CalAmp K-12 Knowledge Base

Dashboards provide key information about your fleet's overall performance in an at-a-glance view you can tailor to your individual needs.

CalAmp K-12 provides some Dashboards out-of-the-box, including one with an overhead look at your hardware's health (called Hardware), one with Comparative Analysis data (called CA), and one with Here Comes the Bus information (called HCTB). To see how to view the Dashboards and for details about all of the prebuilt ones, go to Viewing a Dashboard. More will be added in the future as well, such as Mileage, Idle, and Speeding. Look for those in an upcoming release!

This article covers how you can create a personalized Dashboard with only the data you want to see, as follows:

Note: Your user role must have Can Edit privileges for the Dashboards screen in order for you to be able to create your own Dashboard; if you don't have those, contact your organization's CalAmp K-12 administrator to see if your role can be adjusted.

Plan what type of data you want to see on your Dashboard and how you want it to appear, specifically. For example, if you want to see the alerts for all the vehicles in your fleet for last week, separated by primary group and in ascending order by alert name, plan for that, in written form, if needed.
Choose a CalAmp K-12 report (or reports) and configure it with the exact data and layout you want and then save the report with a name that will be easy to find in later steps.
Note: If you need a detailed guide to the most-often-used reports, go to A Detailed Guide to the Popular and Recommended Reports; for general information about all CalAmp K-12's reports, check out What Standard Reports Are Available?.

For other guidance, see Running a Report, Customizing a Report's Layout, and Saving a Report.

You'll need to personalize the layout of the report if you want the data to be organized by a certain column in ascending order, as shown in Customizing a Report's Layout. Make certain that you make your layout the default layout view before you save the report.
Click >> Dashboards.

The Dashboards screen will appear.
Click at the top right of the screen.

The Create Dashboard window will appear.

The cursor will already be in the Name field.
Type a name for your Dashboard that will differentiate it from other Dashboards, such as My Alerts Dashboard.
Click the Start From drop-down arrow and select Blank Dashboard to create an entirely new Dashboard.
Note: Alternatively, you can choose one of the prebuilt Dashboards from the Start From drop-down list to copy all its tiles and tweak them.
Click the Category drop-down arrow and select how you would like to categorize this Dashboard. For example, for one with Idle data, you'd select Core; for one with Planned vs. Actual data, you'd select Comparative Analysis.
Click the Viewable drop-down arrow and select who will be able to see your Dashboard:
- Private - Only Me: The Dashboard will be visible to only you.
- Public - All Users: The Dashboard will be able to be viewed by anyone in your organization whose role has the Can View privilege for the Dashboards screen.
In the Choose Layout area, select one of the icons that depicts how your data will be displayed; for example, if you choose the icon with three columns, you can add the widgets you want to three columns of identical width.
Note: You can change the layout you select later if you don't like the way it looks.
Click Create Dashboard.

A blank version of your chosen layout will appear.
Click the first blank tile.

The Select Tile Type window will appear.
Click Add Tile to the right of the first view type you'd like for your data, choosing from these available options:
- Grid: Displays the data numerically in columns and rows.
- Radial Gauge: Displays the data on a radial scale, with a single value of your data set per arc.
- Line Gauge: Displays the data on a linear scale, with a single value of your data set per line.
- Bar Chart: Displays related sets of values along horizontal rectangular bars whose size represents the numbers, with data point markers enabling you to compare records.
- Column Chart: The same as the bar chart, except that the data is displayed vertically.
- Line Chart: Displays the values as a series of data markers on top of straight lines, with a pathline connecting each data point that exhibits the ups and downs.
- Bubble Chart: Similar to a line chart in that it shows a series of data markers on top of straight lines, but different in that the data points are bubbles indicating the size of the information at that point.
- Bullet Chart: Similar to a line gauge, this displays the data on a linear scale but includes both an actual value and a target value.
- Basic Pie Chart: Displays each value of an overall data set as a piece of a circle, representing its percentage of the whole.
- Donut Chart: Similar to the basic pie chart, but this displays each value of the overall data set as a piece of a donut instead of a circle, with each section representing its percentage of the whole.
- Simple Value: Displays just a value.
  
  After you click Add Tile, the Tile Properties window will appear.
In the Tile Name field, type a name for the widget, such as Last Week's Alerts.
In the Select Saved Report grid, click the name of the report you customized and saved for use in your Dashboard.
Click Continue.

The Define Tile Layout window will appear, with your chosen tile type selected.
Optionally, you could choose a different widget type.

In the Component Data and Formatting areas, you will see drop-down lists to specify what data you would like where (such as the type of values to show along the x-axis [horizontally]).
Specify all the necessary parameters under Component Data and Formatting.

Here are the line chart parameters and one example of how you could set them for an Idling by Group - Last Week tile (based on a saved Idle Summary by Group report run with a quick range of Last Week):
1. Click the X-axis drop-down arrow and select Group.
  
  A Group By field will appear, which refers to how you would like the horizontal values (the x-axis) grouped. (For example, if you selected Date for your x-axis, you would have options to group the data by date, by year, or by year and month.)
2. Leave None selected for the Group By field.
3. Click the Field drop-down arrow (under Series) and select Idle Time; these options correspond to the column headings in the saved base report, so for this example, the total idle time for each group will make up the pathline of values that goes across the line chart.
4. Leave Stacked under Formatting deselected. ( means selected, and deselected.)
  
  You would select Stacked if the chart displayed multiple values for a single entity and you wanted to see them all on one line. For example, if the tile were showing Early, On Time, and Late values for buses arriving at a school, Stacked would display the three different results for each school in one line but in separate color segments, whereas not stacked would show them as three separate value lines.
5. Click Show Trendline to select it.
  
  A Trendline Type drop-down list will appear.
6. Leave Trendline Type set to its default value, Average Y.
  
  This will make a baseline appear across the width of the tile, representing the average idle time per group.
7. Click Show Points to select it.
  
  This will place circles along the value pathline, showing each group's total idle time in hours, minutes, and seconds.
8. Leave Legend set to None.
  
  Legend places a table of symbols explaining what the icons/values mean at the spot you select (such as Bottom for the lowest part of the tile), which is more useful for tile types like a pie chart.
9. Click the Y-axis Label Format drop-down arrow and select Seconds to Time.
  
  This will display hours, minutes, and seconds values along the y-axis to compare the idle time results against. If you left Y-axis Label Format set to None, the y-axis values would be displayed at whatever the default is for the data you are representing. In this example, None would have the y-axis show the idle time in seconds.
Click Save Tile.

The widget will appear in the first layout area on your Dashboard.
If you have more tile areas to fill with widgets, click the second tile and repeat steps 12 through 18.
Note: If you decide at this point that you don't like the look of the layout you originally selected, follow these steps:
1. Click at the top right of your Dashboard.
  
  The Dashboard Settings dialog box will appear.
2. In the Choose Layout area, click a different layout type you would prefer.
3. Click Save Settings.
If you have a third tile, click it and repeat steps 12 through 18 again.
You can click at the top right of your Dashboard to add another tile, as many times as needed (and repeat steps 12 through 18 again).

Your Dashboard will show the widgets you have added.

Note: If you created the tile example in the substeps of step 17 (with a layout of just one column), your results would look like this:
If you'd like the data refreshed automatically for you before you need to see it in the future, click Schedule Refresh at the top left.

The Schedule Refresh window will appear.
Select the Frequency radio button for how often you'd like the data to be refreshed (every day, week, or month).
Note: For the Daily option, you can also specify if you want the refresh performed just every weekday or truly every day.
Click the Start calendar picker and select the date you'd like the automatic refreshing to begin.
Optionally, you can set an End date as well.
Click the Preferred Start Time time picker and select the time of day you'd like the refresh done.
Note: If you left the default selection of today's date as the Start day, be careful to pick a time later in the day than now. If you want the Dashboard to be refreshed at 3:00 a.m., for example, select a Start date of tomorrow (or later).
Click Save Schedule.

The next time your refresh will be performed will appear to the right of the Refresh Now button.
You can click Refresh Now any time to refresh the data on your Dashboard immediately.
If you don't like the placement of a widget, you can click and drag it to another location.
You can click at the top right to export the Dashboard to a PDF.
To view a Dashboard, follow the steps in the article Viewing a Dashboard.

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Creating a Custom Dashboard

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