Examine the Azure IoT Central dashboard page for administrators

Completed

In IoT Central, dashboards are used primarily to view and assess the property, telemetry, and state information of devices.

Administrators create a default organization dashboard using either an industry focused application template or the custom application template when they create an Azure IoT Central application. If your application was created from one of the industry focused templates, your application will have a pre-defined organization dashboard to start. If your application was created from the custom application template, your default organization dashboard will display a blank layout that you can customize yourself.

As an administrator, you can create more organization dashboards that are associated with a specific organization. An organization dashboard is only visible to users who have access to the organization the dashboard is associated with.

Note

Only users in a role that has organization dashboard permissions can create, edit, and delete organization dashboards. All users can create personal dashboards, visible only to themselves. Users can switch between organization and personal dashboards.

In addition to configuring dashboards, IoT Central administrators are often responsible for configuring UI customizations and managing security considerations. Application settings that affect security include settings for users, roles, and organizations (device authentication is normally configured by the solution builder or specified by the device developer). You can find detailed information about administering your IoT Central application in the following resources:

Create a dashboard

Open your Dashboards page from the left pane of the IoT Central application. To create a new dashboard from scratch, select Go to dashboard catalog > + New. To create a new dashboard by copying the current dashboard, select Copy. In the Create dashboard or Duplicate dashboard panel, give your dashboard a name and select either Organization or Personal as the dashboard type. If you're creating an organization dashboard, choose the organization the dashboard is associated with. An organization dashboard and its tiles only show the devices that are visible to the organization and any of its suborganizations.

Add tiles to a dashboard

If you're in a role with the appropriate permissions, you can customize an organization dashboard. All users can customize personal dashboards.

Open your Dashboard page from the left pane of the IoT Central application. To begin customizing the dashboard, select Edit at the top-left of the Dashboard page. Selecting Edit opens the dashboard in edit mode where you add, customize, and remove tiles in order to customize the dashboard. Selecting either New dashboard or Copy will also open a dashboard in edit mode.

You have two initial options when preparing to add a tile to your dashboard, Start with a visual and Start with a device.

For example, to add a line chart tile to track telemetry values reported by one or more devices over time:

  1. Select Start with a visual, Line chart, and then Add tile, or just drag the tile onto the canvas.

  2. To edit the tile, select its pencil icon. Enter a Title and select a Device group. In the Devices list, select the devices to show on the tile.

  3. After you select all the devices to show on the tile, select Update.

  4. After you finish adding and customizing tiles on the dashboard, select Save.

    Screenshot that shows how to add a tile to the dashboard in the IoT Central application.

Edit tiles

To edit a tile on the dashboard, first select Edit at the top left of the page, which will open edit mode for the dashboard and all its tiles. This provides you with the following options:

  • The square icon lets you resize the tile.
  • The pencil icon lets you edit the visualization. For example, for a line chart you can choose to show the legend and axes and choose the time range to plot.
  • The copy icon lets you create a duplicate of the tile.

Tile types

The following table describes the types of tiles that you can add to a dashboard:

Tile

Description

KPI

KPI tiles display aggregate telemetry values for one or more devices over a time period. For example, you can use them to show the maximum temperature and pressure reached for one or more devices during the past hour.

Last known value

Last known value tiles display the latest telemetry values for one or more devices. For example, you can use this tile to display the most recent temperature, pressure, and humidity values for one or more devices.

Line chart

Line chart tiles plot one or more aggregate telemetry values for one or more devices over a time period. For example, you can display a line chart to plot the average temperature and pressure of one or more devices during the past hour.

Bar chart

Bar chart tiles plot one or more aggregate telemetry values for one or more devices over a time period. For example, you can display a bar chart to show the average temperature and pressure of one or more devices during the past hour.

Pie chart

Pie chart tiles display one or more aggregate telemetry values for one or more devices over a time period.

Heat map

Heat map tiles display information, represented in colors, about one or more devices.

Event history

Event history tiles display the events for a device over a time period. For example, you can use them to show all the valve open and valve close events for one or more devices during the past hour.

State history

State history tiles list and display status changes for state telemetry.

Event chart

Event chart tiles display telemetry events for one or more devices over a time period. For example, you can use this tile to display properties like the temperature changes for a device.

State chart

State chart tiles plot changes for one or more devices over a time period. For example, you can use this tile to display properties like the temperature changes for a device.

Property

Property tiles display the current values for properties and cloud properties for one or more devices. For example, you can use this tile to display device properties like the manufacturer or firmware version.

Map (property)

Map tiles that display the location of one or more devices on a map.

Map (telemetry)

Map tiles that display the location of one or more devices on a map. You can also display up to 100 points of a device's location history. For example, you can display a sampled route of where a device has been in the past week.

Image

Image tiles display a custom image and can be clickable. The URL can be a relative link to another page in the application or an absolute link to an external site.

Label

Label tiles display custom text on a dashboard. You can choose the size of the text. Use a label tile to add relevant information to the dashboard such descriptions, contact details, or Help.

Markdown

Markdown tiles are clickable tiles that display a heading and description text formatted in Markdown. The URL can be a relative link to another page in the application or an absolute link to an external site.

External content

External content tiles allow you to load content from an external source.

Number of devices

Number of devices tiles display the number of devices in a device group.

Data explorer query

Data explorer query tiles display a saved data explorer query.

For more information about creating and customizing dashboards, see: Create and manage dashboards