Read and filter a dashboard

Before you begin

Confirm the reporting question, desired time window, and team or service scope. You need read access to the underlying operational records.

Open the feature

Open Reports & Dashboards, then choose a saved dashboard or select a built-in template to preview it.

Configure the reporting scope

At the top of a dashboard, set:

1. Time range for the reporting window.
2. Team to restrict calculations to a readable team.
3. Service to restrict calculations to a readable service. When a team is selected, the service list is narrowed to that team.

The filters are encoded in the URL. Switching between a saved dashboard and a template keeps the current filters. They are not persisted as the dashboard's default configuration.

Read each widget family

• Metric cards show one aggregate for the selected scope. A comparison is meaningful only when both periods contain comparable data.
• Gauges show rates or compliance percentages. Read them with their denominator; a percentage over very few incidents is not a stable trend.
• Trend charts use buckets inside the selected time window. Incident count, MTTA/MTTR, and SLA compliance are different series and should not be treated as interchangeable.
• Distribution charts group incidents by urgency or status.
• Incident Heatmap is a calendar-style incident-volume view, not an hourly latency heatmap.
• Tables rank or break down services, assignees, on-call load, SLA results, and other scoped entities.
• Smart Insights summarizes notable patterns from the same authorized metrics.

Use the metrics reference for the precise population, unit, labels, and aggregation caveats behind a metric.

How dashboard calculation works

The server calculates metrics from records the current authorization actor can read, using the selected window, team, service, and user time zone. Widgets then render different views of that serialized metric set; a similar title does not make two widget definitions semantically identical.

Empty and partial results

An empty chart is not automatically a runtime failure. It can mean no matching incidents exist in the selected window, the team/service combination has no matching records, the user cannot read those records, or the metric has no valid samples (for example, no resolved incidents for MTTR). Widen the time range, clear team/service filters, and compare with the incident list before escalating.

The Updated timestamp reports when the server rendered the current view. Open Live to refresh immediately or select automatic refresh every 30 seconds, 1 minute, or 5 minutes. The countdown pauses while the browser tab is hidden and resumes when it becomes visible. Auto-refresh belongs to the current viewer session; it is not saved into the dashboard definition.

Monitor active incidents

Add or read the Active Incidents and Active Incidents Feed widgets when the dashboard is used for live response. They show current incident state for the selected authorized scope, while historical metric widgets continue to use the chosen reporting window. Verify a live item against its incident detail before using the dashboard as an escalation decision source.

Switch views safely

Use Select dashboard to switch among My Dashboards, accessible Team & Shared dashboards, and built-in Templates. Templates are previews until cloned. A saved dashboard name followed by Team or Public identifies its visibility; it does not imply edit ownership.

Verify the interpretation

Record the time, team, and service filters with any reported value. Cross-check a count against the incident list for the same scope and confirm a rate's qualifying population in the metrics reference. Success means the scope survives a dashboard switch in the URL and the displayed values match the intended population.

Undo filter changes

Set Team and Service back to All, restore the desired time range, or reopen the dashboard without query parameters. Because filters are not saved defaults, this does not alter the dashboard definition.

Troubleshooting

If values are empty, contradictory, or stale, follow Troubleshoot reports and verify authorization, samples, scope, and refresh time.

Next steps

• Manage a saved dashboard
• Metrics reference