Take the Dashboard Tile Challenge! ‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌📋‌

[Michal_Gebacki]

Welcome back, Dynatrace Community!

Welcome to the last Community Challenge in its current shape, as preparing an essential overhaul and exciting changes in the formula from June! But before it happens, let's enjoy the edition we've prepared for this month, which is targeting a topic well-known for many of Dynatrace Community users: Dashboards!

As we all know, friendly design, readability, and accessibility are the key fundaments of a good dashboard. Share with us the best and the worst examples of Dashboard tiles you're familiar with! It could be a single example in both categories, but feel free to share with us more of these! Let's try to find a pattern - what are the essential characteristics of a good dashboard tile?  👀

Benefits of taking Community Challenges!

👉 Every participant receives a "Dashboard Tile"

👉 You will also get +100 bonus points for extra activity

👉 Engage with others and have fun!

[MaximilianoML]

Nice topic, as usually!

For me, a good dashboard tile should make things obvious at a glance. It should not make the user stop and decode what they are looking at.

I usually look for three simple things:

1. What is happening?
2. Is it expected or abnormal?
3. Where should I look next?

When a tile answers those questions clearly, it is doing its job well.

On the other hand, the worst tiles are often the ones that show data without really telling a story. A big number without context, a chart that is too busy, or a vague title can make a dashboard harder to use instead of more helpful.

A dashboard should guide the eye and reduce effort. The best tiles feel almost natural to read.

I’ve already built several dashboards, and there is always plenty of room to miss something. Most of the time, we do not get everything right on the first try. There is almost always something to adjust, improve, or rethink, and that is part of the process. The important thing is to stay aware of it and keep learning with every iteration.

[ChadTurner]

🎯Dashboard Design: It’s All About Intent

Dashboard design really comes down to two things: who the audience is and what action you want them to take.

A great example of this is the Dynatrace UFO. It’s incredibly simple—just a rotating set of colors—but it’s highly effective:

• 💚Green = No issues
• 🟡 Yellow = Infrastructure problem
• 🟣 Purple = Service problem
• 🔴Red = Application problem

Why does it work? Because at a glance—whether you’re up close or across the room—you immediately understand the state of your environment. Its purpose is clear: grab your attention and direct it to what matters most, right now.

---

🔍Apply That Simplicity to Your Dashboards

You can bring that same philosophy into your own dashboards:

• Let Dynatrace drive color automatically via Davis AI
• Or define custom thresholds that shift tiles from green → yellow → red
• Use color intentionally to signal health, not just decorate visuals

But beyond color, the content matters even more.

---

📊Focus on What Actually Matters

A dashboard filled with:

• 40 overlapping lines
• CPU, memory, disk metrics
  …often creates more confusion than clarity.

Instead, shift your focus to:

• KPIs that reflect business impact
  • Number of calls
  • Error rates
  • User experience metrics (LCP, VCT)
  • Active user counts
• SLO-driven views that tie performance to outcomes

The goal is simple:
👉Someone should be able to glance at your dashboard and immediately know:

• Everything is healthy (green)
• or
• Something needs attention (red) — go investigate

---

🧭 Build, Refine, Simplify

The reality is: no two dashboards are the same.

What works for one team might not work for another—and that’s okay.

Start with your vision:

1. Build what you think you need
2. Use it in real scenarios
3. Refine it
4. Remove what you thought you needed but never use

Over time, you’ll naturally evolve toward a clean, purpose-driven dashboard that delivers value at a glance.

---

🔥Final Thought

The best dashboards don’t try to show everything—
They show the right things, at the right time, in the simplest way possible.


(Yes it wrote this, Copilot helped me turn my novel on dashboards, into something readable 😂)

[MaximilianoML]

I agree with you both! 

A funny thing I noticed now that AI-written text is everywhere: the icons, the perfectly polished structure, and especially the sudden rise of the “—”.

Most people do not even know how to type one, yet somehow it is showing up in every other post. 🤣

[ChadTurner]

Sometimes I fall into the rabbit hole when typing about Dynatrace, and I always just toss it into copilot to "provide clarity" to what I wrote, then i supply the reader with my thesis and - a statement "I know I might have gone to deep into the weeds, so i asked copilot to simplify it" 😂

[AntonioSousa]

Interesting topic!
I hate the simple traffic lights tiles that everyone of my clients want. When I tell them that they have to define exactly what a green/yellow/red really means, is when the fun begins! But it gets bad when a problem happens and it's green, or when it's red but no one is complaining 🤣

One of the best dashboards in the last years is definitely the Christmas tree that I referenced here. Besides being totally made by a client of ours, it really conveys a quick visibility at the service level, while being appealing, especially in the Christmas season:

In the new dashboards, I really love the "bubble map" tiles. There are specific for conveying geographical information. I have them in several clients, so they can see metric information displayed on a map. The following example shows data layered across several geographical locations in Portugal, for a quick perception of what is happening:

[victoria]

@ChadTurner did a really great job with points about good dashboard tiles.. but I have notes on some bad ones.

• Definitely I have looked at tiles before and just thought "what does this even represent?" That's pretty bad. Even if the tiles are representing something I am unfamiliar with, I should have an idea at a quick glance of what it represents at least.
• Tiles showing TOO MUCH. You can usually do it in multiple tiles and make it easier to understand. When there is too much to look at, you don't know what to focus on and don't really take anything in.

Could find some examples but not sure I want to roast anyone like that 😂 Maybe I'll have to make my own dashboard of "examples of bad tiles"