Show off your unique brand and personality with customized dashboards! In PowerMetrics, you’ll find lots of options for changing the look and feel of your dashboards. Choose from a selection of preset colours or get imaginative and create your own custom ones. If you prefer a simple presentation style, you can always use our default options (they're based on whether you're in light or dark mode).

This article includes:

• Dashboard style: Customizing dashboard, widget, and fullscreen mode display
• Sharing dashboard styles
• Chart style: Customizing chart colours

Dashboard style: Customizing dashboard, widget, and fullscreen mode display

This premium feature is available to new sign ups for a 30-day period, after which it's included in all of our paid plans. On a free plan and want to upgrade? Learn how here.

When selecting colours for dashboard components (dashboard filters and background, widget header, background, and border, and fullscreen mode headers and footers), click the colour cube beside the component and select the desired colour either by choosing a preset colour, entering a hexadecimal colour code or R G B A values, or by using the eyedropper or sliding colour selector scale.

Note: Customized dashboard style settings don’t apply to PDF downloads.

To customize the dashboard, widget, and fullscreen mode display:

1. In an open dashboard, click theEdit button in the upper-right corner.
2. Under Dashboard style, enable the Customize dashboard style toggle. (See below.)
   Note: If you don’t select this toggle your dashboard will use the default light or dark mode colours.
   Note: Your saved customized settings are stored, so they’ll be available if you toggle the “Customize dashboard style” setting off and then on again.
   
3. Under Dashboard, select Filters to change the colour of your dashboard filter(s) or select Background to change the background colour for the whole dashboard.
4. Under Background image, apply an image to the dashboard background by selecting or dragging and dropping a file. (See below.)
   Note: We support the following image file types: PNG, JPEG, and SVG. The maximum file size is 10 MB.
   
   • You can use the drop-down arrows to adjust the image opacity, blur, and size settings. You can also repeat the image vertically (repeat Y) or horizontally (repeat X) across the dashboard. (See below.)
     
   • Click Extend to header if you want the image to be shown under the header. You can then set the opacity so the image displays to the top of the screen. (See below.)
     
   • Click the alignment options to position the image on the dashboard. (See below.)
     
5. Under Widget, select Header or Background to change the colour of the header and backgrounds for all widgets on the dashboard.
6. Select Border to add a coloured border to all widgets on the dashboard.
7. Under Fullscreen mode, select a colour for the header and footer. (See below.)
   
   Note: This setting affects the header for fullscreen mode and the header and footer for published views.
   Note: If, after customizing colours for your dashboard, widgets, or fullscreen mode, you want to return to using the default colours for a specific component, select the component (dashboard filters or background, widget header, background, or border, and fullscreen mode headers and footers) and click Reset to default colour. (See below.)
   
8. When you’re done customizing the dashboard, widgets, and fullscreen mode, click Save dashboard.
   Note: If, after saving the dashboard, you want to remove all dashboard customizations and return to the default settings, click the dashboard’s Edit button. Then click the 3-dot menu beside Dashboard style and select Reset style.

Sharing dashboard styles

Perfected a dashboard style and want to reuse it across your and your team's dashboards? It’s quick and easy to copy a dashboard style’s settings and apply them to some or all of the dashboards in your account.

To share a dashboard style:

1. In an open dashboard, click theEdit button in the upper-right corner.
2. Under Dashboard style, enable the Customize dashboard style toggle if needed to display your customized dashboard settings.
3. At Dashboard style, click the 3-dot menu and select View style source. (See below.)
   
4. Click the Copy button to copy the dashboard style’s value. (See below.)
   
5. Share the copied value with team members so they can apply it to their dashboards or paste it over the existing value for any of your dashboards that you want to update to use this style. After pasting a new value for a dashboard, click Apply.
   Note: The dashboard style includes the settings for dashboard filters and background, widget header, background, and border, fullscreen mode headers, and published view headers and footers. It doesn’t include background image settings.
6. Click Save dashboard.

Customizing chart colours

So far, we’ve described how to customize the display features in a dashboard. But, you can also customize charts on a dashboard with preset and custom colours. This feature is included in all of our plans.

Looking for a quick introduction to applying chart colours? Check out this brief video:

This section includes:

• Colour assignment options: By data label and by display order
• Colour assignment options: Example
• Custom colours
• Custom colours: Tip
• How do I apply colours to charts on a dashboard?

Colour assignment options

There are two colour assignment options to choose from:

• Apply colours by data label: Colours will be assigned to data labels by name.
  The same colour will be used for all data labels with the same name for all metrics in your account. For example, if “red” is set for the label called “Canada”, in all charts that include “Canada”, it will display as “red”. This method brings consistency to data labels for charts across all of your dashboards and is the default setting.
  Note: If desired, you can override this account-wide setting for individual dashboards by selecting the “By display order” option instead for those specific dashboards.

• Apply colours by display order: Colours are assigned according to their display order. Colours are applied to data labels in a chart in the same order each time (beginning with the first colour in the palette being applied to the first data label in a chart, and continuing through the palette colours and data labels in order).
  This setting is applied on a per-dashboard basis. Applying this option can improve the dashboard presentation by creating a uniform, harmonious collection of data with a particular colour scheme, for example, when combined with custom colours, one that uses your company brand colours.

Colour assignment options: Example

Here’s an example to further explain the impact of choosing by display order versus by data label.

If you have multiple metrics on a dashboard that share one or more dimensional members and you select by display order, you might end up with label colour inconsistency between the metrics.

See the example below, that uses by display order, where different colours are applied to “Mexico”, “United States”, and “Canada” in each metric.

Following is the same dashboard using the by data label setting. Note that the colours are now consistent for each country in both charts.

Custom colours

Custom colours can be used to override colour assignment options on a per-label, per-dashboard basis. For example, you can select “by display order” and then apply custom colours for any number of labels in your chart.

Custom colours: Tip

If you have multiple metrics on a dashboard with shared dimensional members but the labels for the members are spelled differently (for example, “Canada” vs “CAN”) you can use custom colours to bring colour consistency to these labels.

In the example below, one metric includes “CAN” and “USA” and the other metric includes “Canada” and “United States”. To ensure the same colour is used for the shared dimensional members, regardless of spelling, apply the same custom colour to each spelling variation. (See below.)

How do I apply colours to charts on a dashboard?

To apply dashboard chart colours:

1. In an open dashboard, click theEdit button in the upper-right corner.
2. In the dashboard toolbar, click Dashboard settings.
   The dashboard settings panel opens.
3. Under Chart style > Colour assignment, choose how you want to apply colours to metrics on the dashboard: By data label or By display order. (See the description above for more details.)
   
4. If you’re happy with the colour choices and assignment, click Save dashboard.
5. If you want to create custom colours for one or more labels in the dashboard charts, click the + button beside Custom chart colours.
   Note: Custom colours will override the preset colours that were applied when you selected “By data label” or “By display order”.
6. Select the label name text and start typing the name of the label for which you want to apply a custom colour. As you type, options will display as a drop-down list from which you can select the desired label name.
   Note: Enter the text using spelling that matches that displayed in the chart. For example, if the label in the chart is “Canada”, if you enter “Caneda” the custom colour will not be applied. This is because the custom color maps to the label’s text string.
7. Click the colour cube to the left of the label name and choose the desired colour either by choosing a preset colour, entering a hexadecimal colour code or R G B values, or by using the eyedropper or sliding colour selector scale.
   Note: Each label can only be assigned to one colour.
8. If you want to add custom colours for other labels, go back to step 5 and repeat.
9. When you’re done adding custom colours, click Save dashboard.
   Note: If you want to assign colours to an unsegmented bar or column chart (one with “Data” > “Segment by” set to “None”) select Bar / Column as the Chart Type and either the Bar (colour by category) or the Column (colour by category) as the Style. This chart style assigns colours based on the category you select in the Data tab, under Over. (See below.)