Live Boards App Overview

Live Boards

1. What it is

Live Boards turns data you already have — Power Tables views, recognition activity, engagement by site, or coverage gaps by site — into visual displays that update automatically. Create ranked lists, stat tiles, gauges, scorecards, status grids, and more, then place them on dashboards, full-screen TVs, or Digital Signage slides.

• Enablement: Live Boards is a pay-as-you-go app, billed from your credit wallet per active board per month (no per-employee fee). An admin enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps; it is off until then, and members cannot open it until it is also published to users (step 2 below). Archived boards are not billed.
• What it is not: Live Boards displays data from other sources — it does not store its own data. The data itself lives in Power Tables, the Recognitions app, the Levels & Badges app, or Shifts & Scheduling. If you need to collect or import data first, start with Power Tables.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Admin → Apps → All Apps and enable Live Boards. You also need at least one data source enabled:
   • Power Tables with at least one table that has a shared saved view, or
   • Recognitions, or
   • Levels & Badges (for engagement-by-site boards), or
   • Shifts & Scheduling (for coverage-gap boards by site).
2. Publish the app. A newly enabled app is open to admins only — a member who opens it is told “Live Boards hasn’t been published to users yet. Ask a company admin to publish it.” Go to Admin → Apps → All Apps → Live Boards and click Publish to users (or Publish to specific groups, then pick them under Access management). A board that reads Power Tables also needs Power Tables published to the same people.
3. Go to Apps → Live Boards → Settings and review the four settings: Show boards on Digital Signage, Allow public board embed links, Default name masking for new boards, and Enable AI board suggestions.
4. Go to the Boards tab and create your first board. The form asks for a name and a data source; you then add visualizations one at a time from the board editor.
5. To let others help build boards, a company admin goes to Admin → Apps → All Apps → Live Boards, opens the Admins & Contributors card, clicks Manage Admins & Contributors, and grants Contributor access to the users who should author boards. Contributors can create, edit, duplicate, and reorder boards and their visualizations and build playlists, but cannot change app settings, publish to Digital Signage, switch on public links, or archive/restore boards.
6. Confirm it worked: the board should appear on the Boards tab for every member who can see at least one of its visualizations. To put a visualization on the home page, a company admin places it on a dashboard from the board editor (see “Placing a visualization on a dashboard” below).
7. Optionally, load sample data from Settings to see a board for every chart type plus the states a demo otherwise can’t reach — masking modes, goal bands, an archived board, and a screen rotation — useful for exploring the app before connecting real data.

Silent-until-paired: a Power Tables source requires both the table and a shared saved view. If the table has only personal views, the board-creation form will refuse with an explanation. Create a shared view on the table first.

Native sources work without Power Tables. If your workspace has Recognitions, Levels & Badges, or Shifts & Scheduling enabled but not Power Tables, you can still create boards — the source picker offers only the sources your workspace has enabled.

3. How it fits together

Board — a named container that points at one data source and holds up to 12 visualizations. A board is either Active or Archived. Its Data source and Source table are locked while it has any visualization (archived ones count), because every visualization’s column references point into that source; the Saved view is never locked and can be changed in Board settings. To point a working board at different data, remove its visualizations first — each one’s snapshot history goes with it — and the source unlocks in Board settings, or build a new board on the other table. Duplicating a board does not help: the copy reads the same source and is locked on arrival. One exception is a repair: if the table a board reads was archived (“Source unavailable”), Board settings lets you pick a replacement table and every visualization moves with it, columns matched by name.

Visualization — a single reading of the board’s data, drawn as one of 13 chart types: ranked list, table, chart, movers, status grid, share (100% bar), calendar, stat, line, gauge, streak, pace, or scorecard (2–4 metrics side by side). Each visualization is its own widget — it can be placed individually on a dashboard, given its own Audience, and watched independently.

Data source — boards can read from four sources. A Power Tables view is the default; the board binds to a saved view and draws its columns. Recognition boards rank people by recognition metrics (given, received, points). Engagement (by site) boards rank sites by engagement activity, and Coverage gaps (by site) boards count unfilled on-shift role slots per site (offered only when Shifts & Scheduling is enabled) — on both, entities are locations, not people, which makes them safe for a public screen.

Masking — every visualization that ranks people carries a Name masking policy: Full names, First name last initial, or Anonymized ranks. The policy applies everywhere the visualization renders — dashboards, mobile, TV screens, public embeds, and signage. The workspace default is Full names; each visualization can override it in its drawer’s Advanced section. Engagement and Coverage boards rank sites, not people, so the masking policy does not apply to them.

Playlist — a named, ordered rotation of visualizations for screens that cycle through several automatically. Each playlist has its own Seconds per visualization setting and, once a Live Boards admin switches on Share a link for screens that can’t sign in, its own public link. A playlist can hold up to 20 visualizations.

Snapshot — the platform captures each active visualization’s value once per night. These snapshots power the history page, sparklines, movers, streak, and pace visualizations. A Line with Update through the day (intraday) switched on is also captured hourly. Intraday snapshots are retained for 7 days; daily snapshots are kept for 13 months (396 days).

4. Running it

Creating a board

1. On the Boards tab, click New board.
2. Name the board, choose a Data source and (for Power Tables) pick a Source table. The board starts on the table’s oldest shared view; to read a different one, choose it under Saved view in Board settings.
3. The board editor opens. In the Add a visualization card, click a chart type — the drawer shows only the fields that chart type needs.
4. Add more visualizations as needed (up to 12 per board). Drag to reorder them.
5. On a board that reads a Power Tables view, and while Enable AI board suggestions is on, the visualization drawer has a box labelled Describe this visualization (optional) with a Suggest with AI button. It drafts a leaderboard — a ranked list, table or chart — for you to review. The table’s name and description, its column names and types, and whatever you type in the box are sent to the AI — never any row data.

Placing a visualization on a dashboard

From the board editor, open the ⋮ menu on a visualization’s row and pick a dashboard under Place on dashboard. The visualization goes live on that dashboard at once when the dashboard had no unpublished changes; otherwise it is added to the dashboard’s draft and goes live the next time someone publishes it. Only company admins see this part of the menu (Live Boards admin or Contributor access is not enough), because it changes what that dashboard group sees on its home page.

Boards also appear in the platform’s global search when the app is enabled — searching by board name links directly to the board.

Presenting on a TV or kiosk

Open a board and click Present to show it full-screen with no app chrome. By default the board displays as a grid of all its visualizations. On a board with more than one visualization, click Rotate one at a time to cycle through them instead (30 seconds per visualization). The page refreshes itself automatically — no JavaScript is required on the display device. Present is a signed-in page: the TV’s browser must be signed in as someone who can open the board, and it shows what that person may see.

For a screen that should never need a sign-in, use a public link instead: a Live Boards admin opens the visualization’s drawer (board editor → the pencil on its row → Advanced) and turns on Allow external embed, which creates an unguessable public link (saving closes the drawer — reopen the visualization to copy the link). Anyone with that link can view the visualization without signing in. Its masking policy still applies, and a visualization limited to an Audience cannot be embedded.

Setting up a screen rotation (playlist)

1. Go to the Playlists tab (visible to contributors and admins).
2. Click New playlist, name it, tick the visualizations to include, set Seconds per visualization, and number them to set the order.
3. To share publicly, a Live Boards admin turns on Share a link for screens that can’t sign in on the playlist, which creates a public link. Copy it to the TV’s browser. The screen rotates through the visualizations automatically.

Each visualization in the rotation must also have its own Allow external embed turned on — the playlist does not bypass the per-visualization opt-in. Seconds per visualization must be between 15 and 600 (default 60).

Watching a visualization for alerts

Members can Watch individual visualizations from the board page (Stop watching undoes it). Goal alerts are per visualization and off until its author ticks Notify when this visualization crosses its goal and sets a Goal; the switch is offered on Stat, Line, and Gauge only — Streak, Pace, and every ranked type never alert. Once it is on, the person who added the visualization, the group chosen under Who to notify, and everyone who watches it are notified when the value goes off target, and again when it recovers — each only if they can still open it.

Rank-entry notifications are separate and opt-in: with Notify members who enter the top 3 switched on for a visualization that ranks people, the nightly snapshot compares today’s top 3 with yesterday’s, and members who entered the top 3 are notified.

Reviewing board health (Analytics)

Admins see an Analytics tab that answers four operational questions no other surface does:

• Source health — which boards are bound to a source that no longer resolves (archived table, deleted view, disabled source app). These boards show “source unavailable” on every dashboard, mobile list, and TV they appear on, with nothing else alerting the admin.
• Snapshot health — whether the nightly snapshot job is running and which boards have gaps in their daily history.
• Public exposure — which individual visualizations and which playlists are currently reachable by anyone holding a public link. The links themselves are never shown — only the count and the names.
• Reach — where boards are placed (dashboards, playlists, signage), who watches them, and which active boards are not used anywhere.

Weekly digest

A weekly email digest goes to everyone who watches at least one visualization — the Live Boards · Weekly Digest notification is on by default. It is sent every Monday and lists up to 12 visualizations the recipient can open, watched ones first; if none has a value that week, no email is sent. To stop it, stop watching, or go to Account Settings → Notifications → Add Notification Exception, pick Live Boards · Weekly Digest, tick Email, and click Add Exception.

5. Settings

All settings are at Apps → Live Boards → Settings. Admin access required.

Setting	Default	What it changes
Show boards on Digital Signage	On	Tenant-wide switch. When off, nothing from Live Boards plays on any Digital Signage screen, regardless of each visualization’s own Publish to Digital Signage switch.
Allow public board embed links	On	Tenant-wide switch. When off, every external embed link and every shared playlist link stops at once; the same links resume unchanged when it is switched back on.
Default name masking for new boards	Full names	The masking policy pre-selected for the first visualization added to a board; later ones start from the masking of the first visualization on their board. Choices: Full names, First name last initial, Anonymized ranks. Each visualization keeps its own masking, set under Advanced in its drawer.
Enable AI board suggestions	On	Shows or hides the “Suggest with AI” button in the “Add a visualization” drawer (boards that read a Power Tables view only). When used, the table’s name and description, its column names and types, and whatever the author types in the box are sent to the AI — never any row data.

Wallboard branding

Three additional settings control the appearance of full-screen and public-embed surfaces:

Setting	Default	What it changes
Show your logo on full-screen boards	Off	Displays a logo on wallboard surfaces (present mode and public embeds).
Logo	None	An image from the Asset Library. System, business, and app-level library assets are available.
Accent color	None (built-in dark palette)	A hex color value (e.g. #1b6ef3) used as the accent on full-screen surfaces.

Archiving and restoring boards

Live Boards admins can archive a board from the ⋮ menu on its row in the boards list. Archiving removes the board and all its visualizations from every dashboard, mobile view, and screen at once. Archived boards appear under the Archived status filter on the Boards tab. Restoring a board, from the same menu, brings it back to all the surfaces it was placed on.

Boards are never permanently deleted — archive is the only removal path. Duplicating an active board copies the visualizations it currently shows; a visualization archived on its own in the Widget Gallery is not copied. Duplicating an archived board copies the visualizations that restoring it would bring back. Every copy starts quiet — Publish to Digital Signage, Allow external embed, Notify when this visualization crosses its goal, Also open a task while off target and Notify members who enter the top 3 are switched off — so a duplicate never appears on a signage screen or a public link, and sends no goal alert or rank notice, until someone switches those on.

6. More help

• Live Boards FAQ — specific setup and operating questions, limits, and troubleshooting.
• Power Tables App Overview — where the data behind most boards comes from.
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Live Boards from these articles.