A dashboard is a web page used to visualize current or recent data about your monitored devices. To view longer-term historical data you can set up custom reports.

Once you have created a dashboard you will want to save or bookmark the unique URL, as you can then open the dashboard from anywhere without having to log in to the system. Thus, you could share the URL with anyone on the Internet who need access to the dashboard without giving them edit permissions.

There are two types of dashboards: panels and report cards. A panel is designed to show you recent data about your monitored devices from a number of different perspectives using multiple widgets.  A report card is designed to give you a more diagnostic view of your devices with the ability to drill down into the information by clicking on a specific item.

To navigate to dashboards, from the left sidebar menu select Reports, and select Shareable Panels or Shareable Report Cards depending on your goals.

Shareable Panels

A Shareable Panel is an individual dashboard that displays one or more widgets to visualize recent data and can be shared with anybody using its unique URL. Clicking on the Panels section will expand to display all existing panels, the number of widgets on each panel, the status of the panel (active or disabled), and the actions you can perform on each panel.

Report Cards

Website monitoring Report Cards provide live-feed reports of a monitored device or a group of devices. Report Cards can be accessed from outside of the Dotcom-Monitor service via a unique URL. A report card provides a summary of the device(s), the current status of the device(s), as well as the statistics of the device(s) performance and uptime. You can choose between a Last Check By Location Report Card and a Device Status Report Card.

Auto-reload for all Report Cards is set to 3 minutes.

Report Cards can be placed in a public area of a website, in order to demonstrate to end users that a website receives monitoring by an independent third party. Report Cards demonstrate the reliability of a website and the website’s service uptime and performance. As a result, end users are assured that the website is credible and reliable.

Dashboard Actions

To get access to the dashboard Actions menu, hover over a dashboard in the list and click the Show Actions button in the corresponding line.

Clicking a dashboard line in the list will take you to the dashboard editor.

The following actions are available depending on a dashboard type:

  • Edit: Opens the dashboard editor.
  • Preview: Opens the dashboard in a read-only view in a new browser window.
  • Copy URL: Copies the URL for a selected dashboard to the clipboard. This URL can be shared with anyone on the Internet, even if they do not have a Dotcom-Monitor account. You can also restrict access to the dashboard in the dashboard settings, so only users of the current Dotcom-Monitor account can open the dashboard with the link.
  • Status Message: Use to add and manage comments on the report card. See the guidelines in the Configuring Report Card Comments section.
  • Reset GUID: Use to revoke access to a particular dashboard by changing the GUID in the URL. Users with the URL that was previously shared will not be able to access the dashboard anymore.
  • Delete: Deletes the dashboard from the system.

Configuring Report Card Comments

In some cases, you may want to notify end users of your Dotcom-Monitor Shareable Report Cards about specific changes in a report card status or provide other information on the report card. To do this, you can create and add a custom message with descriptive comments to the report card.

To add a message on a report card:

  1. Go to the Shareable Report Cards list and click the Show Actions button in the corresponding report card line.
  2. In the menu, select Status Message.
  3. In the Status Message window, click the Enabled toggle and enter the comment you want to be posted on the report card. Note that you can hide the message on the report with the Enabled toggle at any time.
  4. Select a message type by clicking the corresponding type button under the input field. For example, if you want to warn end users that the report card is under maintenance, select Warning.
  5. Check the message in the preview area and click Save Changes to add the comment to the report card.