SupportDesk Dashboards

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Dashboards Webinar - Contents

What are Dashboards?

• Introduction to Dashboards

• How to access Dashboards

• Different types of forms in SupportDesk

Designing a Dashboard

• The Dashboard Designer

• Reports and Components definition

• Using Drag and Drop

• The different tabs on the designer

Creating Dashboard Content

• Creating Reports for Dashboards

• Creating Components

• Linking Dashboard Components to QuickCalls (with an overview of the Call Forms designer)

Displaying Dashboards

• Dashboards for access Privileges

• Dashboards for Individual Logins

• Dashboards for Processes (Folders)

• Linking to additional Dashboards

I will be answering questions that arise from the webinar afterwards via email – so please email questions/consultancy requests to support@houseonthehill.com

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An Introduction to dashboards

- A few key points:- Dashboards are available on the web application only.

- The House Forms module is required to create and edit dashboards.

- Dashboard Forms provide the functionality to alter the Web Today Pages for SupportDesk users.

- Dashboard Forms can provide SupportDesk users with a personalised landing page.

- Dashboards can be displayed to users based on:• Login Privilege

• Processes (Folders) that can be accessed

• Individual Login settings

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How to access dashboards• To access the Dashboard Designer, you must have a Supervisor privilege login, and the House Forms module must be

included on your SupportDesk system.

• The Dashboard Designer can be found under the Settings menu, and by selecting Forms and Dashboards.

• Then in the ‘Form Type’ dropdown at the top right of the screen, select Dashboard:

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Different SupportDesk Form Types

• Activity Forms for building Forms that capture information for specific tasks or activities. These may be a requirement of a process, such as “Roll back Information” within a Change Process. If an Activity and an Activity Form share the same name e.g. Risk Assessment, then the form will be generated when the Risk Assessment Activity is logged. See Activities guide for more information on Activity functions.

• Call Forms for creating Call Logging forms: Requests, New Starters, Problem Forms etc.

• Component Forms for creating widgets, buttons, images, to add to call forms or dashboards.

• Contract Forms. If your operation offers a variety of Contract Types then a specific Form can be built for each, capturing only the information needed for that Contract.

• Dashboard Forms. These are Forms that act as initial dashboards presented at login. They can contain standard System objects provided by House-on-the-Hill, Quick reports, or encapsulated blocks of html that serve up specific functionality.

• Feedback Forms to create customer satisfaction survey, to be sent upon call closure to the Customer.

• Inventory Forms specific Forms can be built that are pivoted on the Configuration Item (Asset) Type.

• Opportunity Forms for use with the CRM function and logging Sales Opportunities. (For use with Sales Opportunities to specify print output.)

• PO Forms can be used with the Financial Management function for logging Purchase Orders. (For use with Purchase Orders to specify print output.)

• KBase Forms for creating unique data capture and display forms within the KnowledgeBase. Creating a form named Kbasewill be automatically picked up when creating new KnowledgeBase items, or opening existing ones.

It is in this ‘Form Type’ dropdown that you will notice various different available selections. Below is an overview of each Form Type that can be created and edited using Drag and Drop. It is worthwhile knowing about the different form types, as the creation of Dashboard forms can link with Call and Component form types in particular:

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The Dashboard Designer

• If Dashboards already exist in your system, they will appear in the list. These can be edited by clicking on a selected Dashboard, and editing in the dashboard designer…

• Or to create a new Dashboard from scratch, click the New Form button…

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• And the drag and drop designer will appear:

The Name field can be used to name the Dashboard. The name of the dashboard can be important, something discussed on pages 18 and 19.

The grid is the area to drag reports and components into. This is where you can construct the layout of the dashboard.

The right-hand list shows two tabs: Reports and Components, and these can be selected and dragged across to the left-hand grid…

OK – saves and takes you back to the Dashboard forms listSave – saves the dashboard and remains in the designerRefresh – refreshes the preview without savingExport HTML – exports the dashboard html

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Reports and Components

• So what are the Reports and Components available in the Dashboard Designer, and how can they be customised?

Reports:Reports listed in the Dashboard Designer are the Public Reports that exist in the QuickReport list. Don’t see the report you want to add to your Dashboard? Make it using the QuickReports Designer!

Components:Components are the buttons and widgets that can be added to Dashboards and Forms. SupportDesk is shipped with numerous components, and you can also design your own…

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Using Drag and Drop• In order to begin building a new Dashboard, first of all enter the name of the Dashboard in the Name field. Next, begin

to make selections from the Reports and Components lists, and drag the selections across to the table on the left. Where the Reports and Components are placed on the grid will determine the position of these on the Dashboard. As you begin to drag selections, a preview will appear below:

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Creating a Report for use on a Dashboard• It may be that the report you require to show on the dashboard does not currently exist. If this is the case, go to QuickReports

and click New to access the QuickReport Designer. Then give your report a name and use the tabs on the designer to set the parameters, such as Date Range and Group and Sort By…

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• It is on the Format tab that you can choose how the report will appear on the Dashboard. It may be that, instead of a text-based report, which could require a lot of scrolling down, you would prefer just a chart. In this case, select the graph Type from the dropdown, select whether you would like a Legend to be displayed, and then, click the Chart Only button:

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Creating Components• It may be too that the component you wish to include on the Dashboard may not exist, or that you wish to edit one of the

components to point to a specific Call form. To create a new component, go to Settings > Forms and Dashboards and select the Component form type:

• Click New Form, and the component designer will appear. Enter a name for the component. Do not include spaces or special characters in the Form name, and click Save.

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• On the Details tab, you will see that the tick box ‘Component (Make this form available in the Forms Designer). Defaults to being selected. This enables the Component to be embedded in other forms such as Dashboards.

• Back on the Form tab, you can begin to enter html.

• (You can copy and paste from other existing widgets, and edit from here.)

• Once the html is entered, clicking Refresh will display the Component preview.

• The html used in this example is included at the end of this document.

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Linking Dashboard Components to QuickCallsQuickCalls are call templates that can be created and stored within the various Folders in your SupportDesk system. They can be used forcommonly occurring call types to ease data entry, or for calls that require specific data capture. QuickCalls can be linked to Call Forms, Components can link to QuickCalls, and these can be added to Dashboards. Here is a step by step to demonstrate this concept:

In the Requests folder, a QuickCall has been created called ‘New Starter Form’. It has the Reference of QC000008. *QuickCalls are accessed from the Summary Settings dropdown in each process folder.

1 3In Settings > Forms and Dashboards, in the FormType: Call list, there is a Form created called New Starter Form. This has been made using the Drag and Drop Designer, so this is where the QuickCall is picking up the form data from.

2 Clicking into the ‘New Starter’ QuickCall, we can enter the default settings of the QuickCall, such as Type, Priority etc. We can also select the Form from the Form dropdown, with which the QuickCall will be associated. Here I can pick the New Starter Form and save.

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Back in Forms and Dashboards, Form Type = Component, I can find the ‘WIDGETNewThing’ component that I created earlier.

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I want to use this button to generate the New Starter QuickCall and Form. So, in the html for the component, all I need to do is change the QC= reference to the reference of my New Starter QuickCall(QC000008) and change ‘New Thing’ to say ‘New Starter’ in both the html and Name field.

When I click Refresh, this will show the new name of the button in the Preview. Once I am happy, I can click OK to save.

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Next, in Forms and Dashboards, Form Type = Dashboard, I can select the Dashboard that I want to add my component to…

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And drag the component from the component column onto the grid location that I wish the button to appear. Click OK to save.

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Now, when an Analyst logs in to SupportDesk, they will be able to see the new button on the Today page, and clicking the button will link directly to the QuickCall and Form…

• Which brings us to our next point: Dashboards and Login Privileges.

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Dashboards and Login PrivilegesThere are 6 Login privileges levels in SupportDesk:

Supervisor — Supervisors have access to all parts of the system and can make alterations to the system configuration.

Support — Support logins may log and update Customers, Products, Calls, Contracts and Suppliers.

Analyst — This is the default privilege for new logins and allows them to input and update Calls and Notes.

Engineer — This privilege puts the login into the list of assignees that can be selected at the Call form. An engineer has no login and no password to the system, but can be included on email correspondence. Any number of engineers may be entered. Their creation is not restricted by the licence agreement.

WebGuest — For systems with the Self Service Portal option. WebGuests are Customers or End Users who only have access via the browser for logging and tracking their own tickets. These logins also do not take up a licence.

Group — Groups are used in conjunction with Resource Allocation records so that other User logins can be made members of the Group. Assigning a Call to the Group includes the Call in lists for the Group members until the Call is allocated to a particular Group member. A Group has no login and password.

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• For the privileges that enable users to log in to personal profiles in the system (Analyst, Support, WebGuest and Supervisor), Dashboards can be made with the same privilege name. SupportDesk will then know to use that Dashboard for all users with the same privilege. E.g. a Dashboard named ‘Analyst’ will appear as default for all Analyst privilege logins:

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Dashboards for IndividualsDashboards can be associated with individual Logins, and this will override the Privilege level Dashboard. Dashboards can be associated with individual logins via Settings > Logins, and selecting from the Dashboard dropdown, click OK to save.

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Dashboards at Folder Level• In addition to home-screen dashboards, it is possible to create Dashboards for each folder within your SupportDesk system. This

can be set via Settings > Processes, and selecting the required dashboard from the Default Dashboard dropdown. (2016 feature).

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Linking to Additional Dashboards• One aspect to consider when creating dashboards is the loading time – if you include numerous large reports (i.e. reports that are looking at

thousands of records over a long period of time) on one dashboard, naturally the loading time will take longer. One great way of ensuring that the home page loads quickly, whilst still being able to create the reports your require, is to create buttons that link to additional dashboards, and place these on the home page.

• So in the same way that a component can link to a Call, a component can also link to a Dashboard, and SupportDesk 2016 is shipped with the Dashboard named ‘Performance Dashboard’ and the associated component named ‘Button:Performance Dashboard’. This component can be copied using the Copy button, renamed, and by changing the Dashboard references in the html, can be customised to link to your own dashboards. Your new components can then be added to your dashboards, enabling multiple dashboards to be accessed from a home screen.

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Use this code to create the ‘New Thing’ button:

<a class="view-button blue" href='[System:Action]QC&QC=QC000001'>New Thing<span>+</span></a><style>body .right-panel .view-button.blue{

background: lightblue;border:0 solid #aaa;border-radius: 5px;box-shadow:inset 0px 0px white;float: left;text-align: center;text-decoration: none;line-height: 40px;padding: 10px;font-size: 16px;color:#3a3a3a;-webkit-transition: 0.2s ease-out;

-moz-transition: 0.2s ease-out;-o-transition: 0.2s ease-out;

-webkit-box-sizing: border-box; /* Safari/Chrome, other WebKit */-moz-box-sizing: border-box; /* Firefox, other Gecko */box-sizing: border-box; /* Opera/IE 8+ */

opacity: 1;height:100px;

width:100%;}.view-button:hover span{

opacity: 0.8;}

.view-button.green span{width: 100%;float: left;font-size: 50px;font-weight: bold;color:white;

}</style> 23