# Create a dashboard

Set up a Tooling Metrics dashboard with widgets that show the metrics relevant to your role.

Source: https://support.toolingmetrics.com/en/analytics/guides/create-dashboard/
Updated: 2026-10-29

**Prerequisites:** Lifecycle data exists to display — items, movements, or cost postings. A brand-new organization shows empty widgets until then.

**Required permission:** Reports → Dashboards — User or above. Admins can edit any dashboard; Managers and Users only the dashboards they created.

## Start a dashboard

1. In the sidebar, click **Reports → Dashboards**.
1. Click **New**. This opens the template gallery.
1. Pick a starting point:
   - Click **Blank Dashboard** to start from nothing — enter a **Name** (3–64 characters) and click **Create**. You land on your new, empty dashboard.
   - Click an existing template card to duplicate it into a dashboard you own. The copy keeps every widget's settings except each widget's **Source Name** (the specific record a Metric widget points to), which resets and needs to be picked again.

## Add widgets

1. On the dashboard, click **Add Widget**.
1. On the **Display** tab, set the widget's **Title**, **Size**, **Type** (Metric, Chart, or Table), and — if Type is Chart — **Chart Type**.
1. On the **Data** tab, choose the **Source Type** and configure its **Columns**. On the **Filters** tab, narrow the data if needed.
1. Click **Create**. The widget is saved immediately and appears on the dashboard.

See [Configure a widget](https://support.toolingmetrics.com/en/analytics/guides/configure-widget/) for the full walkthrough of the Data and Filters tabs.

## Arrange widgets

Widgets lay out automatically in a grid, in the order set by each widget's **Order** field; a widget's **Size** (XS–XXL) controls how many grid columns it spans on wider screens. There's no drag-and-drop repositioning — to reorder or resize a widget, open its settings and change **Order** or **Size**.

## Notes

- A dashboard can hold any number of widgets. For readability, keep related questions on the same dashboard.
- There's no separate publish step. Whether other people in your organization see your dashboard in the Dashboards list depends on their Analytics permission role, not a setting you control per dashboard — see [How dashboards and widgets work](https://support.toolingmetrics.com/en/analytics/overview/dashboards-and-widgets/).
- **Section**, **Template**, and **Picture** only appear on the dashboard form for site admins; everyone else sets just the **Name**.