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The Dashboard

The Dashboard is the first page you see after signing in. It always shows an overview of your Boards, Channels and recent activity, and while you're still setting up it also shows a compact setup progress pill you can expand for step-by-step guidance.

The setup pill

Until your organisation has a live board, an active Announcement, a Channel and a second team member, a "Setup: x of 4" pill sits at the top of the Dashboard. Click it to expand the checklist:

  • Pick a board: complete once you have created at least one board.
  • Add content: complete once you have at least one active announcement.
  • Show it on a Channel: complete once you have added at least one Channel.
  • Invite your team: complete once a second user exists on your organisation, on top of you.

Each step's button takes you straight to where you complete it: creating a board, adding an announcement, adding a Channel, or inviting a teammate. If your progress fails to load, a "Try again" link appears so you can retry without refreshing the page. Once all four steps are done, the pill disappears — the overview below is all you need from then on.

The overview

Alongside the setup pill, the Dashboard always shows your estate at a glance:

  • Channels online and Channels offline: click either to jump to the Channels list already filtered to that status. Before you have any Channels, this becomes a single "Add a Channel" prompt instead.
  • Boards live: published boards out of your total boards. Click to open Boards, or "Create a board" if you have none yet.
  • Announcements live: click to open your active announcements, or "Add an announcement" if you have none yet.

Below the figures, Recent changes lists the last boards, announcements and Channels that were added or updated, each with what it was and when.

Sites & map

Next to Recent changes, the Dashboard has a fixed "Sites & map" panel. On the Starter plan and above it shows a live preview of your sites, coloured by whether their Channels are online, offline or mixed, with a link through to the full Sites map. On the Free plan the panel shows a greyed, locked preview with an "Upgrade to Starter" button instead — the map itself only unlocks once you upgrade.

Channel health

"Channels online" and "Channels offline" count the Channels currently checked in with NowBoard. A Channel refreshes its status automatically; if one you expect to be online shows as offline, check that its player device is powered on and connected before assuming there is a fault.

Every clickable figure, checklist step and the map panel's own link lead to the page that owns that data: boards to Boards, announcements to Content > Announcements, Channels to Channels, and the map preview to Sites map. Use them as shortcuts rather than the sidebar when you are following up on something the Dashboard has just flagged.