Duplicating and Reusing Dashboards

When deploying to new machines, lines, or facilities, you may wish to duplicate an existing dashboard layout and update it with different stacks, tags, and labels applied. The Dashboard Management interface, accessible from the dashboard control menu () makes this easy. It allows you to:

• Duplicate an existing dashboard
• Quickly swap in different stacks across a dashboard using find-and-replace
• Remap multiple widgets to new data tags in one action
• Make full or partial updates to widget names

This advanced tool helps to quickly roll out new deployments at any scale, from adding a single machine to a new factory floor overview.

Accessing the Dashboard Management interface

You can find the Dashboard Management interface under the dashboard control menu:

• Open the dashboard you want to duplicate and/or edit
• Click the three dots (•••) in the top right corner
• Select Manage/Copy/Share Dashboard to access the following menu

Each of these sections is explained in detail below.

Dashboard Properties

Click the ‘Name’ field to edit the name of this dashboard, or click the ‘Share with Groups’ field to give one or more groups access to this dashboard. Select a group from the pulldown, or start typing to filter the list. Multiple groups can be added or removed at once.

Stacks in Use

The left column of this section lists each stack being referenced by widgets in this dashboard. Choose a stack from the corresponding ‘Replace With’ dropdown to automatically find all references to the stack on the left, and replace them with the stack on the right.

For example, you can have all widgets that point to a stack ‘Machine Line 1’ instead point to ‘Machine Line 2’, and Save as Duplicate to instantly clone a dashboard and have it provide data from a new deployment.

Tag IDs in Use

The left column of this section shows every Tag ID being referenced by widgets in this dashboard. Choose a tag from the ‘Replace With ID’ dropdown to automatically find all references to the tag on the left, and replace them with the tag on the right. This lets you redirect multiple widgets from one data source to another without editing each one individually.

The tags available in the ‘Replace with ID’ dropdown are determined by the ‘Stacks in Use’ listed in the previous section. If a tag you are looking for does not appear in the list, you may need to add the tag’s source stack first.

Indexed Tag Editor

This section will only display if your dashboard was set up using indexed tags (sensor01, sensor02, etc), typically used for large-scale deployments.

Use this advanced tool to shift or rename an entire range of tag references in one action. For example, you can update references to Sensor01–Sensor10 so they now point to Sensor11–Sensor20 by entering:

• Start of Range: 01
• New Start of Range: 11

• Indexed Tag ID Prefix: Lists all prefixes detected in the dashboard’s tag references. Tags ‘Sensor01’, ‘Sensor02’, and ‘Sensor03’ share the prefix ‘Sensor’.
• Replace Prefix (optional): Enter a new prefix to update an entire range. For example, references to tags ‘Sensor01’ and ‘Sensor02’ could be changed to ‘NewSensor01’ and ‘NewSensor02’ in one action.
• Start of Range: Enter the first index value of the range to find and modify.
• End of Range (optional): Enter the last index value (inclusive) modify. Leave blank to replace all values from the start value forward.
• New Start of Range: Enter the value that will replace the original start of range. The tool will shift the index accordingly.

Widget Names

This section allows you to quickly rename widgets throughout the dashboard.

Use the ‘Find String’ and ‘Replace With’ fields to globally search-and-replace any instance of a string of characters. For example, searching for ‘Alpha’ and replacing with ‘Beta’ would rename ‘Factory Alpha CO2’ to ‘Factory Beta CO2’, as well as ‘SensorAlphaOne’ to ‘SensorBetaOne’.

The ‘Widget name’ column lists the title of each widget on the dashboard. Use the ‘Replace With’ fields to change widget names on an item-by-item basis.

Saving your Changes

When you are done laying out the above changes, you have two options to implement them: ‘Apply Changes’ or ‘Save as Duplicate.’

Apply Changes will make the requested updates to the existing dashboard, while Save as Duplicate will make a copy of your dashboard before applying your changes. If you are using this feature for the first time, try using the Save as Duplicate function first to avoid overwriting an existing dashboard by mistake.