Overview
Harness Dashboards give you a single place to track what matters most across your projects — deployments, builds, costs, services, and more. Each dashboard is made up of widgets that pull in your data and display it as charts, tables, numbers, or gauges. You can build dashboards yourself, or let the AI assistant create them for you.
What you can do with Dashboards
- Visualize data your way: Display information as single numbers, tables, donut charts, gauges, or time-series charts (line, bar, area, scatter).
- Arrange widgets freely: Drag and resize widgets on a 12-column grid to organize your dashboard layout.
- Query your data: Use Harness Query Language (HQL) to pull data from events, entities, metrics, and views.
- Build queries visually or in code: Use a form-based builder for common queries, or write HQL directly for full control.
- Filter and drill down: Apply filters at the dashboard or widget level to focus on specific data.
- Use AI to get started faster: Describe what you want to see in plain language, and the AI assistant creates the dashboard or widget for you. You can also use it to ask questions, list pipelines, or analyze errors. Go to AI-assisted dashboards for details.
Dashboards landing page
When you open Dashboards, the landing page shows three sections:
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AI chat panel: A chat assistant on the left side of the page where you can type requests in plain language, use quick actions like List pipelines or Analyze Pipeline Errors, and access your chat history and settings. Go to AI-assisted dashboards for details.
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Dashboards by Harness: Pre-built, read-only dashboards that are ready to use. Harness provides three out-of-the-box dashboards:
- DORA Dashboard — Tracks the four DORA metrics: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and mean time to restore.
- Services Dashboard — Shows service activity including total services, production and non-production deployments, most active services, failure rates, and deployment duration.
- Deployments Dashboard — Provides deployment volume, frequency, failure rates, duration, and status breakdowns across projects and pipelines.
Go to Create a dashboard for a full description of each pre-built dashboard and its widgets.
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All Dashboards: A searchable, filterable list of every dashboard in your account. You can search by name, filter by tags or owner, pin your favorites, sort the list, and manage dashboards using the three-dot menu (pin, update tags, clone, or delete). Go to Create a dashboard for details.
Widget types
Each widget displays data in a specific way. Choose the type that fits the information you want to show.
| Widget type | What it shows | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Metric | A single number, with an optional label (for example, "1,234 deployments") | Show a count, total, or summary value at a glance |
| Table | Rows and columns of data with pagination | Display detailed records or individual entries |
| Donut | A circular chart divided into segments | Show how a total breaks down into categories (for example, success vs. failure) |
| Gauge | A dial with color-coded zones (green, yellow, red) | Show where a value falls within a range, such as health scores or SLA compliance |
| Cartesian | A chart with X and Y axes (line, bar, column, area, or scatter) | Show trends over time or compare values across categories |
Go to Create widgets to learn how to configure each type, write queries, and customize display settings.
Dashboard layout
Dashboards use a 12-column grid to arrange widgets. Each widget takes up a rectangular area defined by its width (in columns) and height (in row units).
Size limits
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Total grid columns | 12 |
| Minimum widget width | 3 columns |
| Maximum widget width | 12 columns (full page width) |
| Minimum widget height | 1 row unit |
| Maximum widget height | 20 row units |
| Maximum widgets per dashboard | 24 |
Default widget sizes
New widgets start at a default size. You can resize them after adding them.
| Widget type | Default width | Default height |
|---|---|---|
| Metric | 3 columns | 3 row units |
| Gauge | 3 columns | 3 row units |
| Donut | 6 columns | 6 row units |
| Cartesian (line, bar, area, scatter) | 6 columns | 6 row units |
| Table | 12 columns (full width) | 8 row units |
View a dashboard
Select a dashboard name from the list to open it. The dashboard opens in view mode, where you can see live data but cannot make changes.
In view mode:
- Widgets load automatically: Each widget runs its query and shows the latest results.
- Header information: The top of the dashboard displays the title, subtitle, creation date, and last updated date.
- Refresh data: To reload all widget data without leaving the page, open the actions dropdown in the header and select Refresh.
To make changes, select Edit to switch to edit mode. Go to Create a dashboard for details on editing.
Tips for effective dashboards
- Keep each dashboard focused. Build each dashboard around a single topic or question. "Service Health" or "Weekly Build Metrics" is more useful than one dashboard that tries to cover everything.
- Use descriptive names. Name dashboards and widgets so anyone can understand what they show at a glance. "Pipeline Failures (Last 7 Days)" is better than "Dashboard 1."
- Aim for 6 to 12 widgets. Too many widgets make the page slow and hard to read.
- Group related widgets together. Place widgets about the same topic next to each other on the grid.
- Tag your dashboards. Use tags like "CI", "production", or "platform-team" to organize dashboards by team, service, or environment.
- Pin dashboards you check often. Pinned dashboards appear at the top of the list when you select the pin icon.
- Clone instead of starting from scratch. If a dashboard already exists that is close to what you need, clone it and adjust.
Next steps
- Create a dashboard — Build your first dashboard or explore pre-built ones.
- Create widgets — Configure widget types, write queries, and set up filters.
- AI-assisted dashboards — Generate dashboards and widgets using plain language.
- Harness Query Language (HQL) — Learn the full query syntax.