Overview#
A solution builder preparing a new supervisor dashboard needs to add three custom widgets, update the title on two existing ones, and rearrange the layout before a Monday morning briefing. Without a unified workspace, those tasks involve navigating separate admin pages, editing JSON configuration files, and hoping the preview matches what deploys. Widget Management Workspace consolidates the entire workflow, from widget catalogue administration through layout composition and dashboard settings, into one coherent surface.
Platform administrators and solution builders in government technology, law enforcement, and enterprise operations rely on this workspace to manage the full lifecycle of dashboard elements without bouncing between disconnected routes or maintaining parallel documentation.
Key Features#
- Widget Inventory Management: Browse and maintain the available widget catalogue from a single operational view. Administrators can see all widgets, their current metadata, and their deployment status without switching between admin sections.
- Create and Edit Metadata Flows: Configure widget title, description, type, and related metadata used across dashboard compositions. Consistent naming and descriptions reduce operator confusion when building new dashboards.
- Layout Composition Workspace: Arrange widgets into dashboard layouts through a builder surface designed for operational composition work. The workspace handles layout state directly rather than requiring manual JSON editing.
- Dashboard Settings Management: Update dashboard-level configuration alongside widget-level metadata in one place, eliminating the common mistake of updating a widget without updating the dashboard that contains it.
- Smart-Field Assisted Metadata Entry: Applies smart-field assistance to text and metadata workflows where inline suggestion improves configuration speed and consistency, catching common naming variations before they proliferate.
- Canonical Workspace Routing: Consolidates the active widget-management workflow into one route rather than splitting users across overlapping builder pages, reducing the time spent navigating to find the right admin surface.
Use Cases#
- Operational Dashboard Composition: Platform teams create new dashboard layouts for mission, analyst, or supervisory use without manual JSON editing or multi-step navigation.
- Widget Catalogue Administration: Administrators review existing widgets, update metadata, and remove naming ambiguity in titles or descriptions before wider deployment.
- Template Refinement: Solution builders test and revise layouts and settings as new workbenches or persona dashboards are introduced during platform upgrades.
- Governed Configuration Updates: Teams make controlled metadata changes using assisted text-entry workflows that reduce naming inconsistency and incomplete descriptions across a large widget library.
Integration#
- Widget inventory and configuration services in the web application backed by PostgreSQL
- Shared dashboard shell and builder workspace components
- Dashboard settings and layout state management with RBAC-enforced access controls
- Smart Fields for configuration and metadata text entry with consistency checking
Open Standards#
- GraphQL (June 2018 Specification): all widget inventory, metadata, layout, and dashboard configuration operations are exposed as GraphQL queries, mutations, and subscriptions, with field naming following the GraphQL camelCase convention throughout.
- JSON Schema: widget configuration definitions are authored, stored, and validated against JSON Schema documents; the schema service both generates schemas from sample data and enforces them at runtime before widget persistence.
- OAuth 2.0 (RFC 6749): datasource connections attached to widgets support OAuth 2.0 bearer-token authentication alongside API-key and HTTP Basic flows, enabling widget data sources to interoperate with standards-compliant external APIs.
- WebSocket Protocol (RFC 6455): real-time dashboard updates and live investigation-progress events are delivered to the workspace over persistent WebSocket connections managed by a tenant-scoped broadcast and subscribe layer.
- ISO 8601 / RFC 3339: all widget and dashboard timestamps (created, updated, approved, last-used) are serialised as RFC 3339-compliant ISO 8601 strings, ensuring interoperable datetime exchange across the platform.
- RFC 4122 (UUID): widget identifiers, dashboard panel IDs, and subscription correlation tokens are Version 4 UUIDs, providing collision-resistant, globally unique references without central coordination.
- W3C WCAG 2.2 / WAI-ARIA: as a browser-based administration surface used by government and law-enforcement operators, the workspace targets WCAG 2.2 conformance and applies WAI-ARIA roles and attributes to builder and catalogue components.
Last Reviewed: 2026-03-24 Last Updated: 2026-04-14