Creating your first dashboard
Follow these steps to go from a blank canvas to a published, interactive dashboard.Create a new dashboard
From the Qvista home screen, click New Dashboard. Give your dashboard a name and, optionally, a description. Select the workspace folder where it should live so your team can find it later.
Connect a DataTable
Click Add Data in the top toolbar and select an existing DataTable or connect a new data source. Your DataTable is the live reference that all charts on this dashboard will draw from. You can connect multiple DataTables to a single dashboard for cross-source analysis.
Add your first chart
Click + Add Chart on the canvas. Choose a chart type from the panel, then drag the fields from your DataTable onto the axis and value slots. Qvista renders a live preview immediately. Resize and reposition the chart block by dragging its edges or corners.
Add more charts and layout your canvas
Repeat the process to add additional charts, summary metric cards, and data tables. Use the drag-and-drop canvas to arrange elements into a clear, logical layout. Group related charts visually by placing them in proximity and using section header text blocks.
Configure filters and slicers
Click + Add Filter to place interactive filter controls on the dashboard — date-range pickers, dropdown lists, multi-select checkboxes, or free-text search fields. In each filter’s settings, choose which charts it affects. Enable Cross-Chart Interaction so that clicking an element in one chart filters the others automatically.
Set the data refresh interval
Open Dashboard Settings and navigate to Data Refresh. Choose an automatic refresh interval — from every 30 seconds up to every 24 hours — or leave it on manual refresh. Charts update silently in the background without disrupting a viewer who is actively exploring the dashboard.
Adding and arranging charts
Once your dashboard canvas is open, you can add and configure charts at any time.- Drag to resize: Grab any edge or corner of a chart block and drag to resize it. Charts reflow automatically to fill the available canvas width.
- Duplicate charts: Right-click any chart block and select Duplicate to create a copy with the same configuration. Use this to quickly build comparison views across different filters or date ranges.
- Swap chart types: Change a chart’s type at any time from the Properties panel without losing your field bindings. Qvista remaps the existing fields to the new chart type where possible.
- Pin a chart to a fixed position: Lock any chart block to prevent it from being accidentally moved or resized during collaborative editing sessions.
Configuring filters and slicers
Filters let viewers dynamically adjust what they see on a dashboard without modifying the underlying data or affecting other users’ sessions.Filter types
Date Range Picker
Let viewers select a start and end date to scope all time-series charts simultaneously
Dropdown List
Bind a dropdown to a categorical field — for example, Region or Product Category — so viewers can select one value at a time
Multi-Select Checkbox
Allow viewers to select multiple values from a field and see charts filtered to that combined set
Search Field
Add a text-input filter for high-cardinality fields like customer names or order IDs
Cross-chart interaction
Enable Cross-Chart Interaction in Dashboard Settings to turn any chart into a filter source. When a viewer clicks a bar segment, pie slice, or heatmap cell, every other chart on the dashboard that shares the same DataTable updates to reflect that selection. Click the same element again to clear the filter.Cross-chart interaction and manual filter controls work together. A viewer can combine a date-range selection from the filter panel with a category selection from a pie chart click to drill into a highly specific data slice.
Saving multiple views for different audiences
Qvista lets you save multiple named Views of the same dashboard, each storing a distinct combination of applied filters, visible chart sets, and layout configurations. Use Views to:- Give the sales team a View that defaults to the current quarter and filters to their region
- Give the executive team a View that shows only top-level KPI cards without detailed breakdown charts
- Give external clients a View that pre-filters data to their account and hides internal metrics
Multi-user collaboration
Qvista dashboards support real-time collaborative editing so that multiple team members can work on the same dashboard simultaneously.- Live presence indicators show which teammates currently have the dashboard open.
- Edit locking prevents two editors from modifying the same chart block at the same time — the second editor sees the block as locked and can request access.
- Change history logs every modification with a timestamp and the name of the editor who made it. Roll back to any previous state from the History panel.
Role-based access control
Control who can view, interact with, and edit each dashboard using Qvista’s role-based permissions.| Role | View | Apply filters | Edit charts | Manage sharing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Viewer | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Editor | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Owner | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Real-time data refresh settings
Configure how often Qvista fetches fresh data from your connected sources and pushes the update to all open dashboard sessions.- Manual refresh: Viewers click a refresh button to pull the latest data on demand.
- Scheduled refresh: Set an interval (30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, or 24 hours). Qvista refreshes silently in the background.
- Event-triggered refresh: For data sources that support webhooks, configure Qvista to refresh a DataTable immediately when a new record is written to the source.
Embedding dashboards externally
Embed any published Qvista dashboard into a website, intranet portal, or third-party BI tool using an embed snippet.- Open the dashboard and click Share in the top-right corner.
- Select Embed from the sharing options.
- Configure embed options: set a fixed height and width, choose whether to show the filter panel, and select which View to display by default.
- Copy the generated
<iframe>or JavaScript snippet and paste it into your external platform.
Embedded dashboards respect your role-based access settings. If the embed link requires Qvista authentication, unauthenticated visitors will see a login prompt. To make an embedded dashboard publicly accessible, enable Public Access in the sharing settings and review your data privacy requirements before doing so.
