Dashboards

Each section of the Umbraco backoffice has its own set of default dashboards. Your own custom sections can show dashboards, and you can create your own custom dashboards for existing sections.

The dashboard area of Umbraco is used to display an "editor" for the selected item in the tree. If no item is selected, then the default set of section dashboards is shown in the dashboard area.

Notice that Section Views is another similar approach to append information to the root of a Section. Section views are thought mainly to be used as Secondary pages. These two approaches should ideally not be combined.

Default Dashboards in Umbraco

The default dashboards in Umbraco are the ones that are displayed when you first enter a section in the backoffice. These dashboards are used to display information and functionality that is relevant to the section you are in.

The default sections in Umbraco are:

Here is a table of the default dashboards in Umbraco and the sections they are used including their aliases:

Even though these dashboards are useful, you might want to create your own custom dashboard to display specific information or functionality.

You can try and create a custom dashboard as a way on getting started on this topic.

Registering your Dashboard

This section dives into the Dashboard Extension Manifest, shows how to register one, and append additional details.

Example Extension Manifest

Insert this as an entry in the extensions list in a umbraco-package.json file.

{
  "type": "dashboard",
  "alias": "my.welcome.dashboard",
  "name": "My Welcome Dashboard",
  "element": "/App_Plugins/WelcomeDashboard/dashboard.js",
  "weight": -1,
  "meta": {
    "label": "Welcome Dashboard",
    "pathname": "welcome-dashboard"
  }
}

This will register a dashboard with the alias my.welcome.dashboard and the name My Welcome Dashboard. The dashboard will be loaded from the file /App_Plugins/WelcomeDashboard/dashboard.js. The dashboard will be displayed with the label Welcome Dashboard and the URL /welcome-dashboard on all sections, e.g. /section/content/dashboard/welcome-dashboard.

Conditions

You can specify conditions for when the dashboard should be displayed. This is done by adding a conditions property to the manifest. Ideally, we would like the dashboard to be shown only in a specific section. This can be done by specifying the condition called Umb.Condition.SectionAlias and providing the alias of the section you want the dashboard to be displayed on:

"conditions": [
  {
    "alias": "Umb.Condition.SectionAlias",
    "match": "Umb.Section.Content"
  }
]

This will make the dashboard only be displayed on the Content section.

Properties

The dashboard manifest can contain the following properties:

Full Example

{
  "type": "dashboard",
  "alias": "my.welcome.dashboard",
  "name": "My Welcome Dashboard",
  "element": "/App_Plugins/WelcomeDashboard/dashboard.js",
  "weight": -1,
  "meta": {
    "label": "Welcome Dashboard",
    "pathname": "welcome-dashboard"
  },
  "conditions": [
    {
      "alias": "Umb.Condition.SectionAlias",
      "match": "Umb.Section.Content"
    }
  ]
}

You can learn about creating a custom dashboard in the tutorials section. Here you will learn how to build the dashboard itself as a Web Component.