Creating a Dashboard
This article will walk you through the steps of how to create a Dashboard within Canvas, taking your mood board to specification and better managing furniture schedules, budgets, and milestone dates.
What are Dashboards?
Dashboards, also known as projects, allow you to focus on the management and scheduling part of the design process so that everyone is aware of a project's scope, progress and status. You can create a budget, Product List (furniture schedule), and mark milestones all in one place within the Canvas to make sure your project stays on track. Adding a Dashboard within your Canvas also allows you to track your embodied carbon. With Dashboards, you can easily organize and manage a project's scope of work - all in one place.
This feature is only available for Pro, Unlimited, and Custom users.
Why use Dashboards?
Add a Dashboard into your Canvas in order to capture and easily present the following information:
The Project's Name
Furniture Specification (Product Lists)
Lists are customizable and filterable
Address information with a live Google Maps view of your project's location
Gross Area sq ft
Plannable Area sq ft
Total Budget - with a Discount percentage and a Markup percentage
You can edit pricing per item by adding in custom discounting and a markup to show net discounting
You can decide to show or hide the project subtotal price
Carbon Estimate
The percentage of second-life items you are designing with
Cost per Square Foot
Milestone Dates in a timeline format
How to add a Dashboard:
On the toolbar, click Add a Dashboard to then place one inside the Canvas you are working on. The Dashboard reads the entire Canvas initially, but don't worry - you are able to filter and manipulate what you want it to read.
Open or create a Canvas.
Start designing with Products library to create a collage or vignette for a new project or client. (A.k.a. put some furniture into your Canvas for the Dashboard to capture and showcase).
Reference the top Toolbar, and click Add a Dashboard.
A grey rectangle will hover with your cursor. Place your Dashboard in your Canvas wherever you would like it to live. You can always move your Dashboard around the Canvas at a later time.
What do to with your Dashboard:
Now it's time to edit and customize your dashboard with all your project details.
To edit the Dashboard settings, click on the Gear icon in the upper right hand corner of the Dashboard. A side panel window will pop-up on the right side of your screen to edit all the fields inside the Project.
Click on the Arrows to expand the editable fields, which are Address, Budget & Pricing, Square Footage, Milestones, and Column Settings.
While in the Dashboard settings, add Milestone dates that will then activate the Milestone widget at the bottom of your Dashboard. After you add a few milestones - like Kick Off Meeting, Order Ship Date, and Delivery & Install days - you can scroll horizontally on a timeline to compare those due dates to today.
Outside of Dashboard settings, click on the Filter button and the different product view icons to further control what is included in the Product List portion of your Dashboard. The Product List is located on the left-side of your Dashboard and is interactive.
You can edit the List columns under Column Settings in the Dashboard settings side panel.
Click the Export Selection button at the bottom of the Dashboard (when activated) to export your Dashboard.
You can choose to export this work into a PDF, JPEG, or PNG.
If you select to export to a .CSV file, a product list, with all the products' data, will be emailed to you directly.
Read more about the Product List feature and how to customize it in depth here:
How to create a Product ListResize your Dashboard by clicking the corners or dragging out the sides.
Continue reading the next articles to learn how to utilize Areas to better manipulate and further detail your Dashboard and Product List.
How to draw an AreaLast updated
