Introduction

Dashboards have been added to the Reporting module in the PVX web app to enable you to display critical, up-to-date metrics from your warehouse management system (WMS) in a graphical format that can be easily understood by your colleagues, enhancing communications within your business about the performance of the warehouse operation.

A dashboard can consist of one or more components. A component is typically a graphical representation of data such as a bar chart. Each component is created from selected data in an existing report. A set of system dashboards has been created to display data commonly requested by users. You can also create new dashboards.

This article describes how to view dashboards and share them with your colleagues, and how to create and edit your own custom dashboards.

Paid Feature: Dashboards is a chargeable feature. You need to raise a ticket with the PVX helpdesk to have this option enabled on your account.

Viewing dashboards

Dashboards are accessed through the Reporting module, in a tab that is laid out in a similar way to the Reports tab. The Dashboards menu on the left side of the tab lists all dashboards that you've created under My Dashboards. You can edit and delete these dashboards. System Dashboards have been created to show metrics commonly requested by clients. These are read-only; they cannot be edited or deleted.

The area on the right of the tab is used for viewing and editing the layouts of dashboards.

Click a dashboard from the System Dashboards list. You can search for a dashboard by entering keywords from the title in the Search for dashboard box at the top of the Dashboards menu. The dashboard layout is displayed. This shows the components that are present on the dashboard. Hover the mouse pointer over a component to see its name.
Click the edit icon () for a component in the dashboard. The icon appears if you hover the mouse pointer over the component. This will display the Edit component screen. For system dashboards, this screen will be read-only.
The Edit component screen is used to define all aspects of the component, from the report on which it is based to the component type (e.g., chart, counter), and the data that should be displayed on it.
Click View dashboard to display the dashboard populated with live data from your WMS in a new tab of your Internet browser. It may take a few minutes to compile a dashboard depending on the volume of data it contains. The reports on which the components are based are automatically regenerated on a regular basis, at which time the dashboard will automatically refresh to show the up-to-date data. The time at which the current displayed data were produced and when the next update will occur are shown in the top right corner of the dashboard.

Note: You can open more than one dashboard at once, up to a limit (at which point a warning message will be displayed).

System dashboards

The table below lists the dashboards that are available for you to use directly.

Name	What is displayed
Current sales	Sales orders by channel, status and service type, how they are split between single- and multi-item orders, and average number of items per order.
Sales history	Top revenue items for the day so far.
Despatched	Quantities of sales orders and items despatched today in each hour and by each user, and quantity of packages despatched by service type during the day so far.
General snapshot	Quantity of items in stock by location use type, and largest accepted variances in stock takes by volume and value of items.
Warehouse Manager	Activity of current users, quantity of items picked by current users today, and number of remaining items and actions.
Receive	Quantity of items received today not on purchase orders.
Returns	Quantity of items returned in last 7 days, analysed by volume, reason and return condition (state).

Creating custom dashboards

You can create a completely new custom dashboard based on any component of any report listed in the My Reports and Shared Reports sections of the Report tab in PVX. If you want to use a system report component in your dashboard, you first need to save the system report into My Reports as described in the article on reports.

There are very few restrictions applied by PVX when you are creating dashboards. You can select almost any combination of data fields to use in the dashboard. This means that careful thought is required when setting up the dashboard components to ensure you get the desired results. You should be aware of the following points:

A maximum of 9 components can be shown on a single dashboard.
A dashboard component simply takes data from a chart and displays it in graphical form; it cannot perform any summing or counting, therefore components work best when they are based on summary reports.
Take care not to choose the same data field for multiple axes/data series on charts, or the dashboard will display meaningless charts.
It makes sense to group components related to the same area of your WMS on a single dashboard.

Creating and saving a dashboard

Click Add at the top of the dashboards menu. This button will not be active if a dashboard is already loaded in the tab. Click Cancel on the top left of the screen to close the dashboard, at which point you will be able to click the Add button.
In the New dashboard dialog, enter the name of your dashboard.
Select the group name under which you want to store the dashboard from the drop-down list, or enter a new group name. A new group name will only apply to your dashboards.
Click Submit. The dashboard name is displayed under My Dashboards and it is shown in the editing area with a placeholder for a new component (indicated by a cross).

Editing components

Hover the mouse pointer over the new component and then click the edit icon . The Edit component dialog is displayed.
Enter the name of the new component.
Select the report from which you want to extract the data from the list of My Reports and Shared Reports in the Reports tab.
Select the type of component you want to create (pie chart, bar chart, etc.). The remaining sections in the Edit component dialog change to reflect the choice of component type (refer to the table below). Those outlined in red must be selected before you can save the dashboard.
Once you've made the selections needed for your new component, click Confirm at the bottom of the dialog. The component's icon is changed to reflect the type of component you have created.
Click Save dashboard.

Note: The dashboard is not saved when you click Confirm in the Edit component dialog. You must click Save dashboard. This will save all the changes made since the last time the dashboard was saved.

The different components have specific settings in the dashboard:

Component Type	Settings
Line/Column/ Horizontal bar charts	Select the data to be displayed on the horizontal and vertical columns (axes) from all the options available in the report you selected when creating the component. You can enter your own labels for each column (axis); if you leave these blank then the data field name from the report is used. Use the Data series to select a third data item to display on the report.
Pie charts	Define the data slices (usually a category field to display on the chart, such as a country or customer) and the slice size (usually a number field to control the size of each slice) from all the options available in the report you selected when creating the component. You can enter your own labels for each slice; if you leave these blank then the data field name from the report is used. The Data series is not applicable for pie charts.
Counters	This type of chart only displays a single number, so we recommend that you use this for a summary report where single numbers are listed. If an underlying report with multiple rows is chosen, please be aware that the chart will show the value from the first row of the report only; it will not display the total of all the rows.

Adding and arranging components

Once you've edited the first component in your dashboard, click Add component on the top right of the editing screen to create a new placeholder for a component. Then follow the editing process described above to set up the new component.

You can go back and edit a component at any time by hovering the mouse pointer over the component and then clicking . You can also delete a component by hovering over the component and clicking .

Components can be clicked and dragged to change the layout of your dashboard. You can also change the size of each component by clicking and dragging the edges or corners. Remember to consider the type of component and how much data is displayed when choosing its size in the dashboard.

You can check the appearance of your dashboard using live data at any time by clicking View dashboard.

Editing and deleting dashboards

You can edit the components in any of your dashboards by clicking the dashboard in the menu. The components are displayed in the editing screen and can be changed immediately as described above (remember to save the dashboard afterwards).

If you want to change the dashboard name or group, click Edit at the top of the Dashboards menu, make the required changes and click Submit.

To delete a dashboard, click the dashboard in the tab and click Delete at the top of the Dashboards menu.

Troubleshooting dashboards

The Dashboards tab in PVX has been designed to be as flexible as possible, therefore there may be times when a large dashboard loads slowly, or when a user-defined component does not display as expected. If you are having problems with dashboards, please check to see if your issue is covered in the table below before raising a ticket with the helpdesk.

Issue	Possible causes and solutions
Dashboard takes a long time to load	The underlying report contains a large amount of data. Use the Reports tab to edit the report; hide or group columns to summarise the data more concisely, apply limits to include only the top/bottom x records, or split the report up using filters and create a separate component for each part.
Dashboard is not displaying all the data labels	Too many data labels. Consider editing the underlying report as described above.
Blank dashboard seen when View dashboard clicked	Changes have not been saved. The new/updated component will only be visible when you have clicked Confirm in the Edit component dialog AND clicked Save dashboard in the dashboard screen.
After updating components, changes are not seen in dashboard	Changes have not been saved (see above).
Underlying report is updated, but nothing changes in dashboard	The underlying reports are run at regular intervals and dashboards are based on the last execution of the report. If you change your report and re-run the dashboard in between two executions of the report, the dashboard will still use the old report data. Wait for the next round of reports (shown in the top right of the dashboard screen).
Data displayed looks strange	Make sure that charts have different data fields on all columns (axes). If the same data is plotted on more than one axis it produces a strange-looking chart. The Data series is always optional; if the report contains only two columns then leave this blank. If the report contains a large number of values for the selected data field, this can cause problems. Create a summary report for the data you wish to display and base your dashboard on the summary report instead.
Tab displays message 'No data to display for this chart'	One possible cause is that the underlying report has not yet been run, in which case you should wait for the next round of reports. Another possible cause is that the data fields selected for the component are not compatible with the chart type. Try using a different chart type, or consider either using different data fields or creating a different underlying report that summarises the data using the required fields.

PVX licences and sharing dashboards

The dashboards feature in PVX was designed to be used for displaying dashboards on screens in the warehouse, using either extended HDMI cables or Google Cast. We recommend that this is done from an existing user's PC where that user is responsible for maintaining the dashboards in the company's PVX account. Alternatively, you can use a standalone PC to control the dashboard display, but be aware that this will require an additional licence for PVX.

Some clients want to allow different users to view shared dashboards at their workstations. This option is not explicitly supported by PVX. However, one work-around is to create a ‘reporting user’ account, to which all users can log in to view the dashboards saved to that account. If users log out of their existing user account and into the reporting account to view a dashboard, this will not impact their licence usage. It is also possible to use different browsers to log in to both accounts at the same time but be aware that this will use two licenses.