Live Boards
1. What it is
Live Boards turns data you already have — Power Tables views, recognition activity, or engagement scores — into visual displays that update automatically. Create ranked lists, stat tiles, gauges, scorecards, status grids, and more, then place them on dashboards, full-screen TVs, or Digital Signage slides.
- Enablement: Live Boards is a pay-as-you-go app billed per active board. An admin enables it from the Apps Marketplace; it is off until then. Archived boards are not billed.
- What it is not: Live Boards displays data from other sources — it does not store its own data. The data itself lives in Power Tables, the Recognitions app, or the Levels & Badges app. If you need to collect or import data first, start with Power Tables.
2. Standing it up
- Go to Apps Marketplace and enable Live Boards. You also need at least one data source enabled:
- Power Tables with at least one table that has a shared saved view, or
- Recognitions, or
- Levels & Badges (for site-level engagement boards).
- Go to Apps → Live Boards → Settings and review the three defaults: signage publishing, default name masking, and AI board suggestions.
- Go to the Boards tab and create your first board. The form asks for a name and a data source; you then add visualizations one at a time from the board editor.
- To let others help build boards, go to Apps → Live Boards → Configure and grant Contributor access to the users who should author boards. Contributors can create, edit, duplicate, and reorder boards and their visualizations, but cannot change app settings, manage embed tokens, or archive/restore boards.
- Confirm it worked: the board should appear on the Boards tab for members whose audience group includes them. Place a visualization on a dashboard from the board editor to put it on the home page.
- Optionally, load sample data from Settings to see nine pre-built boards covering different chart types, masking modes, goal bands, and a screen rotation — useful for exploring the app before connecting real data.
Silent-until-paired: a Power Tables source requires both the table and a shared saved view. If the table has only personal views, the board-creation form will refuse with an explanation. Create a shared view on the table first.
Native sources work without Power Tables. If your workspace has Recognitions or Levels & Badges enabled but not Power Tables, you can still create boards — the source picker offers only the sources your workspace has licensed.
3. How it fits together
Board — a named container that points at one data source and holds up to 12 visualizations. A board is either Active or Archived. The data source is locked once the first visualization is added, because every visualization’s column references point into that source. To switch sources, duplicate the board onto a different table — the duplicate re-resolves columns by name and reports any it could not match.
Visualization — a single reading of the board’s data, drawn as one of 13 chart types: ranked list, table, chart, movers, status grid, share (100% bar), calendar, stat, line, gauge, streak, pace, or scorecard (2–4 metrics side by side). Each visualization is its own widget — it can be placed individually on a dashboard, given its own audience group, and watched for alerts independently.
Data source — boards can read from three sources. A Power Tables view is the default; the board binds to a saved view and draws its columns. Recognition boards rank people by recognition metrics (given, received, points). Engagement boards rank sites by engagement score — entities are locations, not people, which makes them safe for a public screen.
Masking — every board that ranks people carries a masking policy: Full names, First name last initial, or Anonymized ranks. The policy applies everywhere the board renders — dashboards, mobile, TV screens, public embeds, and signage. The workspace default is Full names; each board can override it. Engagement boards rank sites, not people, so the masking policy does not apply to them.
Playlist — a named, ordered rotation of boards for screens that cycle through several boards automatically. Each playlist has its own shareable token URL and dwell interval. A playlist can hold up to 20 boards.
Snapshot — the platform captures each active board’s value once per night. These snapshots power the history page, sparklines, movers, streak, and pace visualizations. Boards with intraday capture enabled are also snapshotted hourly. Intraday snapshots are retained for 7 days; daily snapshots are kept indefinitely.
4. Running it
Creating a board
- On the Boards tab, click New board.
- Name the board, choose a data source type and (for Power Tables) pick a table. The form auto-selects the table’s first shared view; you can change it later in board settings.
- The board editor opens. Click Add visualization and choose a chart type — the form shows only the fields that chart type needs.
- Add more visualizations as needed (up to 12 per board). Drag to reorder them.
- If AI suggestions are enabled, click Suggest with AI in the creation drawer. The AI reads column names and types to recommend a visualization — no row data leaves your workspace.
Placing a board on a dashboard
From the board editor, each visualization row has a Place on dashboard control. Select a dashboard group and the visualization is appended to that group’s draft layout. This requires business-admin access (not just board-contributor access), because it publishes content to that dashboard group’s home page.
Boards also appear in the platform’s global search when the app is enabled — searching by board name links directly to the board.
Presenting on a TV or kiosk
Open a board and click Present to show it full-screen with no app chrome. By default the board displays as a grid of all its visualizations. Add ?rotate=1 to cycle through them one at a time (default 30 seconds per board). The page refreshes itself automatically — no JavaScript is required on the display device.
For a screen that should never need a sign-in, use the external embed flow: in a visualization’s settings, enable External embed to generate a token-based URL. Anyone with that URL can view the board without authenticating. The board’s masking policy still applies.
Setting up a screen rotation (playlist)
- Go to the Playlists tab (visible to contributors and admins).
- Click New playlist, name it, choose boards, set the dwell interval, and set the order.
- To share publicly, an admin enables External sharing on the playlist, which generates a token URL. Copy it to the TV’s browser. The screen rotates through the boards automatically.
Each board in the rotation must also have its own external embed enabled — the playlist does not bypass the per-board opt-in. The dwell interval is clamped between 15 seconds and 10 minutes.
Watching a board for alerts
Members can follow individual visualizations from the board page. Scalar visualizations (stat, gauge, line, streak, pace) with a goal target evaluate automatically: when the value crosses from on-target to off-target, followers are notified, and again when it recovers.
Rank-entry notifications are separate: the nightly snapshot compares today’s top 3 with yesterday’s, and members who entered the top 3 are notified.
Reviewing board health (Analytics)
Admins see an Analytics tab that answers four operational questions no other surface does:
- Source health — which boards are bound to a source that no longer resolves (archived table, deleted view, disabled source app). These boards show “source unavailable” on every dashboard, mobile list, and TV they appear on, with nothing else alerting the admin.
- Snapshot health — whether the nightly snapshot job is running and which boards have gaps in their daily history.
- Public exposure — which individual boards and which playlists are currently reachable by anyone holding a public URL. The token values are never shown — only the count and the board names.
- Reach — where boards are placed (dashboards, playlists, signage), who watches them, and which active boards are not used anywhere.
Weekly digest
An opt-in weekly email digest is available. It is off by default — users opt in through their notification preferences under the Live Boards digest category. The digest runs Monday mornings and shows the boards the recipient can access, with followed boards listed first.
5. Settings
All settings are at Apps → Live Boards → Settings. Admin access required.
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Show boards on Digital Signage | On | Tenant-wide switch. When off, no boards appear in signage playlists regardless of each board’s own publish-to-signage flag. |
| Default name masking for new boards | Full names | The masking policy pre-selected when creating a new board. Choices: Full names, First name last initial, Anonymized ranks. Each board can override this. |
| Enable AI board suggestions | On | Shows or hides the “Suggest with AI” button in the board creation drawer. When enabled, column names and types are sent to the LLM to suggest a visualization — no row data is sent. |
Wallboard branding
Three additional settings control the appearance of full-screen and public-embed surfaces:
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Show logo | Off | Displays a logo on wallboard surfaces (present mode and public embeds). |
| Logo | None | An image from the Asset Library. System, business, and app-level library assets are available. |
| Accent colour | None (built-in dark palette) | A hex colour value (e.g. #1b6ef3) used as the accent on full-screen surfaces. |
Archiving and restoring boards
Admins can archive a board from the board editor or the boards list. Archiving removes the board and all its visualizations from every dashboard, mobile view, and screen at once. Archived boards appear under the Archived status filter on the Boards tab. Restoring a board brings it back to all the surfaces it was placed on.
Boards are never permanently deleted — archive is the only removal path. Duplicating a board copies all its visualizations but turns off signage publishing and external embed on every copy, so a duplicate never appears on a live screen by surprise.
6. More help
- Live Boards FAQ — specific setup and operating questions, limits, and troubleshooting.
- Power Tables App Overview — where the data behind most boards comes from.
- Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Live Boards from these articles.