3D Experience - Dashboard Creation

If you haven't seen Part 1 - Platform Management, then you can watch it here.

There is an app shortcut to “3DDashboard” but it isn’t really needed as the Dashboard is what is in essence the homepage when you land on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

Logged in as my imaginary Administrator “Chris MANAGER” I am going to go through some of the key parts of creating your first dashboard.

Firstly you can review the default “My First Dashboard” and modify this if needed. You can also create a brand new Dashboard keeping the default one as a backup to refer back to if required (some of the Getting Started material may be useful for reference). Therefore click the down arrow next to the dashboard name and choose to create a new dashboard or rename the existing one. This down arrow would be where you swap dashboards if you have been invited into more than one.

Within the dashboard you can work across multiple tabs. To add a new one click the + button and give it a name- this will be empty and your placeholder for dragging in the widgets and apps:

Once created you can use the down arrow to make some changes such as renaming, and eventually sharing with your colleagues.

Adding widgets and Apps

Into this empty dashboard we can begin dragging in some of the apps from the left hand task pane. We won’t worry about the specifics of the apps at this point, but just show you some basics of how the apps can be laid out. The apps are found on the left hand side when the Compass is activated- you may also spend some time managing your favourite apps so they are more easily found. Quite simply you then drag and drop the apps into the main area of the dashboard. Not all apps can be dragged and dropped in this way- the indicator they can is the arrow in the upper right corner as pictured on the 3DPlay app below:

As you drag into the dashboard you will feel how it snaps to positions and as more apps are added they dock alongside one another and can be dragged to their desired size. Once you have placed the apps you may find it best to close the left hand task pane with the X to get a full screen view.

Depending on the logged in user’s permissions, various options appear under the drop down arrow including a more granular level of sharing- as oppose to sharing the entire dashboard layout. In later blogs we shall see how these apps and widgets can work with one another to give you a full overview of how your projects are progressing.

These options will be available in some form on each app, but the specific options you can control will be relative to the app itself. Now as well as adding the app/widget with a drag and drop gesture you can also use it on the fly by simply single clicking from the left hand task pane. When this is done the app opens in front of the main dashboard and can be closed when you have done what you need to. This would be preferred over pinning to the dashboard if it is a less regularly used app and not something you want to constantly keep an eye on.

Communities

Communities have similarities to how you interact with website such as YouTube and Facebook. On YouTube you subscribe to “Channels” which keeps videos from the same author in one place so you can assume the topics covered are related. On Facebook you may Like or Join “Groups”. By joining you expect that the posts are relevant to your interests based on the theme of the group. Communities in 3DEXPERIENCE should be seen in the same way. The most simple type of Community could be a Project name. Those you invite to join the community are your project team members and the topics posted will be related.

The admin user therefore needs to launch the “Communities Control Center” app from the “Social and Collaborative” apps (North Quadrant)

Within here a new community can be created with a name and description. You can change the image associated with it and then begin to add new members. Members can be set to be Owners (for full control over the Community), Authors (allowing new posts and content to be created) and Contributors (who can have their ability to add comments restricted).  When you begin typing the names of your invited colleagues, the search results should find them so you can add them into your community.

The other users then receive a notification when they next login that they have been added to this Community:

The Statistics section is useful to track general activity and how often people are interacting with the community posts, and the Settings allow you to set options such as the privacy of the Community as well as some granular options for Contributor users. Within settings you will see this funnel type graphic. This is used for creating new ideas and moving them through different statuses as your ideas mature. This could be seen as a very simple entry into a product workflow that you may associate with Product Data Management (PDM). You can create and add to the default states as well as changing their labels and colours (as I have in the image below).

User Groups

In the intial setup of the platform and dashboards you are likely to be sharing a lot of content, which is the equivalent to assigning permissions. The design team in this scenarios is only 4 members so not too onerous to type in their names each time. However you may wish to create a user group so that the sharing can be done in bulk. Again the admin user can do this using one of their specific Social and Collaborative Apps – User Groups.

As pictured above, User Groups can be selected in the left hand pane, a new group created and named and then Members invited in.

Now when it comes to sharing, it can be done on a Group basis rather than User by User.

Sharing Dashboards

The Dashboard will take some initial configuration to optimise the layout for the screen sizes. You may wish to also add multiple tabs to keep certain information separate. Once you have got the arrangement you are happy with you can then share this with other team members. This means they don’t have to recreate the same layout for themselves. Use the down arrow against the Dashboard name (now renamed to Soap Box) and click the Share button:

You can search for users already within the Platform, or create a public link. For this latter option, please be aware that the content of your dashboard may be unavailable to a public users since they won’t have been granted specific permissions to see the content of the apps and widgets (i.e. added to the community for conversations, or to access the files stored in 3D Drive). Therefore we would recommend sharing the content to people you have specifically invited to join the platform.

And you can of course share to groups as an alternative.

Logging in as Sarah, I see a notification that a dashboard has been shared:

Clicking the message adds the dashboard in the same layout as the original. Now the dashboard that has been shared is drawing information from three different sources.

The left hand widget is 3DDrive- where files can be uploaded.Currently there is just a concept sketch image in this folder. The middle panel is the 3DSWYM Community linked to the “New Product Proposal” community setup earlier. The right hand panel is the Web Page Reader embedding a public webpage. You may find that when the dashboard is shared, both the left and middle panels are not showing the same for other users compared to how you set it up. This will be down to permissions. To see the contents of the 3DDrive folder, this must be shared to the team members, and likewise the 3DSWYM community members must be setup to include your team as well. We set the Community members up earlier in this post, and will look at sharing content from 3DDrive in a future post. The Web Page reader will be fine as this is a public URL so no additional permissions will be required here.

So hopefully you now have a good understanding about some of the pre-work required in setting up Dashboards and more importantly how you can start bring other colleagues into the mix and sharing information.

Further information on Dashboards and others tools within 3DEXPERIENCE Business Innovation can be found here on MySOLIDWORKS.

General Online Help for the platform can be accessed here.

By Adam Hartles

Customer Support Manager