Managing & Customizing Your Dashboard (Totara)

This article demonstrates how to manage and customize your dashboard on your Learn Totara site.

TOPICS

Introduction to Dashboards
Create a Dashboard
Manage Dashboards
Customize a Dashboard
Using Multiple Dashboards

Introduction to Dashboards

Dashboards allow content to be displayed on selected user's Home page. Dashboards are able to be assigned to audiences and users can select and customize their assigned dashboards if allowed.

An example dashboard.

The default home page is initially set to the Totara dashboard for all logged in users on a new site. To change this, from the Administration menu go to Appearance > Navigation > Default home page > Totara dashboard.

The Totara dashboard is also referred to as the My Learning page and can be accessed by clicking on the Dashboard tab. It contains the Current learning block, which is a really useful way for learners to see their progress and any outstanding learning.

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Create a Dashboard

Select Site administration > Advanced features > Enable Totara Dashboard > Show.
Select Site Administration > Appearance > Dashboards.
Click Create dashboard.

Add the following information:
- Name: Description of dashboard so assigned users know the audience the dashboard is aimed at.
- Locked: Assigned users will not be able to customize their dashboard when locked, unlocking shows customization made to user's dashboard and allows further customizing.
Choose from Assigned audiences - Availability: Available to no users, Available to all logged in users, Available only to the following audiences.
Select Assign new audiences.
Select Save changes.

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Manage Dashboards

Select Site Administration > Appearance > Dashboards to view all dashboards.

Select the Edit (cog) icon to change the settings of existing dashboards.
Select Publish/Unpublish icon to change the dashboard visibility.
Select the arrow icon to change the order of dashboards.
- When a user is assigned to more than one dashboard the dashboard that is higher up in the order is displayed.
Select Clone dashboard (two documents) icon to make a copy of the dashboard including the blocks that have been added to it and any audience assignments.
Select Reset dashboard for all users resets the selected dashboard to the original layout for all assigned users.

NOTE NOTE

In order to edit dashboard blocks users require the following capabilities. Manage dashboard (totara/dashboard:manage) allows the user to manage the dashboard and Manage dashboard blocks (totara/dashboard:manageblocks) allows the user to manage blocks on dashboards. Additionally, users require the capability to configure system templates for My Learning pages (moodle/my:configsyspages).

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Customize a Dashboard

Users that have been assigned to a dashboard and have the dashboard unlocked are able to customize the dashboard.

Select Home menu to display the dashboards assigned.
Select the dashboard you want to customize.
Select Customize dashboard.
Select the Add a Block block.
Select the Block from the drop down list you wish to display on the dashboard.
Drag the Block to the position required on the page.
Select theActions icon on the Block to display required content in the block.
Select Stop customizing dashboard when you have finished adding blocks.

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To find out more about Blocks see Managing Blocks.
If you need to go back to the original dashboard before customizing select the Reset dashboard to default button.

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Using Multiple Dashboards

In Totara you can also set up multiple dashboards to suit your requirements and provide different users with different navigation options.

For example, you may want to create separate dashboards for the important roles in your system (such as Learners, Trainers and Site Administrators), providing easy access to important information and features. Learners might benefit from blocks showing their recent learning, course overviews and upcoming seminars, while Site Administrators require a different set of blocks.

Alternatively, you could create audience-specific dashboards, highlighting new learning relevant to that audience and signposting to useful resources, forums and more. For example, a separate dashboard could provide a space to collate information and training for your organization's first aiders, which they could access in addition to their role-based dashboards.

Links to dashboards using Features links blocks.

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You can use the Featured links block to allow Learners to quickly navigate between their different dashboards. You can draw attention to other dashboards (or other useful links) using large images, rotating images, or banners to point your users in the right direction.

There is also a Dashboards block that can be used to allow users to navigate between their various dashboards if the user has more than one assigned dashboard.

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