Exercise - Customize the dashboard

8 minutes

In the last unit, you saw how dashboards are a flexible tool for managing different aspects of Azure services through the portal. They make it convenient to monitor the state of your services. Because they're shareable, they help ensure that everyone on your team sees the same data and stays aware of the state of your critical components.

Let's create a new dashboard and add some tiles to it.

Create a new dashboard

In the Azure portal, from the top left-hand side, select Show portal menu > Dashboard.
Select the Create button, then select Custom.
At the top left, change My Dashboard to Customer Dashboard.

Add and configure the Clock tile

In the Tile Gallery, find the Clock tile and drag it onto the workspace. Place it on the top along the right side of the available space.
Select the Preview button at the top of the screen, then right-click the Clock tile and select Edit.
On the Edit clock pane, change the Location to (UTC-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada).
Under Time format, select 24 hour.
Select Done, then select Save at the top of the screen.
Select the Edit button at the top of the screen to return to edit mode, then repeat the previous five steps to place a new clock right below the first one. This time, select (UTC-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada) for the Location.

You should now have two clocks on your dashboard, each displaying a different time zone.

Add and resize tiles

Select the Edit button to return to edit mode, then find the All resources tile in the Tile Gallery. Drag and drop it in the top left-hand corner of the dashboard workspace.
Hover over the new All resources tile and select the ellipsis icon (...); then select the 6 x 6 size.
Select the gray corner on the bottom right-hand side of the tile, and drag it up to resize the tile to about 3.5 squares vertically, keeping the horizontal size the same. When you finish resizing, the tile adjusts to the closest available size, 6 x 4.
From the Tile Gallery, drag the Resource groups tile onto the workspace. Place it underneath the All resources tile.
From the Tile Gallery, select the Metrics chart tile, and drag it onto the workspace. Place it to the right of the All resources tile.
Continue to add the following tiles, rearranging them to fit as needed:
- Help + support
- Microsoft Entra quick tasks
- Marketplace
After you've added these tiles, select Save. The Customer Dashboard dashboard that you created appears as your current dashboard.

Clone a dashboard

You now want to create a similar dashboard for some other customers, but with a few changes.

Select the Clone button.
Rename the dashboard from Clone of Customer Dashboard to Microsoft Entra Admin Dashboard.
On the Resource Groups tile, select the trash can icon to delete this tile.
Select the Preview button at the top of the screen, then select Edit.
From the Tile Gallery, locate and add the following tiles:
- Users and groups
- User sign-in summary
Reposition the tiles as necessary, then select Save. The Microsoft Entra Admin Dashboard dashboard that you created appears as your current dashboard.

You now want to make this dashboard available to other users. In the sandbox environment, you can't share a dashboard with other users. But you can see how you'd publish a shared dashboard by completing the following steps.

From the Microsoft Entra Admin dashboard, select the Share button at the top. The Sharing + access control appears.
If the Publish to the 'dashboards' resource group checkbox is selected, uncheck the box.
Select the resource group [sandbox resource group name] from the Resource group dropdown.
Select Publish.
Close the Sharing + access control pane.

Delete a dashboard

From the dashboard selection drop-down control, ensure that Microsoft Entra Admin Dashboard is selected.
Select the Delete button.
In the Confirmation message box, check the box to confirm that you want to delete the dashboard, then select OK.

Reset a dashboard

Ensure that Customer Dashboard is selected.
Select Edit.
Right-click on the workspace, and select Reset to default state.
In the Reset dashboard to default state message box, select Yes.

You see the Customer Dashboard with the default tiles instead of the edits you made.
Select Save.
Select your name at the top right of the portal.
Select Sign out.
Close your browser.

You have created and edited dashboards, shared them, deleted them, and finally, reset them to the default state. Now you understand how to use dashboards to create efficient interfaces showing appropriate information for different roles within an organization.