Creating a Live Dashboard from Text Entries
Asked by Kim Trask:

Hello, I am curious if any of you have a working use case where fields (like, perhaps, those defined in a Page Properties macro table) are live and a dashboard (like, perhaps, in a Page Properties Report macro view on a summary page) stay in constant communication such that the latest change to the field is displayed on both ends?

Users would like to make programmatic assignments while the totality of their group's workload is in-view. These are no date-driven assignments, otherwise I would use Jira.

I have tested Live:Dropdown List, Live:Table, Live:Text Area, and Live:Text Input macros as individual fields within a page properties table. The behavior I see, that makes this approach DOA, is that if I change the content of a field from the Page Properties Report view on the summary page the entry is pushed to the Page Properties macro, but it does not stay in-view on the Page Properties Report macro side if I navigate off the Page Properties Report page. The field appears empty on the Page Properties Report page until I click on the field again, then the content is visible only until the next time I navigate from the page.

I can force the data to stay if I go to the Page Properties macro page, open the storage format, and click apply, but this is an untenable ask for our user base to enable content view stability.

Any of you know a way to make a content dashboard live?


Answers:
author: Stiltsoft Support
body: Hello [@Kim Trask](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4865450) ,

You could probably look at our [Handy Macros for Confluence](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1214971/handy-macros-for-confluence-formatting-and-interactive-ui?tab=overview&hosting=server&utm_source=atlassian-community&utm_medium=answer&utm_campaign=handy-macros-traffic-sources&utm_vendorID=1216111&utm_content=creating_live_dashboard).

It has many macros to benefit from. For your use case you can use [Handy Status](https://docs.stiltsoft.com/hmfc/server-dc/handy-status/how-to-use-handy-status) and [Handy Date](https://docs.stiltsoft.com/hmfc/server-dc/handy-date/how-to-use-handy-date). Handy Status is great to create dropdowns and update values in the view mode. Handy Date is an easy way to change the date on the fly. Both of them work properly within the Page Properties and the Page Properties Report macros.

![ppr.gif](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/192134iE50EBDF909A43DA4/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ppr.gif")


author: Darja Majninger _K15t_
body: Hi [@Kim Trask](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4865450)

you might want to check out our new app [Orderly Databases.](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Marketplace-Apps-Integrations/Announcing-Orderly-Replace-Confluence-Page-Properties-with/ba-p/1915196)I think it would be a great fit for your use case.

You can create a database for your assignments and choose from various field types like text, related Confluence pages or selectable items (for example for the status) to display important meta data for each assignment.

Then you can use the Orderly Database macro to create a dashboard in form of a table on any page you like. This table can also be filtered by specific values of every entry, therefore it is very customizable.

Finally, you can use the Orderly Entry macro to display meta data for a specific entry, in your case an assignment. It is very similar to Page Properties Report but the fields of macro are dynamic, i.e. if you change them in the database or dashboard they are automatically changed for the entry macro too and vice versa.

Cheers,  
Darja


author: Kim Trask
body: [@Stiltsoft Support](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4550250) thank you for your feedback. We are considering trying out the Handy Macros for Confluence suite.

comments: author: Stiltsoft Support
body: [@Kim Trask](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4865450), thank you for your interest! Feel free to contact me should you have any questions.


Tags: confluence-server

server