Your First Dashboard

Your First Dashboard

After installation, dashboardSMASHBOARD automatically creates four pre-built dashboards covering the most important views for any store. You can start using them immediately — no setup required.

Daily Pulse opens by default. All four dashboards use relative goals (e.g. +5%, +10%) so they work out of the box regardless of your store's size — no per-store configuration needed.

These are a starting point, not a prescription. Every card can be modified, and you can add, remove, or reorder cards on any dashboard. You can also create fully custom dashboards from scratch.

Pre-Built Dashboards — What You Get on Day One

Each dashboard is pre-configured with cards, goals, and time windows that cover the most common tracking needs.

Daily Pulse

Audience: Anyone who does a morning check or monitors the store intraday. This is the right dashboard to leave open during a sale event or campaign.

Question it answers: "Is today going well compared to a typical day?"

All cards compare today (or this week) against the same time period in the prior week, so the comparison accounts for day-of-week patterns.

The two trend cards at the bottom give context for the four daily metrics — you can see whether today's numbers fit the recent pattern or represent a breakout.

Growth Tracker

Audience: Store owners focused on growth, doing weekly or monthly performance reviews. Also useful for teams reporting to stakeholders or investors.

Question it answers: "Am I growing this month compared to last month?"

All cards use a rolling 30-day window and compare against the previous 30-day period. Revenue and Orders include a Forecast indicator projecting where you'll land by the end of the period.

| Sessions (30d) | Sessions for the last 30 days | +10% vs previous 30 days | Metric |

| Top Products (30d) | Top 10 products ranked by gross revenue | No goal — ranked list | Table |

The +15% revenue goal and +10% order goal are industry-benchmarked starting points for healthy growth. Adjust them to match your own targets.

Operations Health

Audience: Operations managers, fulfillment teams, and anyone who needs to catch problems before they escalate.

Question it answers: "Is stock healthy and is order volume holding steady?"

The "decline alert" card on Orders uses a +0% goal — the target is literally "don't be worse than last week." The Alert will fire red if orders drop vs. the prior period, giving you early warning of a slowdown.

Inventory Health The low-stock and critical thresholds can be adjusted per card.

Year-Over-Year

Audience: Established stores (12+ months of history), seasonal businesses, and annual planners who need to benchmark this year against last year.

Question it answers: "Am I beating last year?"

Note: Cards on this dashboard display "insufficient history" until your store has at least 12 months of order data. [SHARED FACT: YoY requirement]

The 365-day revenue chart lets you see seasonal patterns at a glance — where the peaks and valleys fall and whether this year's pattern mirrors last year's.

Modifying pre-built dashboards: Click Edit (pencil icon) on any dashboard to add, remove, or reorder cards. Click Edit on any card to change its goal, visualization, time window, or write a custom SmashGL query. All changes are saved immediately and only affect your dashboard — the pre-built templates are a starting point, not a lock-in.

Creating Additional Dashboards

1. Open dashboardSMASHBOARD from your dashboardSMASHBOARD dashboard.
2. Click + Create Dashboard (top right of the Dashboards list).
3. Enter a Name (e.g. "Daily Operations") and optionally a Description.
4. Click Create Dashboard.

You can have as many dashboards as you need. Effective names answer a specific question:

• "Q2 Goals" — focused on the quarter's OKRs
• "Daily Check-in" — quick morning snapshot (orders, revenue, sessions)
• "Product Performance" — top products and inventory

Navigating Dashboards

All your dashboards appear on the home screen. Click any dashboard name to open it. Dashboards update automatically with live data from your store.

Dashboard Header Controls

The header bar at the top of every open dashboard contains four custom controls:

Canvas Layout — Sections and Elements

A dashboard is a free-form grid where cards, sections, and elements all live as peer items you can drag, resize, and reposition independently.

Cards

Cards are the primary data item — they display metric values, goals, and visualizations. See Adding and Configuring Cards for how to add and edit them.

Sections

Sections are non-data structural items you add to organize your dashboard visually.

To add a section: open the dashboard's + Element button (visible when editing), or click + Element inside any heading section row.

Edit and delete buttons appear on hover, inline with the content, so you never have to enter a separate edit mode before deleting. For text and note sections, clicking the pencil icon replaces the text in-place with an editable field — no floating modal.

Elements (Summary Block)

Elements are extracted summary widgets — the Status ring, Biggest Movers list, and related overview items — that used to be locked inside the dashboard title strip. They are now independent grid items you can drag to any position and resize freely.

• Status ring — the donut chart tracking how many goals are on track vs. at risk. The ring scales proportionally as you resize the element vertically.
• Biggest Movers bullets pin to the top of the element regardless of height.

To add an element, click + Element from a heading section or from the canvas add menu.

Grid and Snapping

The canvas uses a 24-column grid with 4 px margins between items. Cards default to 1/3 of the canvas width (8 columns); text, note, and element items also start at card width but can be resized down to 1/6 width (4 columns). Every item has a drag handle — grab any item's header row to move it.

Existing dashboards: Dashboards built before the 24-column grid was introduced are automatically migrated. Saved positions scale up so everything lands at the same visual proportion as before.

Dashboard Name and Description

The dashboard name and description are edited directly on the canvas in the title strip at the top — click either field to edit it in place. There is no separate rename modal. The last-refreshed time and card count appear in the dashboard header bar, not in the title strip itself.

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