Dashboards: General Information

In MYOB Acumatica, a dashboard is a collection of widgets—small components you configure to display a particular type of information—that are displayed on a single form and are designed to give you needed information at a glance.

The dashboard form is the MYOB Acumatica form on which the dashboard is created. It contains buttons that you click to perform dashboard-specific actions. You can share a dashboard with other users as you can other forms. That is, you can place any dashboard in a workspace by adding it to the MYOB Acumatica site map and specifying different access levels to the dashboard form for the user roles available in the system.

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn how to do the following:

  • Create a dashboard form
  • Manage access rights for the viewing and configuration of dashboard forms

Applicable Scenario

You administer dashboard forms if you are responsible for system administration or for the customization of MYOB Acumatica in your company.

Creation of a New Dashboard Form

On the Dashboards (SM208600) form, you add the new dashboard form and enter its internal identifier in the Name box.

In the Owner Role box, you select a user role. All users that have the selected role assigned are the owners of the dashboard. That is, the Design button on the dashboard title bar is available to these users. If they click the button, the dashboard switches to design mode. In this mode, an owner of the dashboard can populate the dashboard with widgets, modify the dashboard layout, and edit widget properties.

Publication of a Dashboard

On the toolbar of the Dashboards (SM208600) form, you click the Publish to the UI command. The system opens the Publish to the UI dialog box.

In this dialog box, you make the needed changes to the default values in the Site Map Title (in which the system inserts the value you have specified as the name), Workspace, and Category boxes.

Also, the system assigns the dashboard an automatically generated ID in a format similar to the format of screen IDs of other dashboards, with DB as the two-letter module code: DB000000. When the ID is assigned, the system adds the dashboard to the site map. This setting controls whether the dashboard is published on the MYOB Acumatica site.

In the Access Rights section of the dialog box, you select one of the following option buttons to indicate which access rights should be specified for the newly added form:

  • Set to Granted for All Roles: The system will set the access rights for this form to Granted for all user roles in the system.
  • Set to Revoked for All Roles: The system will set the access rights for this form to Revoked for all user roles in the system.
  • Copy Access Rights from Screen (default): The system will copy the set of the access rights from the specified form.

After you specify the needed settings and click Publish in the dialog box, the dashboard is published. That is, it is assigned a screen identifier and becomes available in the specified workspace. Also, the system adds the new site map node for this form to the site map and applies the appropriate access rights to this site map node.

After the dashboard has been published you can adjust access to the dashboard on the Visible To tab of the form.

Configuration of Dashboard Visibility

On the Visible To tab of the Dashboards (SM208600) form, you specify the access levels for the roles defined in the system. To give the access, you select the Granted access level for the roles for which the dashboard should be available. Users that do not have a role for which the Granted access level is specified will not be able to view the dashboard.

Ability to Personalize a Dashboard

You can also control whether these users who can view a dashboard can personalize the dashboard—that is, create a personal copy of the dashboard and configure and modify the copied widgets. To provide users with this capability, you need to select the Allow Users to Personalize check box on the Dashboards (SM208600) form for the particular dashboard. With this check box selected, the Create User Copy button will be displayed on the title bar of the dashboard. A user clicks the button to create a personal copy of the dashboard.

If a user has created a personal copy of the dashboard and made modifications to it, this user can reset the copy to the original dashboard by clicking the Reset to Default button on the title bar of the dashboard.

A user who manages a particular dashboard can reset all user copies of the dashboard at once by clicking Reset All User Copies on the More menu of the Dashboards form.

Ability to Deactivate Widgets

In MYOB Acumatica, you can deactivate a widget that consumes a lot of memory, malfunctions, or currently is not needed. On the Widgets tab of the Dashboards (SM208600) form, the list of widgets of the selected dashboard is shown. By default, the Active check box is selected for each widget, meaning that the widget is shown on the dashboard. You can deactivate a widget on the dashboard by clearing the Active check box for the widget. If you clear the check box, the widget is no longer shown on the dashboard in either view mode or design mode.

Attention: A user with the dashboard owner role or a user who has created a personalized copy of a dashboard can drag a widget to the place of an inactive widget. If the inactive widget is activated again, it may not reappear on the dashboard. In this case, you may need to know the hidden widget's coordinates so that you can quickly locate it and rearrange the widgets on the dashboard. Widget coordinates are shown in the Row and Column table columns on the Widgets tab of the Dashboards form for the dashboard. For details, see Dashboards: Widget Location Within a Working Area.

Ability to Delete Widgets

On the Widgets tab of the Dashboards (SM208600) form, you can delete a widget from a dashboard by selecting the row of the needed widget and clicking the Delete Row button on the form toolbar.

Exposure to the Mobile Application

If a dashboard should be displayed in the MYOB Acumatica mobile app connected to your MYOB Acumatica site, you select the Expose to the Mobile Application check box on the Dashboards (SM208600) form for the particular dashboard.

Export of a Dashboard

On the Dashboards (SM208600) form, you can prepare a dashboard as an XML file to export it to another tenant of your MYOB Acumatica site. You can do this by opening the needed dashboard and clicking the Export as XML command on the Clipboard menu of the form toolbar. For details, see To Export Data to XML. Then in the other tenant, you open the Dashboards form and click the Import from XML command on the Clipboard menu of the form toolbar, as described in To Import Data from XML.

If a dashboard contains a widget that is a wiki page or a widget based on a generic inquiry (such as a table widget or a KPI widget), you need to make sure that this wiki page or generic inquiry exists in the tenant to which you are exporting the dashboard. If it does not, you need first to create the wiki page or generic inquiry in the tenant. You can also import the wiki page or generic inquiry from the tenant where it is stored along with the dashboard and then export the wiki page or generic inquiry to the same tenant where you are exporting the dashboard. After importing a dashboard, you need to reselect the wiki page or generic inquiry in the imported dashboard on the Dashboards form. For details, see Specific Widgets: Table Widgets, Specific Widgets: Wiki Page Widgets, and Specific Widgets: KPI Widgets.