Introduction

The XER schedule toolkit provides a range of configurable charts and data reports within the dashboard creator function. This video will show you how to use the dashboard creator tools to set up and share dashboards with other toolkit users.

As with all toolkit features use the open and close sliders to select the projects you want to analyse within the dashboard. We can set up dashboards right here on the home page; however, we will use the dashboard creator to take advantage of the whole screen which can be accessed via the “reports and analysis” menu.

Creating a chart

A blank chart template is created by default, so go ahead and click on the add chart button. It is not the intention of this video to explain the meaning or merits of particular charts, but rather to demonstrate how to configure the data in appearance. Here we will select to include a schedule quality summary chart and select the four checks that relate to miss intro inadequate activity relationships.

Chart configuration

Regardless of the chart type we are looking at, a configuration menu can be accessed by hovering the mouse over the hamburger menu in the top left of the chart window. Each chart can be filtered independently from one another in the same way we filter other functions such as the schedule viewer, filtering tasks is covered in a separate video and so for this demonstration we will analyse all tasks in the open project. We can export any dashboard chart along with the underlying data to standard excel workbook, the specifics of individual charts reports and their respective excel outputs is not covered.

Here we can save and share individual chart templates the process is essentially the same as saving and sharing an entire dashboard which is demonstrated later in this video. Raise the chart settings form, which contains various options that are specific to the type of chart selected, in this instance we are able to change the type of display and the standard target to a full list.

Now drag the bottom and right edges of the chart to resize and use the mouse to drag and drop to the desired position. To add a new chart, use the left-hand menu, and follow the same steps to set up the entire dashboard. Once the dashboard has been configured, we can save it as a dashboard template by clicking manage dashboards on the left-hand menu, give the dashboard a relevant name and click the save button.

To share the save dashboard with other toolkit users, again, select a manage dashboard this time click to share and select the share teams that you want to have access.