Main dashboard overview

The dashboard is the first thing you see when you sign in to DPMS, and it's designed to give you a one-glance picture of where your data protection program stands right now. Whether you're a Data Protection Officer triaging the day's overdue tasks, a compliance coordinator keeping an eye on vendor reviews, or a risk manager looking for the next priority, this is your starting point and your dispatcher — every chart segment, KPI, and slice is clickable, sending you straight to the records that need attention.

This article walks you through how the dashboard is laid out, how to customise it to match the way you work, and how the figures you see relate to the rest of DPMS.

How to open it

The dashboard is your default landing page after sign-in. To return to it from anywhere else in DPMS, click Dashboard at the top of the left-hand navigation menu. There are no sub-menus — the tabs you'll see at the top of the page are content tabs inside the dashboard, not separate menu entries.

Access to the dashboard requires the standard Dashboard permission, which is granted to all users who manage compliance work. Within the dashboard, three further permissions decide which tiles you can see: a personal-data permission (User scope), a company-wide permission (Company scope), and a cross-company permission (All Companies scope). If you don't have one of these, the corresponding tiles and filters simply won't appear — there's no error message.

What you see

The dashboard takes over the whole content area to the right of the main menu. Across the very top runs a thin toolbar with three blue scope pills — User, Company, and All Companies — which let you switch on or off the tiles for each scope. Super-admins also see a circular sync button on the far right of this toolbar.

Just below the toolbar is the tab strip: one tab per element type — Tasks, Vendors, ROPA, Assessments, Documents & Policies, Users, ROPA Risk, TOMs, Assets, Asset Groups, DPIA, Legitimate Interests, Meetings & Activities, Retention & Deletion, and Data Collection Points. The active tab is highlighted with a blue trapezoid background. Switching tabs re-paints the entire dashboard with charts and KPIs for that element type.

Below the tabs, the content area is split into two zones. At the top is a row of up to four compact white KPI Info Cards, each displaying a single big number — for example, "Total overdue tasks - User". Below the KPI row is the chart grid itself, where tiles are grouped by scope (User, Company, All Companies) and rendered as bar charts, pie charts, radials, polar charts, sunbursts, funnels and more. Each tile has its own header with a title, a "last updated" timestamp, and small icons for refreshing, filtering and removing.

In the very top-right corner of the dashboard frame floats a small panel containing a wand (auto-optimize layout) and a padlock (lock / unlock the dashboard for editing). When the dashboard is locked, the toolbar and most edit controls disappear so you can read without accidentally bumping anything.

Working with this screen

Reading the dashboard at a glance and jumping to the work

Most days you'll arrive on the dashboard, scan it, and dive into the records that need attention. Pick the tab that matches the area you're looking after — Tasks for daily triage, Vendors for third-party reviews, ROPA for processing activity changes, and so on. Look first at the KPI Info Cards along the top: these show the big-number metrics like total open tasks or overdue records.

Then look down at the chart grid. The grid is divided into sections labelled User, Company, and All Companies (you'll see only the scopes you have permission for). Charts in the User section show your personal items; the Company section aggregates across the whole company; the All Companies section — visible only when group sharing is on for your company — pulls together data from every company you share with.

Many chart segments are clickable. Click the "Overdue" slice on a tasks status pie and DPMS takes you straight to the Tasks index, already filtered to show only your overdue tasks. The same goes for status slices on Vendors, ROPAs, DPIAs, TOMs, Assets, Documents & Policies, Retention & Deletion, Legitimate Interests, Meetings & Activities, Data Collection Points and Assessments charts; for the priority bars on the task bottleneck chart; and for the deadline segments (Overdue, Within 7 days, Then 7 days) on the deadline tiles. Tiles like the company-wide ROPA polar chart or the assessments funnel are read-only.

If a tile is empty, you'll see a faint silhouette of the chart shape with a translucent "No data" message — that just means there are no records matching the tile's scope, not that something is broken.

Customising your dashboard

The dashboard is locked by default. To make any change to it, click the closed padlock icon in the top-right of the dashboard frame. The padlock turns into an open lock, the toolbar appears, and drag handles, close buttons and the wand (auto-optimize) become visible.

Once unlocked, you can:

• Switch tiles on or off. Click the User, Company, or All Companies pill in the toolbar. A dropdown appears listing every chart available for the active tab and that scope. Use the search box at the top to filter by title, then flip the toggle next to any tile to add it to the grid or remove it. Your changes save automatically.
• Rearrange tiles. Grab a tile by the small six-dot drag handle at the top-left of its header and drop it where you want. Resize a tile by dragging its bottom-right corner. DPMS remembers your arrangement per device and per company.
• Tidy a messy grid. After turning lots of tiles on and off, the layout can develop awkward gaps. Click the wand icon at the top right to auto-optimize the current tab — DPMS will repack the tiles into a clean, balanced grid grouped by scope. Other tabs keep their hand-tuned layouts.
• Manage tabs. Drag a tab sideways to reorder it. Right-click a tab and choose Remove tab to take it off the strip — you must always keep at least one tab. Click the small + button at the right end of the strip to re-add a tab you previously removed (or add one you've never used). Tab order is remembered next time you sign in.

When you're done, click the open padlock again to lock the dashboard back down. You can read freely without worrying about misplacing a tile.

Adding and changing KPI cards

The KPI Info Cards row at the top can hold up to four cards. When the dashboard is unlocked, any empty slot shows as a dashed + placeholder. Click one to open the Add KPI tile modal:

• Choose a scope — User, Company, or All Companies. Only the scopes you have permission for appear.
• Pick a metric from the list. Metrics already on your dashboard at that scope are hidden so you can't add the same number twice. If everything is already added, the list will show "No tiles available".
• The new card appears in your KPI row immediately.

To switch an existing card to a different metric without removing it, click the small chevron next to its title and pick a new metric from the dropdown. To remove a card, click its X button. All these changes save automatically.

Forcing a fresh data refresh (super-admins)

Most numbers on the dashboard come from a backend job that recalculates statistics on a schedule. The small icon next to each tile's "last updated" timestamp tells you which kind of data you're looking at: a yellow lightning bolt means the value is live (real-time), and an amber clock means it came from the cached background-job calculation.

If you've just imported a large batch of records and want the cached numbers to catch up immediately, super-admins can click the sync button at the far right of the toolbar. A toast confirms the job has started, the icon spins, and DPMS polls every five seconds until the job finishes. When it does, every tile's data cache is invalidated, the KPI cards refetch, and the dashboard reflects the new totals.

A 30-second cooldown prevents accidental rapid clicks; the job itself usually takes a couple of minutes. To refresh just one tile or KPI card on demand, click the small refresh icon in its header instead — that bypasses only that tile's cache and is available to everyone.

Disabling temporarily — locking the dashboard

If you simply want to read the dashboard without risking accidental changes, click the open padlock to lock it. The toolbar disappears, drag handles vanish, the wand goes away, and the X buttons on tiles and KPI cards are hidden. Your tile selection and arrangement remain exactly as you left them.

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

The dashboard is read-only when it comes to your compliance records — it never creates, edits, or deletes the underlying tasks, ROPAs, vendors, assets, DPIAs and so on. What it does do is summarise and dispatch:

• Click-through navigation. Status, priority and deadline segments take you to the relevant index page (Tasks, Vendors, ROPA, DPIAs, TOMs, Assets, Asset Groups, Documents & Policies, Retention & Deletion, Legitimate Interests, Meetings & Activities, Data Collection Points, Assessments) with the right filter pre-applied. From there you can edit, reassign, close or escalate as normal.
• Personal configuration that roams with you. Your tile selection, layout, KPI card list, tab order and lock state are stored against your user account on the server, so you'll see the same dashboard on your laptop, your desktop and any other device you sign in on.
• Company-aware caching. When you switch companies in DPMS, the dashboard's data cache is wiped so you never see another company's figures by accident.

Because the dashboard is purely a view, there's nothing to "save" or "publish" when you're done — your configuration changes are saved automatically the moment you make them. After you've set things up the way you like, just lock it and use it.

Tips & common pitfalls

Tip: If your dashboard looks empty, you've probably turned everything off. Unlock the dashboard, open one of the scope pills (User, Company, or All Companies) and toggle some tiles back on.

Heads up: All Companies tiles only appear when group sharing is enabled at company level. If your company doesn't have sharing turned on, those tiles stay hidden even if your permissions allow them — this is intentional, not a fault.

• Lock first, drag later. If your tiles refuse to move, the dashboard is probably locked. Click the padlock in the top-right corner first, then drag.
• Live vs. cached data. A yellow lightning bolt next to "last updated" means real-time data; an amber clock means the figure comes from a cached background job (calculated within the last 30 seconds). Click a tile's refresh icon to force a fresh fetch for that tile alone.
• Removing a tab doesn't delete data. Tabs are pure configuration. If you remove a tab and want it back, just click the + button at the right end of the tab strip — your previously configured tiles for that element type will still be there.
• Not every chart segment is clickable. Status pies and a handful of priority and deadline bars do navigate you to filtered index pages; broader analytical tiles like funnels and polar charts are for reading only.
• First-time auto layout. The very first time you visit the dashboard, DPMS auto-arranges your tiles into a clean grid. After that, every change you make is yours to keep — your layout won't be re-optimized unless you ask for it with the wand.