A dashboard is a page whose subject is the numbers. A map with analytics widgets is still a map — the widgets annotate it. A dashboard is the other way round: charts, indicators and lists are the page, and the map is one element among them.
It is its own thing, published and versioned separately. Building one changes nothing about the map it came from.
Create it
Ava Reyes has "Harbourview Network Buildout" open and wants a page her operations lead can read without opening a map at all.
She opens the project menu and chooses "Create Dashboard…", one item below "Publish to Server".
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Give it a "Name". It is prefilled from the project — "Harbourview Network Buildout dashboard".
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"Create". This makes a draft and nothing else: nothing is live, and Production is untouched.
Choose how it starts
You land on the gallery. Pick your "Data" layer in the header first — the gallery uses it to tell you which templates your data can actually fill.
Templates are grouped by where they come from: Tamaat ships a set, your organization may have its own, and so may you. Each card says what question it answers. A template your chosen layer cannot satisfy is marked, and says which field it is missing, before you pick it rather than after.
Choosing one lays out a whole dashboard and preconfigures every element. Everything it set is yours to change afterwards.
Or "Start blank" and build it yourself. You get an empty grid and an "Add element" menu offering all seven kinds — indicator, chart, ranked list, map, feature details, header, text. A kind your layer cannot serve says why rather than disappearing, so you can tell "my data is wrong" from "the product cannot do this".
A new element arrives already reading a real field of your layer and already placed clear of the others, and opens its settings straight away — what it guessed is the first thing you will want to change. Remove one with the bin beside its gear.
Point it at your data
A template describes what it needs — a category to group by, a number to measure, a name to label rows — and the configure step maps those onto your layer's real fields.
Tamaat proposes what it is confident about, and leaves the rest for you.
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Check the "Data source" layer at the top. There is no map to choose: publishing from a map already chose it.
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Work down "Fields". Each row is something the template needs; each dropdown lists every field on your layer, searchable, with incompatible ones marked "wrong type" rather than hidden — renaming across unrelated names is the normal case.
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"Done".
You do not have to finish. "Done" works with fields still unmapped: the elements that have what they need render, and the rest stay on the page, switched off, each saying what it is still waiting for. Come back and finish them whenever.
Applying a mapping recomputes the whole dashboard, and any map element moves to the extent of the layer you chose.
Change what an element reads
Hover an element and click its gear. This is the same panel whether the element came from a template or you added it — a template's chart is not a special kind of chart, just one somebody else configured first.
- Chart type — every type is offered, including the ones needing a different field. Switching between types that read the same kind of field costs nothing; one that needs a different kind asks for that field and says so.
- What it reads — the layer, the field on each axis, the measure, how many to show.
- Filters — narrow this element alone. The dashboard's own filters apply on top.
Rename an element by giving it a "Title". The name describes the role, not the field, which is why it survives being pointed at a differently-named column.
The Data sources rail
The rail on the left lists what the dashboard reads and how much of it is mapped. It opens by itself when something is unconnected or a required field is missing, and stays out of the way when everything is bound. "Configure" reopens the mapping at any time.
It lists layers, not maps: publishing from a map already fixed the map.
Filters, and what a viewer can drive
Three things narrow a dashboard, and they are deliberately different:
- Dashboard filters ("Filters" in the header) apply to every element, including ones you add later. Viewers cannot see or remove them.
- Element filters narrow one element, set from its gear.
- Selectors are controls a viewer operates — a category, a number range, a date range — placed in the dashboard's header by a template or by you.
On top of those, clicking a mark filters the rest of the page. Click a bar, a ranked-list row, or a feature on the map, and every other element reading that layer recomputes. The element you clicked keeps all of its marks and shows which one you picked — a chart that collapsed to the bar you clicked would tell you nothing.
Everything in force is listed in the filter bar, each with a way out, and the page says how many features it is drawn from. Panning the embedded map changes nothing; only picking something on it does.
Publish it
A dashboard follows exactly the path a web map does.
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"Publish to Server" cuts release v1 into Non-production. It tells you how many elements it carries, and warns you about any still waiting on a field — those are left out.
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Review it in the Server console, under "Dashboards". "Open dashboard" returns you to the draft; "Copy preview link" gets a reviewer in without a Tamaat account.
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"Promote to Production" when it is ready. Now it is live at its own URL.
A live dashboard is Public to anyone with the link, or Restricted to whoever has the access token you hand out. Viewers get live numbers and can drive the selectors and click the marks; they cannot change what the dashboard is.
Carry on editing the draft afterwards — the published version does not move until you share the next release.
Can a dashboard read more than one layer?▾
Yes, as long as every layer belongs to the map it was published from. Clicking a mark on one layer does not filter elements reading a different one — there is no join between them, so it would appear to mean something it does not.
Why is an element greyed out and asking for a field?▾
Its mapping is incomplete. That is a legitimate state, not an error — the element is kept exactly as the template built it so you can finish it later, rather than deleted for you.
Which layers can a dashboard read?▾
Uploaded vector layers — shapefile, GeoJSON, CSV and TAB. Rasters and WMS layers have no attribute table to summarize, and imagery products are not readable this way.
Does building a dashboard change my map?▾
No. It reads the map's layers and nothing else. Your analytics widgets, symbology and published web maps are untouched.