Dashboards & Widgets

Business Configuration Administration Updated October 14, 2026 117 views

Dashboards & Widgets

1. What it is

The dashboard is every employee’s home page. When someone signs in or taps the home icon, the platform decides which dashboard they get and which widgets it shows, based on their group membership and role. Two admin pages control it:

Admin → Dashboard Builder — where you compose dashboards and assign each one to a group.
Admin → Widget Gallery — the catalog of every widget, where you switch widgets on or off for the whole business and create custom embed widgets.

How every card looks — its outline, shadow and spacing — is set once for the business in Brand & Theme Settings, not per dashboard.

Enablement: these are built-in admin pages, not a licensed app. Admins and super admins can use them.

What it is not: the Dashboard Builder does not change the admin sidebar. It only decides each audience’s home page and which apps are recommended on that audience’s navigation rail.

2. Standing it up

The dashboard works with no configuration. Every business gets starter dashboards filled with default widgets. The steps below tailor it.

Go to Admin → Dashboard Builder. Every business has three starter dashboards: Default (the catch-all for everyone), All Admins and All Managers.
For each dashboard, drag widgets from the palette onto the canvas. The palette groups widgets as Platform, Core Apps and one section per enabled app. Pick the dashboard’s layout under Columns in the toolbar: 1 to 4 equal columns, Main + side (a wide main column beside a narrow one) or Side + main + side (a narrow column on each side of a wide main one). Each widget is one column wide, or Full, which puts it above the columns; widgets stack in their column with no gaps. On a narrow screen Side + main + side stacks both side columns beside the main one, and on a phone every widget is full width.

The News Feed widget puts a feed on the dashboard, loading more as people scroll. It is one card with one list: company posts from Communications and the message boards of every workspace a person is in, together. The list leads with what needs you (a must-read waiting for your acknowledgement, a post that mentions you, a question sent to you as an expert), then what you have not read — company news first, then workspace posts — then a You’re caught up line and everything older by latest activity. A notice Communications is featuring leads whichever of those sections it falls in. Weekly and closeout recaps you have not read are folded into one row you can open. A switch under the header narrows the list to News, Workspaces or Unread. The ⋮ menu opens the Feed or the Messages page and has Mark all as read while something is unread; a must-read still waiting for an acknowledgement stays unread until it is acknowledged. People who can post see Compose. With only one of the two apps the card takes that feed’s name and the switch is All and Unread. The widget is offered only on Main + side and Side + main + side, where it fills the main column below any other widget there, and the side columns stay in view while people scroll. On a phone it is the last card, with the same single list and switch; recaps you have not read are one card that opens Messages. Every other layout keeps the three-row Latest Posts widget.
Click Save draft to store changes without affecting anyone. Click Publish to make the draft live. People only ever see the published layout.
To target a specific audience, click Add dashboard and choose a group. The new dashboard appears in the priority list above Default.
Drag dashboards to reorder them. Priority runs top to bottom (see §3). Default always stays last and cannot be deleted.
Optionally, drag the Hero card to the top of a dashboard, publish it, and set that audience’s banner from the Hero strip above the canvas (see §3).
Confirm with ⋮ → Preview as a person, which shows the dashboard one person resolves to.

Pairings that matter:

A widget only appears when the app it depends on is enabled in Admin → Apps → All Apps. Adding Upcoming Shifts does nothing until the Shifts & Scheduling app is on.
A hero you save shows nowhere until that dashboard carries the Hero card and is published. The Hero strip tells you which of the two is missing.

3. How it fits together

Which dashboard a person gets

Each dashboard is tied to a group and has a priority position. The platform gives each person the first published dashboard, from the top, whose group they belong to. Everyone else gets Default. A person sees only that one dashboard’s published layout, filtered to the widgets their role and apps allow.

Starter layouts vs. layouts you arranged

The three starter dashboards are laid out automatically from the apps your business has. While nobody has saved a layout on one, it keeps itself current: enable a new app and its cards appear there for everyone.

Once an admin saves a layout on a dashboard, that layout is yours. When a new app is enabled later, its cards are added only to the dashboard’s draft, so nothing changes for people until you review and publish. Cards you removed are not added back. Dashboards you add yourself are never laid out automatically.

Draft, published, and unpublished changes

Every dashboard has two layouts. The draft is what you edit. The published layout is what people see. Editing a published dashboard parks the edit as “unpublished changes” until you publish again, so you can rearrange over several sessions without disturbing the live home page.

The Hero card is a full-width banner across the top of a dashboard. It is not added when your apps change — you drag it onto each dashboard that should have one. It can show two different things, and people often confuse them:

Standing hero — a banner that belongs to one audience’s dashboard and stays until you change it. You set it in the Dashboard Builder. It speaks as the company: your organization’s name appears above the headline.
Booked announcement — a time-boxed message scheduled from the Communications app for a date window that always ends. It reaches only the people in the message’s audience, who can dismiss it or, if required, acknowledge it.

For each person, the card shows the newest announcement that is current for them. Otherwise it shows the standing hero of the dashboard they get. If neither exists, the card takes no space at all — there is no empty banner.

Worked example. A dashboard for the “Store Associates” group carries the Hero card. Its standing hero reads “Holiday hours are live — check your schedule” with a Learn more button. On 1 December, Communications books a Dashboard hero announcement, “Open enrollment closes Friday”, running 1–5 December for all employees. From 1 to 5 December associates see the enrollment banner; one who dismisses it sees the holiday-hours banner again. From 6 December everyone sees holiday hours.

A mirrored dashboard shows the hero of the dashboard it mirrors. You set the hero there.

Card style and density

Card Style and Card Density are business-wide theme settings. They apply to every card and dashboard widget on desktop, in dark mode and in the mobile app. You cannot set them per dashboard or per audience.

Platform — always available, such as Quick Actions, Profile Summary and Hero.
Core Apps — available when the matching core feature is on, such as Catch Me Up, Upcoming Shifts and Pending Approvals.
Marketplace Apps — one or more per enabled app.

Each widget declares which roles can see it, which apps it depends on, and its default width.

The Widget Gallery is a business-wide on/off switch for individual widgets. Disabling a widget hides it everywhere — every dashboard, the mobile app, the builder palette and signage — without changing any layout. Re-enabling it restores every existing placement.

4. Running it

Setting a standing hero

In Admin → Dashboard Builder, open the dashboard’s tab.
On the Hero strip above the canvas, click Set a hero (or Edit).
Fill in the drawer: Headline (required), then optionally Subheading, Image (picked from or uploaded to the Asset Library — a wide image works best), Link and Button text. The link is a web address or a page in this workspace starting with /. The button reads Learn more unless you change it.
Click Save hero. It saves straight away; you do not need Save draft. People see it once the dashboard carries the Hero card and is published.
To take it down, open the drawer and click Remove hero.

Booking a time-boxed hero announcement

In the Communications composer, create an In-context message.
Under where it appears, choose Dashboard hero, and set From and Until dates.
Optionally set a Button label and Require acknowledgment.

Personal layouts

A dashboard can let the people who get it arrange it for themselves. It is off for every dashboard until you turn it on, one dashboard at a time.

With it on, a Customize this page link appears under the dashboard on each person’s desktop home page. There they can drag cards into a different order, move a card between columns, and hide the cards they don’t need. Their arrangement is theirs alone. They cannot add cards, change a card’s width or change the columns, so the dashboard keeps the shape you gave it. The phone follows what a person saved on desktop; there is no customizing on the phone.

Your later changes still reach them:

A card you add appears for everyone, including people who rearranged. It lands after the card it follows in your layout.
A card you remove is removed for everyone.
Reordering cards does not move them for people who arranged the dashboard themselves. Their own order wins.
Changing the Columns puts everyone back on your layout.
Turning personal layouts off shows your layout to everyone at once. People’s own arrangements are kept and return if you turn it back on.

Because a move you make may not reach everyone, anything every person must see belongs above the dashboard, in the Home briefing or a Top of Home banner. Those cannot be moved or hidden.

Experience preview shows a named person’s own arrangement and lists the cards they hid.

The composer offers Dashboard hero only once a published dashboard carries the Hero card. The Communications app must be enabled, and the Dashboard hero slot must stay on in its Placement slots settings.

Adding, copying or mirroring a dashboard

Add dashboard — pick a group from the dropdown. Groups already backing a dashboard, and groups that need runtime details (such as location-radius groups), are not offered. A new dashboard starts as a draft with an empty canvas.
Copy from — fills this dashboard’s draft from another dashboard. Replace makes an exact copy; Merge adds only the widgets not already present.
Mirror — makes this dashboard show another’s published layout. A mirror is read-only; edit the source instead, or unlink the mirror to make it independent. Circular mirrors are blocked.
Preview — a full-page rendering of the draft inside the real app layout.

Disabling or enabling widgets business-wide

Go to Admin → Widget Gallery. The Catalog tab lists every widget; filter it by Available, Disabled or Unavailable (its app is off).
Click Disable or Enable on a card, or select several cards and use the bulk bar. Bulk changes are capped at 200 widgets per request.
A disabled widget disappears from all dashboards and pickers. Layouts are left untouched, so re-enabling brings it back everywhere it was placed.

Creating custom widgets

Embed widget — in the Widget Gallery, click New widget → Embed widget. Enter a name (up to 120 characters) and an HTTPS address, then choose an aspect ratio (16:9, 4:3, 1:1 or 3:1) or a fixed height of 200–1,200 px (default 400 px). Optionally set a zoom level (100%, 90%, 75% or 50%). The address cannot point to a MangoApps domain. There is no per-widget role list: who sees an embed is decided by which dashboards you place it on. A weekly check re-tests whether each embed can still be framed.
Board widget — created in the Live Boards app from Power Tables data.
Quick-add widget — created in the Power Tables app on a table; it captures one row from the dashboard.

Letting people rearrange a dashboard

In Admin → Dashboard Builder, open the dashboard’s tab.
Open the Dashboard actions menu (⋮) and choose Personal layouts….
Turn on People can rearrange this dashboard and click Save. It applies straight away; you do not need Save draft or Publish.

The same drawer shows how many people have their own layout of the dashboard. To put them all back on your layout, tick the reset box and click Save. This cannot be undone. A person can also go back on their own, with Reset to company layout in Customize this page.

After you publish a dashboard, the confirmation says how many people keep their own layout of it.

Custom widgets are archived, not deleted. An archived widget leaves every dashboard but keeps its placements; restoring it brings them back. Archived widgets are listed on the Custom Widgets tab.

5. Settings

Setting	Where	Default	What it changes
Widgets and order per dashboard	Admin → Dashboard Builder	Starter dashboards: laid out from your apps; added dashboards: empty	Which widgets people in that group see, and in what order
Columns	Dashboard Builder → Columns in the toolbar	Two columns	1 to 4 equal columns, Main + side, or Side + main + side
Widget width	Dashboard Builder → width control on the card	One column; Hero is full width	One column wide, or Full (above the columns)
Hero	Dashboard Builder → Hero strip	None	The standing banner for that dashboard’s audience
Recommended apps	Dashboard Builder → Recommended apps strip	None — the company’s recommended apps apply	Apps suggested on that audience’s navigation rail
Personal layouts	Dashboard Builder → Dashboard actions (⋮) → Personal layouts…	Off	Whether the people who get this dashboard can reorder and hide its cards on their own home page
Card Style	Admin → General Settings → Brand & Theme → Surfaces & Shape	Standard	Outline and shadow of every card: Standard (thin outline, soft shadow), Outlined, Elevated (lifted shadow, no outline) or Flat
Card Density	Admin → General Settings → Brand & Theme → Surfaces & Shape	Comfortable	Room around card content; Compact fits more on a screen
Widget on/off	Admin → Widget Gallery	All widgets on	Whether a widget appears anywhere in the business

Out-of-the-box defaults:

A dashboard you add starts as a draft and must be published before anyone sees it.
Only the Default dashboard is the catch-all.
No dashboard has a standing hero until you set one.
Nobody can rearrange a dashboard until you turn on Personal layouts for it.
Cards look exactly as they always have until you change Card Style or Card Density.

6. More help

Business profile and Brand & Theme — the rest of the theme settings, including colors, fonts and the sign-in page.
Communications — composing In-context messages, including Dashboard hero announcements.
Live Boards and Power Tables — building board and quick-add widgets.
Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about dashboards and widgets from these articles.

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Article ID: admin_dashboards_and_widgets

Dashboards & Widgets