: your hardware Connected through the Edge Server, readings Collected from it, and those readings Stored in the platform. The board itself does not wait on any of that, so it is reasonable to lay out a dashboard first and bind the widgets to Variables once data starts arriving.
Video walkthrough
Part of the Visualize stage in the ControlCom Connect data workflow.
Creating the dashboard
Open Visualization → Dashboards in the sidebar. The list shows every board in the Organization, with tabs for Public, My Dashboards and Components, a name search, and filters for status, Device and owner.
Click Dashboard in the top right. The create dialog asks for four things:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name of your dashboard | The name shown in the list, the breadcrumb and search. |
| Lock Dashboard Updates | When on, only you can edit the board. Leave it off for a board your team maintains together. |
| Public | On by default. Public boards can be viewed by every user in the Organization. |
| Limited to Device | Scopes the board to a single Device. Leave it on All Devices for a board that spans your site. |
Click Create. The board is created and ControlCom Connect opens it directly in the editor.
The dashboard editor
The top bar holds Exit, the board name (click the pencil to rename it), and three tabs. Dashboard is the canvas you design on, Parameters defines values the board can be filtered by, and Layouts manages the per screen size layouts. On the right, History lists previously published versions and can restore one, Preview opens the published board in a new tab, and Publish saves your work.
The row underneath holds the widget actions (copy, duplicate, delete, group, find and replace, and move), the breakpoint toggles for ultra wide, desktop, tablet and mobile, a dark mode toggle, the refresh interval, and the View and Edit switch that flips between designing the board and seeing it as a viewer does.
The left rail switches the panel between Widgets, Elements, Branding, Tools and Settings. The
Widgets panel is the Add Widget palette, which carries 15 widget types in four groups. Press / to jump into its
search box.
| Group | Widgets |
|---|---|
| Display | Generic, Status, List, Asset Table, Radial, Text |
| Visualization | Graph, Diagram |
| Interactive | Control, Menu |
| Layout & Advanced | Section, Logic, Component, IFrame, Group |
Most Display and Visualization widgets read a Device Variable: Status shows a current value with a label, Radial draws it as a gauge, and Graph plots a time series. Asset Table fills itself from your Assets, grouped by Location. Control sends commands back to a Device, and Diagram embeds an interactive HMI diagram. Section, Text and Menu need no data at all, which is why this guide starts with them.
The canvas itself is a 12 column grid on desktop. Widgets snap to it, so boards stay aligned as they grow.
Adding widgets
Click a widget in the palette, or drag it onto the canvas. Either way the widget lands at the bottom of the grid and its settings panel opens straight away.
Start with Section, under Layout & Advanced. A Section spans the full grid width and gives the board a heading. Set
its Name to Campus Overview and click Save.
Now add Text from the Display group. Its settings panel is split: a live preview of the widget on the left, and the settings on the right.
General Settings holds the widget Name, which appears as the small label above the content. Under Content, leave Bind to Variable off to write fixed text in the Text Content box, or switch it on to pull the value from a Device Variable instead. Text Formatting controls font size, weight, alignment, italics and color, and Card Appearance covers the widget background and border.
Set the name to Board Notes and the text content to a short description of the board, then click Save. The panel
closes and the widget appears on the canvas.
New widgets arrive at a default size, and the Text widget arrives one column wide, which is narrow for a sentence. To
change that, click the move button in the toolbar row (or press Shift+M), drag the widget by the handle in its bottom
right corner until it is the size you want, then click Done. Move mode also lets you drag widgets to reposition
them.
Adding a graph
Now for a widget that reads data. Add Graph from the Visualization group and set its Name to the reading it
will plot, such as Utility Demand.
A graph plots one or more series, each bound to a Device Variable. Under Series, click Add Serie, then click the Variable button to open the picker. It browses your Organization in three columns: pick the Device, then the Variable, and confirm. Each series has an aggregation (average by default), a line or area type, and fill options, and the preview on the left redraws with real data as you configure it.
The panel's other cards add more: Thresholds draws limit lines on the chart, Trend Prediction extends the series with a forecast, Weather Series overlays outside weather for a Location, and Computed Series derives a series from the others. Click Save, then resize the graph in move mode so the curve has room to read.
Publishing your changes
Everything you have done so far lives in the editor only. Click Publish to write it to the platform.
The dialog asks for a Comment. It is worth writing something specific, because that comment is what identifies the version later in History, where you can restore it.
If someone else published the same board while you were working, ControlCom Connect stops and tells you so rather than overwriting their work. You can load their version and lose your edits, or overwrite it with yours.
Viewing the dashboard
Click Exit to return to the list, then open the board by name.
The header under the title reports the widget count, the active configuration, when the board was last updated and how often it refreshes. To the right, Configure opens the viewing options, Report generates a report from the board, and the remaining controls set the refresh interval, refresh immediately, go full screen, and reopen the editor.
Anyone with access to the Organization can open a public board from Visualization → Dashboards. Full screen mode makes a board usable on a wall display in a control room.
Next steps
Before you fill a board with charts, it helps to know which readings are worth watching. That is the job of the Analyze stage: use the Data Explorer to query and compare your Variables, then bring the ones that matter onto a board with the Graph, Status and Radial widgets.
For a schematic view of the equipment behind those numbers rather than the numbers themselves, build a diagram instead. Both live in the Visualize stage and can be combined, since a dashboard can embed a diagram through the Diagram widget.
After Visualize comes the Report stage, where Assets Reports turn the same stored data into formatted compliance reports. For the wider picture of what dashboards do and how access works, see the dashboards overview.