Dashboards basics
Widgets, charts, and live external data.
A dashboard is an operating surface, not a document — a grid of widgets that turns your data into something you can read and act on at a glance. Where a page is for writing and a database is for storing, a dashboard is for watching.
View mode and edit mode
Dashboards open in view mode: a clean screen with no editing chrome, where the data stays interactive — you can open a record or switch a tab inside an embedded view without changing the dashboard itself. Building happens in an explicit edit mode you toggle from the header. In edit mode you get a grid canvas with an inspector panel on the right: click a widget to select it, and all of its configuration lives in that panel. Edit mode is permission-gated, so viewers never even see the toggle.
Widgets
Every widget binds to your workspace data and picks how to show it:
- Metric — a single number (count, sum, average, min, max) with formatting, targets, and thresholds, or a chart (column, bar, line, pie) grouped by a field.
- Database view — a live embedded table, board, or chart from one of your databases.
- Activity feed — recent, member-meaningful events across the workspace.
- Insight — a durable written brief you or the AI can refresh.
- Button — runs a real workspace action, like refreshing a source or creating a record.
- Heading and text — labels and section notes, edited in place.
Add widgets from the tile palette, then drag to reposition and pull the edges to resize. The build a dashboard walkthrough takes you from an empty grid to a working overview.
Where the data comes from
Widgets only read Snoze state — your databases, views, aggregates, and events — so dashboards stay fast and update in real time as the underlying data changes. External services reach a dashboard by syncing into a database first, never by a widget calling an API live. That’s what keeps a dashboard responsive even when the original source is slow. See connect external data.
Building with AI
The dashboard header has an Ask AI action. It inspects the current layout, explains a proposed plan, and waits for your go-ahead before applying any change — it uses the same workspace parts a person does, so nothing bypasses permissions or history.
Dashboards share like any other item — with the team, or published to the web for stakeholders who just need the numbers.
Go deeper
- Build a dashboard — a full walkthrough from empty grid to live overview.
- Connect external data — sync outside services into your databases.