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General
The dashboard display is used to view several displays side-by-side. For example, it can be used to view both a precipitation and a temperature grid plot side-by-side, synchronizing the time sliders. All users can create and modify their own dashboards, which will be stored in the user settings. Alternatively, a configurator can configure "predefined" dashboards which will be the same for all users. An example of a dashboard display is shown below.
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Creating and modifying a Dashboard Display
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For example, the situation before using the "Arrange Frames Automatically" option is shown on the left while the result is shown on the right in the screenshots below:
Frame Titles
On newly added frames, the title will always be constructed automatically. The title of such a frame, is the name of the grid plot, followed by the selected accumulation (if any). The title is updated automatically if the grid plot or accumulation is changed. Since several grid plots may have the same name, it is possible to give custom titles to frames. To do so, first select the frame you wish to rename and then use the "Rename Active Frame" option in the dashboard drop-down menu. Once a frame has been given a custom title, it will always have that title even if the grid plot shown or the accumulation is changed.
The option to rename frames is only available for user-defined dashboards. For predefined dashboards, whether a frame should have a fixed (custom) name or should have a name that is constructed automatically, has already been decided by the configurator.
Deleting a frame
Frames in user-defined dashboards can be deleted from the dashboard by closing the frame (through the close-button in the frame's title bar). The frame will be permanently deleted from the dashboard, so after closing an reopening the dashboard, the frame will still be gone.
Frames in predefined dashboards can be closed as well, but upon closing and reopening the dashboard, the frame will reappear as it was defined in the dashboards.ini file.
Deleting a dashboard
User-defined dashboards can be deleted through the "Delete this Dashboard" option in the drop-down menu of the dashboard button. This will remove the dashboard from the user settings and from the dashboard menu in the FEWS toolbar.
Using a Dashboard Display
Opening a Dashboard Display
To open a dashboard, simply select the dashboard title in the dashboard menu in the top FEWS menu bar. This will open the dashboard, or if it is already open, bring the dashboard into focus.
Accessing the frame toolbars
The dashboard panel has toolbars on the top and bottom of the panel. When a frame is selected / active, its toolbars are added to the dashboard panels toolbar, thus allowing the user to access all buttons they would ordinarily have access to. In the screenshot below, the dashboard panel's button section's have been highlighted in green, while the grid display toolbar's of the active frame have been highlighted in red:
Since the right-frame is active (and synchronization has been turned of), using any of the buttons in the toolbar sections marked red will only influence the contents of the right-frame. If the user wishes to change something for the left frame, they must first select the left-frame to get access to it's toolbars (the grid display button sections will be replaced by the toolbars of the left grid display).
Synchronizing Frames
The dashboard panel can synchronize the times or map extents of its frames.
Map Extent Synchronization
The 
synchronize button in the top toolbar controls whether the map extents of the frames should be synchronized. When this button is on, changing the zoom level in one of the frames will also update the zoom level in the other frames.
This option works best if all frames are roughly the same size. It may also be wise to turn this option off while manually rearranging frames, since changing the frame sizes will cause constant updates of the zoom level which are then propagated to the other frames, causing a lot of resources used to repaint the maps.
Time Slider Synchronization
The synchronize button in the top toolbar controls whether the times of the frames should be synchronized. When this button is on, changing the selected time on the time slider, or starting the animation through the play button, will also update the times of the other frames. This allows the user to quickly compare the same time steps in different plots.
User-defined vs. Predefined Dashboard Displays
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While it is possible for users to create and customize their own dashboards, it can also be advisable to provide several predefined dashboards through the configuration so users don't have to construct common dashboards themselves. While user-defined dashboards are stored in the user settings, predefined dashboards are configured through a dashboards.ini file, which is a root config file.
Predefined dashboards will be shown in a separate section of the dashboards menu than user-defined dashboards. In the example below there is one predefined dashboard present in the system "BE Creation", and one user-defined dashboard called "My Custom Dashboard".
Section 1 contains the predefined dashboard(s) and section two the user-defined dashboard(s).
There are several differences in the behavior of user-defined dashboards vs predefined dashboards:
| user-defined | predefined | |
|---|---|---|
| sharing | user specific, can't be shared between users | shared between all users and the same for all users |
| creator | created by a user | created / configured by a configurator |
| customization | can be customized by the user, i.e., frames can be added / removed, frame titles can be changed, can be deleted | can not be customized, i.e., no new frames can be added, if a frame is closed the change won't persist when reopening the dashboard, frame titles can't be changed |
| storage | stored in the user_settings.ini file | stored in the dashboards.ini file |
Configuring a Predefined Dashboard
To configure a predefined dashboard, simply construct the dashboard you wish to make as a user-defined dashboard in a stand-alone. Once you are satisfied with the contents of the dashboard, you can use the debug menu (F12) of the dashboard panel, to turn the user-defined dashboard you constructed into a predefined dashboard. This will mean FEWS will automatically move the information stored for that dashboard from the user_settings.ini file to the dashboards.ini file. A new dashboards.ini file will be created if there is none, or the information will be added if there already is a dashboards.ini file present. FEWS will automatically restart, and after this restart the dashboard will now be included in the predefined dashboards section instead of the user-defined dashboards section.
If a configurator wished to make changed to a predefined dashboard, they can use a standalone environment and use the debug menu (F12) of the dashboard panel to turn the predefined dashboard back into a user-defined dashboard. This will perform the reverse action, moving the dashboard settings back from the dashboards.ini into the user_settings.ini. After the automatic restart, changes to the dashboard can be made. Once satisfied, the debug menu can be used to turn the now user-defined dashboard back into a predefined dashboard.
Note that aside from the logical settings such as the frames and the dashboard title, the dashboard settings stored in the ini-files also include the following:
- the way the frames are arranged on the desktop
- the button status of the grid display toolbars for each frame
- the status of the synchronization buttons
It is advisable to always check if the dashboard looks as you want it to look when (re)-opening it, before turning it into a predefined dashboard.
It is possible to assign a permission to predefined dashboards to control which users will be able to access it through the Explorer.xml. More information on this is found at Configuration Guide > System Configuration > FEWS Explorer > Predefined Dashboards
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