We’ve had dashboard views in TimeControl almost since its inception 29 years ago.  This last release of TimeControl offers a whole new look and feel to dashboards and a slew of new views.

TimeControl 8.4 included a complete dashboard rewrite.  Now, instead of 4 fixed panels, TimeControl offers moveable panels that can be drag and dropped.  There can be more panels than fit on the page so the page can become longer with more in it.  Aside from the already voluminous list of widgets to insert into those panels, we’ve also added a Notifications widget, Task assignments from TimeControl Project, a Task Project widget to show how tasks are being completed and an all-new GANTT widget.  There is a new Custom HTML widget to put, well, almost anything in.  That’s different from the existing Custom URL widget that would let you point to an external source and so much more.

Some widgets can be used multiple times on the same page.  A Barchart widget could show certain data in one panel but then be used again to show other data in another panel.  Same goes for the histogram view, the Pie Chart view and more.  The Chart widget includes options for Area, Bar, Line, Pie, Stacked Area, Stacked Bar and Stacked Line views.  That’s a big change from what was already there.  For each chart widget in a panel, you can use it for a Count, a Summary or an Average view.

Like all dashboards, they should come with a disclaimer.  If you feed the dashboard data that is untimely or mashed together from current and old projects, the view may not show what is expected.  We ask people to explain what decisions or actions they expect users to make when they see the dashboard view.  Announcements are self-explanatory.  They tell you to be advised about something or to do something.  Notification views or warning views with traffic light type red-yellow-green indicators could be telling people to take action and if so, there should be a broad consensus of what action should be taken for any particular indicator.

Just as was always the case, Dashboards can be specific to one group or shared among all.  That’s all up to you and is managed in the Dashboard security and in TimeControl’s security module.