Dashboards
A guide to creating custom dashboards in Umbraco
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:
| Alias | Name |
|---|---|
Umb.Section.Content | Content |
Umb.Section.Media | Media |
Umb.Section.Settings | Settings |
Umb.Section.Members | Members |
Umb.Section.Users | Users |
Umb.Section.Translation | Dictionary |
Here is a table of the default dashboards in Umbraco and the sections they are used including their aliases:
| Alias | Section | Weight | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
Umb.Dashboard.UmbracoNews | Umb.Section.Content | 20 | The Getting Started dashboard users see when they first enter Umbraco. Contains the latest news of Umbraco including outbound links to resources |
Umb.Dashboard.RedirectManagement | Umb.Section.Content | 10 | Contains a list of active URL redirects |
Umb.Dashboard.SettingsWelcome | Umb.Section.Settings | 500 | Contains a set of boxes with links to appropriate resources |
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
You can read more about manifests in the tutorial Creating Your First Extension.
Insert this as an entry in the extensions list in a umbraco-package.json file.
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:
This will make the dashboard only be displayed on the Content section.
You can read more about Extension Conditions in the documentation.
Properties
The dashboard manifest can contain the following properties:
| Property | Type | Description | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
type | string | The type of extension, should be | |||||||||
alias | string | A unique alias for the dashboard extension | |||||||||
name | string | The name of the dashboard extension | |||||||||
element | string | The path to the JavaScript file that exports the dashboard | |||||||||
elementName | string | (Optional) The name of the Web Component that contains the dashboard (only if not a default export) | |||||||||
weight | number | (Optional) The weight of the dashboard, higher numbers are displayed first | |||||||||
meta | object | Additional metadata for the dashboard
| |||||||||
Property | Type | Description | |||||||||
Label | string | The label shown to the user | |||||||||
pathname | string | The routable URL pathname | |||||||||
Property | Type | Description | |||||||||
Label | string | The label shown to the user | |||||||||
pathname | string | The routable URL pathname | |||||||||
Property | Type | Description | |||||||||
Label | string | The label shown to the user | |||||||||
pathname | string | The routable URL pathname | |||||||||
conditions | array | (Optional) Conditions for when the dashboard should be displayed |
Full Example
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.
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