Dashboard
The Dashboard is your central hub for monitoring project health at a glance. It provides real-time charts comparing your planned budget against actual expenses, tracks personnel expenditure with projections, and highlights upcoming deadlines alongside overdue items. Use the Dashboard to quickly access your starred items, catch up on recent team activity and conversations, report status updates, track time, and perform other common tasks via Quick Actions.
Note: You can only see the metrics and data that relate to the elements of the workspace for which you have at least read access (see "Roles, access levels, and access rights").
To view the Dashboard, click "Dashboard" in Home menu.
Overview
The Dashboard is your central hub when you open a workspace in EMDESK. It gives you an at-a-glance overview of your financial status, upcoming deadlines, recent team activity, and conversations — all in one place.
Dashboard Layout
The Dashboard is organized into distinct sections arranged in a two-column grid:
| Section | Position | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Starred Items | Top left | Quick access to your favorited items |
| Quick Actions | Top right | One-click shortcuts for common tasks |
| Monthly Budget / Expenses | Left column | Bar chart comparing planned budget to actual expenses by month |
| Personnel Expenditure | Right column | Cumulative line graph of personnel costs and effort over time |
| Project Overview | Full width (only if 2+ projects) | Per-project summary with timeline, milestones, and assignees |
| Recent / What's Next / Overdue | Left column (lower) | Activity stream, upcoming deadlines, and overdue items |
| Conversations | Right column (lower) | Latest comments and discussions across the workspace |
Starred Items
The Starred Items bar appears at the top of the Dashboard. It displays all items you have marked as favorites (starred) across the workspace, such as activities, milestones, deliverables, documents, or participants.
How it works
- Items appear as rounded chip-style buttons with an icon matching their type (e.g., a workplan icon for activities, a milestone icon for milestones, a document icon for files).
- Click any starred item to open its details in the sidebar.
- Items are sorted by a relevance score: frequently and recently clicked items appear first.
- If you have not starred any items yet, you will see the message: "Star elements to see them here".
How to star an item
You can star any activity, milestone, deliverable, participant, or document by clicking the star icon when viewing that item in the sidebar. Starred items then appear on the Dashboard for quick access.
Quick Actions
The green Quick Actions button in the top-right corner of the Dashboard provides one-click access to common project tasks. Click it to reveal a dropdown menu with the following options:
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Report status update | Create a new status report for an activity (select the activity in a popup, then fill in completion, status, priority, dates) |
| Report expense | Add a new expense |
| Track time | Open the time tracking dialog to log work hours for today |
| Create task | Create a new task and assign it to team members |
| Start meeting | Start a new video meeting |
| Add budget | Create a new budget entry |
| Add activity | Create a new activity (work package, task) in the workplan |
| Add participant | Add a new participant |
Note: The available actions depend on your user role, permissions, and the currently selected version (Plan or Actual). You will only see the actions you are authorized to perform.
Monthly Budget / Expenses
This chart provides a month-by-month comparison of your planned budget versus actual expenses for the selected year.
Reading the chart
- Summary row (top): Shows three key figures for the selected year:
- Budget — Total planned budget for the year. Hover to see the total across all years.
- Expenses — Total actual expenses for the year. Hover to see the total across all years. Turns red if expenses exceed the budget.
- Percentage (%) — Consumption rate (Expenses ÷ Budget × 100). Turns red when over 100%.
- Bars: Each month shows two values:
- The top number represents the monthly budget.
- The bottom number represents the monthly expenses (turns red when expenses exceed the budget).
- The bar itself is blue for the portion within budget and red for the overhead portion.
- Hover tooltip: Hover over any month bar to see a detailed breakdown of Budget, Expenses, and Overspend with exact figures and percentages.
Filtering by cost category
Use the dropdown at the top-left of the chart to filter by a specific cost category. When set, only budget and expense entries belonging to that cost category are included. Select the option "All cost categories" to show metrics from all cost categories.
Navigating between years
Use the left and right arrow buttons next to the year number to move between years. The available year range is determined by the projects' start and end dates.
Personnel Expenditure
This chart shows your personnel costs and effort as a cumulative line graph over the selected year. It only includes expenses belonging to personnel cost categories (as defined in your workspace customisation).
Reading the chart
- Plan line (solid dark blue): Cumulative planned personnel costs or effort, month by month.
- Actual / Projection line: Shows actual cumulative spending up to the current reporting date, then projects forward based on the average monthly spending rate.
- The line appears in green if the year-end projection is within budget.
- The line appears in red if the projection exceeds the planned budget.
- Actual cut-off line: A vertical line marks the boundary between actual data (left) and projected data (right).
- Budget ceiling (horizontal dashed line): Shows the peak cumulative budget level.
- Today indicator: An orange dot and vertical line mark today's position on the timeline.
- Y-axis labels: The right side shows the year-end totals for the plan and the actual/projection.
- Shaded area: The area under the plan line is lightly shaded for visual reference.
Hover tooltip
Move your mouse over the chart to see a detailed tooltip for any month, showing:
|
|
Follow-up (cumulative) | In this month |
|---|---|---|
| Budget | Cumulative planned amount | This month's planned amount |
| Expenses | Cumulative actual amount | This month's actual amount |
| Projection | Cumulative projected amount | This month's projected amount |
Switching units
Use the dropdown at the top-left to switch the unit displayed on the chart:
- Currency (e.g., EUR) — Shows monetary amounts
- PM — Person-Months
- PD — Person-Days
- PH — Person-Hours
Cumulative across years
Toggle the "Cumulative across years" switch to control how cumulative totals are calculated:
- Enabled (default): Monthly totals continue from previous years. The January value of 2026, for example, includes all spending from 2025 and prior.
- Disabled: Each year starts from zero. Only that year's amounts are accumulated.
Navigating between years
Use the arrow buttons next to the year number to navigate. The year range is determined by the projects' start and end dates.
Project Overview
Note: This section is only visible when the workspace contains two or more projects. If you have a single project, this section is hidden.
The Project Overview provides a per-project summary with quick access to key status indicators.
Project tabs
When multiple projects exist, tabs appear at the top of this section. Click a tab to switch between projects. Your last selected project is remembered.
Project header
For the selected project, the header shows:
- Project name (displayed as a heading)
- Assignees — Avatar icons of team members assigned to this project (up to 10 visible)
Deliverable & Milestone progress
Two progress indicators appear on the right side of the header:
- Deliverables — Shows how many deliverables have been completed out of the total (e.g., "3 / 8 completed"). The circular progress ring fills proportionally.
- Milestones — Shows how many milestones have been reached out of the total (e.g., "2 / 5 completed").
A deliverable or milestone is considered "completed" when its most recent status entry has the reached flag set.
Timeline
Below the header, a visual timeline shows the project's schedule:
- Plan bar (top, striped pattern): Represents the planned project duration from start to end date. The planned start and end dates are shown above the bar.
- Actual bar (bottom, gray): Represents the actual project duration based on reported activity dates. The actual start and end dates are shown below the bar.
- Today marker (orange vertical line): Indicates the current date position on the timeline.
- Milestone markers: Icons placed along the timeline at each milestone's expected (or forecast) date.
- Normal milestones appear as standard icons.
- Overdue milestones are highlighted in red.
- Completed milestones are highlighted in green.
- When milestones are close together, they are grouped with a count badge (e.g., "3").
- Milestones outside the visible date range are summarized as "+N" at the left or right edge.
- Hover over any milestone icon to see a tooltip with the date, status, and completion percentage.
Per-project charts
Below the timeline, the Project Overview includes its own Monthly Budget / Expenses chart and Personnel Expenditure chart, filtered to show only data for the selected project.
Recent Activities / What's Next / Overdue
This section features three switchable tabs that help you stay on top of project progress:
Recent Activities
Shows the latest changes made in the workspace, powered by the Activity Stream. Entries are grouped by time period:
- Just now — Changes made in the last hour
- X hours ago — Changes made earlier today
- Yesterday
- This week
- Previous week
- This month
- Quarterly groups (e.g., Q4/2025) — For older entries
Each entry shows who made the change, what was changed, and when. By default, the 5 most recent entries are shown.
Click "Open Activity Stream" at the bottom to navigate to the full Activity Stream view with all activity history.
What's Next
Shows upcoming deadlines across your projects, sorted by date. This includes:
- Projects and Activities that are about to start or end (based on actual dates)
- Milestones and Deliverables that are due
- Reports with upcoming due dates
- Tasks with upcoming due dates
Each entry shows the item reference, the type of deadline (starts, ends, or is due), and the date. Items are grouped by date for easy scanning.
Overdue
Shows the same item types as "What's Next", but filtered to only display items whose deadlines have already passed. This helps you quickly identify things that need attention.
If nothing is overdue, you will see the message: "Nothing is due yet".
Conversations
The Conversations panel displays the most recent comments and discussions from across projects. This gives you a quick overview of team communication without navigating to individual items.
Features
- Shows the latest comments posted anywhere in the workspace (on projects, activities, deliverables, milestones, etc.).
- Initially displays 7 comments. Click "Load more" to show additional comments (in batches of 7, up to 20 total).
- Each comment shows the author, timestamp, and the content of the message.
Tips & Best Practices
- Star your most-used items to keep them one click away on the Dashboard.
- Check the Dashboard daily to spot budget overruns (red indicators), overdue items, and recent team activity.
- Use the cost category filter on the Monthly Budget / Expenses chart to drill into specific spending areas (e.g., travel, equipment, subcontracting).
- Toggle the cumulative switch on the Personnel Expenditure chart to compare year-over-year vs. project-lifetime spending patterns.
- Switch units on the Personnel Expenditure chart (EUR/PM/PD/PH) to view effort in the unit most relevant to your analysis.
- Keep an eye on the projection line — if it turns red, projected personnel spending will exceed the plan by year-end.
- Use Quick Actions for fast data entry instead of navigating to individual modules.