08.07 Customizing a Dashboard Layout

Requires: Customization Extra

Viewing a dashboard is Core. Rearranging one needs the Customization Extra turned on: moving widgets, adding new ones, publishing your layout as the org default, all of it. Until an admin turns it on, Edit layout shows a lock icon and won't open.

Why this matters

SimpleRisk's dashboards aren't fixed pages. Each one is a grid you can rearrange: drag widgets around, resize them, remove the ones you don't look at, add ones that aren't shown by default. Your arrangement is saved to your account, so it's there the next time you sign in and it doesn't disturb anyone else's view.

That matters most for the dashboard you open every morning. The default layouts are a reasonable starting point for a general audience, but a control owner and a CISO want different things on screen first. Ten minutes rearranging a dashboard once tends to pay for itself within a month.

Administrators get one extra capability: publishing a layout as the organization's default, so new users and anyone who hasn't customized their own view see the arrangement you chose rather than the one SimpleRisk ships.

Before you start

Turn on the Customization Extra. An administrator does this once, from Settings → Extras → Customization. Until someone does, every Edit layout control on every dashboard is locked, and clicking it does nothing but point you at that settings page. Turning the Extra off again resets the dashboards it controls to the built-in defaults for everyone: personal layouts and the organization default are removed, including any saved report widgets (a dismissed Getting Started card stays dismissed); turning the Extra back on starts again from the defaults.
Know which pages support this. Four dashboards live under Reporting → Dashboards: Home, Risk Management Dashboard, Compliance Dashboard, and Governance Dashboard. A fifth, Risk Charts, is also editable but sits under Reporting → Reports instead — easy to miss if you go looking for it alongside the others. The Governance Dashboard additionally requires the governance permission; the rest are open to anyone who can reach them.
Risk Charts has two grids, not one. Its Open Risks and Closed Risks sections each have their own Edit layout control and their own independent widget catalog.
Administrator rights, but only for publishing a layout as the organization's default. Everything else on this page is available to anyone who can open the dashboard.

Step-by-step

1. Open Edit layout

Open the dashboard and click Edit layout near the top of the page. There's no separate mode switch to flip first — the click puts you straight into editing. A label reading EDITING appears next to the button, and every widget on the page gets an ✕ in its corner.

Nothing is saved yet. You're free to experiment.

2. Move and resize what's already there

Drag a widget to move it; the others reflow around it. Drag an edge to resize it. Both are called out right in the toolbar, next to the ✕ hint, so you don't have to remember them.

3. Add a widget

Click Add widget. A panel opens listing everything available for this dashboard that isn't on it already, grouped under a heading like Risk Management. Each entry shows its name and a small tag, either CHART or TABLE, so you know what you're getting before you add it. Click one and it drops onto the bottom of the grid immediately; no drag required. It also disappears from the panel, since it's no longer something you could add twice.

Remove a widget later and it reappears in the list, ready to add again.

Home and the Risk Management Dashboard also have a Saved reports section at the bottom of the panel, which works a little differently. It lists every saved report you can open, one entry each, with a small tag saying whether the report is private or public and how it's drawn. Long lists scroll, and a filter box appears once there are more than eight. Click a report and a small Add a saved report dialog opens for it. The report is fixed; you choose the view under View as (it starts on the report's own view when a widget can draw it, and is Donut otherwise), a Size (Small, Medium or Large) and, if you like, a Title; leave the title blank to show the report's name. Click Add to dashboard and the tile appears on the grid at once. Unlike the other entries, a report stays in the panel after you use it, because you can put several widgets for the same report, or for different ones, on one dashboard. If you have no saved reports yet, the section says so and links to the Dynamic Risk Report so you can build one. You can also add the same widget from the report itself with Pin to dashboard (see Saving and Sharing Custom Reports).

Adding a saved report widget needs the permission to save reports as well as the Customization Extra; without it the panel keeps the pointer to the Dynamic Risk Report page instead of the dialog. A report widget is stored on your dashboard as soon as you add it, so unlike the other entries it is saved without clicking Save, adding it doesn't raise the unsaved-changes prompt, and Cancel doesn't take it off. To remove it again, click the ✕ on its tile and then Save.

4. Add your own text with a Rich Text widget

At the bottom of the Add widget panel is Create a custom widget. Selecting it reveals a Select custom widget type dropdown (right now the only option is Rich Text) and an Add to dashboard button. Pick Rich Text, click Add to dashboard, and a small "Add text" tile lands on the grid, ready for you to type into.

Use it for the context a chart can't carry: what the reader is looking at, which numbers are known to be under review, who to ask about an anomaly. A pane reading "Q3 figures are provisional until the vendor assessment closes on the 14th" saves a recurring conversation, and it's easy to forget this option exists because it's tucked one click deeper than the rest of the catalog.

5. Remove a widget

Click the ✕ in the corner of any widget while you're editing. It comes off the grid immediately and goes back into the Add widget list.

A saved report widget has a small arrow-out-of-a-box icon just left of its Risk label. It opens the saved report behind the widget in a new window or tab, so the dashboard stays where it is; hover over it to see Open as report in a new window. The widget has no menu of its own for removing it. Use Edit layout and the ✕ like any other widget (this needs the Customization Extra); as with the rest of the layout, the removal takes effect when you click Save, and Cancel brings the widget back. Removing the widget never deletes the saved report, and you can add the report again whenever you like from its entry in Add widget or with Pin to dashboard.

A pinned widget always shows the report's current data, and shows only the risks the person viewing it can access. If the report is later deleted, made private or no longer visible to a viewer, the tile reads Report unavailable for that viewer, with the explanation "This report was deleted, made private, or you no longer have access to it." Edit layout is the only way to remove the tile, and it needs the Customization Extra: click its ✕ and then Save. Or ask the owner to make the report public again.

6. Save, or back out

Two buttons sit at the top: Cancel and Save.

Save writes your layout and takes you out of editing mode.

Cancel exits editing without saving — but only quietly if you haven't actually changed anything. The moment you've moved, added, or removed a widget, clicking Cancel asks first: "You have unsaved changes to this dashboard. Discard them and stop editing?" Confirm and your edits are gone; back out of the confirmation and you're still editing. That prompt is what stands between an afternoon of rearranging and losing all of it to a stray click.

7. Restore default layout

Restore default layout sits next to Save. It throws away your custom layout, saved or not, and puts the dashboard back to what SimpleRisk ships. There's no separate "undo my last save" button; if you've saved a layout you later regret, restoring the default and starting over is the only way back.

8. Publish a default for everyone (administrators)

Administrators see one more control in the same toolbar: a Set as default for everyone checkbox, marked ADMIN.

Check it and click Save, and your layout becomes the default for the whole organization — anyone who hasn't saved a layout of their own for that dashboard sees yours instead of SimpleRisk's built-in arrangement. Anyone who has customized keeps their own; publishing a default doesn't touch personal layouts.

You can only publish a layout you've actually changed from the default. An empty checkbox next to an unmodified grid has nothing to publish. And there's exactly one default per dashboard across the whole instance, so a second administrator who checks the box and saves replaces yours rather than adding to it.

Common pitfalls

Assuming "Edit layout" is broken. If it shows a small lock icon and won't open, the Customization Extra just isn't turned on yet. That's a one-time admin task, not a bug.
Hunting for Risk Charts under Dashboards. It's under Reporting → Reports, despite being an editable grid just like the other four.
Two administrators quietly overwriting each other's default. Because only one default exists per dashboard instance-wide, the second person to save silently replaces the first. There's no warning and no record in the UI of who set it. If your organization has several administrators, agree on who owns the dashboard defaults before anyone starts publishing.
Assuming a published default reaches everyone. It only reaches users who haven't saved their own layout for that dashboard. Long-tenured users have often customized already, so a new organizational default may be invisible to exactly the people you most wanted to reach.
Customizing a dashboard when you wanted a report. Dashboards answer "how are we doing" at a glance. If you need a list of specific records with specific columns, that's the Dynamic Risk Report — see Saving and Sharing Custom Reports.
Expecting a widget that doesn't exist. Each dashboard has a fixed catalog, and you can't define a new chart or point one at a different field. The exception is the saved report widget, which charts any saved report you can build; when nothing else answers your question, build it in the Dynamic Risk Report and add it from Add widget or pin it. Other than that, the reports are the next place to look.
Looking for a saved report in Add widget. Saved reports are in their own Saved reports section at the bottom of the panel, below the groups of built-in widgets, and the section is there only on Home and the Risk Management Dashboard, and only when you can save reports. Reports stay in the list after you add one, because you can put several on the same dashboard. Note that a dashboard saved as the organization's default shows the report widget to everyone who hasn't customized their own, so only a public report can go there.