In this lesson we will cover:
– Overview and Benefits
– Creating your Dashboards
– Creating Widgets
– Dashboard Configuration
Overview and Benefits
Ticket Dashboards are an alternative way to view your ticket lists and various other important areas of Halo, such as custom tables and in-depth details of tickets. Ticket dashboards are like global dashboards but filter data to be relevant to the specific ticket that is being viewed, and come with a number of additional widget types exclusive to Ticket dashboards.
With some relatively simple setup, you can customise your Ticket page from the boring old structure to include any details you like, including charts, report data, and other tickets. All the previously available information can be viewed too, but placed wherever you like on the screen, so that the format best suits your needs!
You can go from this…
Fig 1. Ticket before a ticket dashboard
To this.
Fig 2. Ticket dashboard added
You may want to display all child tickets, and you can then export the ticket list from a ticket dashboard to a CSV:
Fig 3. Export to CSV on ticket list
If you and your team find yourself flicking through tabs all the time, and looking for child tickets and related assets etc, then consolidating all this information into one tab may speed up your processing time on tickets. Although not included on the above example, you could easily include Report Charts and other performance metrics to encourage work. I personally find that having the newly added AI Insights alongside the actual ticket description is an interesting comparison between the two pieces of information. Alternatively, you may choose to just have the insights on their own, with the other bits of handy information alongside them, without even looking at the original ticket's details.
The benefit is that you can streamline the information down to whatever you deem important to see, however best suits you and your business' needs.
Creating your Dashboards
To get started, you will need to navigate to the Configuration page for Custom Objects, then to Custom Tabs (Configuration > Custom Objects > Custom Tabs). Here, whilst under the 'Tickets' entity (top left), you can create a new Tab. This new Tab will need the Type: Dashboard.
Fig 4. Ticket Entity in Configuration for Custom Tabs
Fig 5. Selecting Type as Dashboard when creating a Custom Tab
Once that is selected, you will be able to configure the Dashboard via the "Configure Dashboard" button. That will take you to the configuration screen for that Dashboard. You will be initially prompted for a Ticket ID. This ticket will be used for the example data while you are building your Dashboard, and can be changed anytime after by clicking "Preview a Ticket" at the top of the screen.
Fig 6. Configure Dashboard button
Fig 7. Preview a Ticket button on a dashboard
Fig 8. Preview a Ticket from Ticket ID
Now that we have a Ticket ID set, we can start to create Widgets. These are created with the "Add Widget" button, and will present a new menu for configuring this new Widget.
Fig 9. Add Widget button when editing a dashboard
Fig 10. Add Widget configuration
Creating Widgets
Type
There are four main categorisations of widget types that we can choose between: Reports, Tickets, Ticket Details, or Custom HTML. These will each have different sub-fields to populate in order to decide which Data is displayed, and how it's displayed.
- Reports: This includes the types; Data, Chart and Counter.
- Report Data will display the raw output of the selected report, i.e. the rows and columns generated by the query. This data, as well as the rest, will be inherited from the time-period the report is set to.
- Report Chart will display any configured chart on the selected report. The chart must be customised on the report itself.
- Report Counter will display a single number relating to the chosen metric on the selected report. This can be a count of rows, or an average or total of the values in a selected column. The counter can be allocated a "Drill down report override", which will produce a different report's data when the widget is clicked. A colour can also be chosen for the number.
- Tickets: This includes the types; List, Calendar, Kanban, and Gannt.
Widgets of this type will only be visible to Agents, as the other tickets may contain sensitive information that End-Users would otherwise not have access to. The types correspond to the view in which the tickets are presented, and these can all be filtered to Areas, particular Views, and Filter Profiles. They also all have the ability to filter the tickets shown to either that ticket's children, any of its related tickets, or any tickets at all. When using Ticket List, a limit can be placed on how many results show up. - Ticket Details: This includes the types; Ticket progress/history, Attachments, Single field, Group of fields, Workflow progress, SLA information, and Activity Feed.
These types can all be used to display different aspects of the ticket's details. The 'Group of fields' type will require that particular Field Group to be present on the ticket's Type. The rest are relatively self-explanatory, with the distinction between 'Ticket progress/history' and 'Activity Feed' being that the latter appears as a read-only view of the 'All Actions' version of the usual tickets' "Progress" tab, whereas the other's filters can be configured live, akin to the "Progress" tab beforehand. - Custom HTML: This type of widget can contain any HTML that you would like, which can in-turn contain any $ variables you need to use. For example, these can provide Ticket or Agent specific information, formatted however you like (as long as you can write the HTML to do so!).
Appearance
The selection here will determine how the Widget appears in the live Dashboard.
- Default appearance: The content of this Widget will be in the box of your configured size, and permanently bordered with a thin lined, rounded box.
- No border: The content of this Widget will be displayed as above, however there will be no outline at all.
- No border with hover: The content of this Widget will be displayed as above (No border), however an outline will appear once the Widget is hovered with the cursor. This is recommended for cases where one might scroll data, but still desire a borderless look when not doing so.
Custom CSS
CSS code can be entered here to customise your widgets. This is a universal language, and guides can be found for this on the internet. You can apply CSS to a particular Widget by using the selector "#widget-10 .widget" (for Widget 10). The Widget number can be seen at the bottom left of each Widget when in Edit mode (below highlighted in blue)
Other Widget Configuration
Once saved, these Widgets can then be moved around the Layout pane by dragging them into place. They can be resized by dragging the small corner icon in the bottom right of each Widget.
Should you want to remove a Widget, there will be a small bin / trash can icon on the top right of each Widget which you can use to delete them. It should be noted that content of the widget may obscure this button, however you will still be able to select it through the image, as in edit mode, the widget content is read-only.
Likewise, if you would like to edit an already created Widget, a paper and pencil icon will be alongside the bin/trash can which can be used to re-configure the Widget. Again, this may be obscured in edit mode but it is still functional.
Fig 11. Editing a Widget
Dashboard Configuration
Once you are happy with your Widget configuration, save the Dashboard.
The other options at the top of the Dashboard configuration screen allow you to Import or Export this Dashboard via a .JSON file. This is useful for sharing Dashboard layouts between other instances, and allows you to play around in a UAT or trial without negative repercussions before exporting it to your production instance to be used once you're happy with it. Should you want to clone a Dashboard, this is also a way to do that (export it then import it back in again).
Fig 12. Button options when editing a ticket dashboard
There are also the options for the Layout sizes when you are configuring the Layout. This will determine the size of the menu that this tab will try to fit. Auto is recommended for most, however you may want to consider the smaller sizes should you be using these dashboards on the mobile application.
Fig 13. Dashboard Layout options
The Sequence value on the Custom Tab setup will determine the position of this Dashboard tab in lists, with higher values being towards the bottom.
Fig 14. Sequence on the Custom Tab setup
If you would like the Dashboard tab to appear at the opening of a Ticket, then head to Ticket Types in the configuration and then to the Allowed Values tab.
Here, you must ensure your new Tab is allowed at the bottom of this list. If so, navigate to the Layout tab, and choose a Custom layout. This will present a list of all your current tabs. A lot of these are rarely used, since they appear dynamically when they are needed and populated, however the top to bottom order of them is what will determine the left to right order of Tabs on Tickets, should they appear at all.
For the Dashboard to display upon opening, it must be placed at the top (the left) of the list. You can also choose to hide tabs here, I would suggest this is done for tabs that already appear in the dashboard as Widgets.
Fig 15. Adding Dashboard to the Ticket Type Field List
The Finished Product
Fig 16. Dashboard finished example
