Dashboard overview

The dashboard is where Maelo opens. It is a board you build yourself out of cards, called widgets, each one a live view of a different part of your business: what is on today, who is waiting on a reply, what has come in this month. Nothing on it needs refreshing. The numbers move as the work does.

It starts completely empty, and that is deliberate. A dashboard full of cards you did not choose, all reading zero, tells you nothing. You decide what earns a place on your screen.

The bar at the top greets you by name and changes with the hour, so it reads Good morning, Good afternoon or Good evening. Next to it sits the current temperature and conditions where you are, which is more useful than it sounds when half your day is a walk-in.

On the right is the ⋮ menu. Everything that changes your dashboard lives behind it: adding widgets, rearranging them, changing your background, switching between light and dark, and re-running the guided tour. On a phone the same menu sits beside a burger button that opens your sidebar.

Under the greeting, until you have finished setting up, is the Finish Setting Up Your Profile card. It carries a progress count and a tile per job, and each tile jumps you straight to the right settings panel. Once every tile is done or dismissed the card removes itself. See your first week.

The first time you land here, Maelo says hello and offers a tour. It takes about two minutes and it is a real walk through your own screen: it highlights the actual menu, waits for you to open it, and ends with your first widget on the board.

If you would rather look around by yourself, tap Skip for now. Nothing is held back and the greeting will not reappear. The tour is always waiting under ⋮ as Show me around, and every other page in Maelo has its own guide in the same place.

An empty dashboard shows one button: Add your first widget. That opens the Widget Manager, where widgets are grouped by what they are for, and each one offers a few sizes. Pick a widget, pick a size, and it lands on the board.

Most artists start with three: something that shows what is on today, something that shows new enquiries, and something that shows money. Add more when you miss them rather than in advance. Twelve widgets on one screen is a wall, not a dashboard.

The full catalogue and what each widget shows is in the widget reference. Moving, resizing and removing them is in adding and arranging widgets.

A widget is a window onto a real page, not a second version of it. The card shows you enough to decide whether something needs you now, and clicking through takes you to the screen where the actual work happens.

• •Booking cards open your calendar.
• •Enquiry cards open your requests inbox.
• •Money cards open your financial hub.

A few do their work in place. You can reply to a client from the Messages widget at its largest size, and write a note straight into the Notes widget without going anywhere.

Maelo remembers a separate layout for each device you sign in on. The board you build on a studio monitor stays on that monitor, and your phone keeps its own arrangement. A three-across desktop layout squeezed onto a phone would be unreadable, so it is not forced on you.

Your background and your light or dark preference behave differently. Those follow you. See themes and backgrounds.