Custom dashboards: build, share and filter your own view
Last updated: November 2, 2026
Custom dashboards put the charts you check most on one page, set up once with the right team, time range and filters. Find them under Insights → Productivity → Custom dashboards.
Why it matters
For managers: stop rebuilding the same filters every week. Your team's agreed numbers sit on one page.
For a team review: everyone reads the same charts in the same order, so the conversation is about the numbers, not about finding them.
For leaders: one dashboard can be viewed for any team by switching the team in its filter bar.
How it works
Widgets. A dashboard is a grid of widgets you can drag to reorder. Each widget is shown as one of three types under Display as:
Widget | What it shows |
|---|---|
Groupable Time Series | A metric over time, which you can split by a breakdown such as team |
Metric Card | A single number for the time range |
Callout | Your own text, such as the team's agreement or how to read the page |
Some metrics support only some widget types; the others are greyed out.
Metric settings. For each metric widget you choose:
Metric and Aggregation, for example Median (p50) or Trimmed Average
Time range: Last 7 days, Last 2 weeks, Last 4 weeks, Last 3 months, Last 6 months, Last 12 months, or a custom range
Time granularity: how the points are grouped, such as monthly or quarterly
Population: the teams or people the metric is filtered to
Breakdown and Extra filters, where the metric supports them
Shift time range: moves the widget's range back 90 days, for metrics that need time to settle, such as Est. Bug Density
Filtering while you view. The filter bar at the top lets you override the team or person, the time range and the group by for every widget at once. Your overrides are kept in your browser and in the page link, so you can share the filtered view. They don't change the saved dashboard or what others see.
Who can see and change a dashboard
Creating and opening dashboards needs Manage Custom Dashboards. By default, Owners, Admins and Managers have it. Team Leads and Team Members don't, so they can't open any custom dashboard, even a shared one, until an admin adds the permission to their group.
New dashboards are private. Under Who can access this dashboard?, a new dashboard is set to Only me. Nobody else can open it, not even an admin. A lock icon marks private dashboards in the list.
Sharing is the creator's choice. Only the creator can switch a dashboard to your organization. Then everyone with Manage Custom Dashboards can view it.
Each viewer sees their own data. A shared dashboard shows each viewer data based on their own permissions, so two people can see different numbers on the same widget.
Only the creator can edit or delete it. Anyone who can view a dashboard can Duplicate it. The copy is named "(copy)", belongs to the person who made it, and starts with the same sharing setting as the original.
Setup
Go to Insights → Productivity → Custom dashboards and click Create dashboard.
Enter a Name and Description, and choose Who can access this dashboard?: Only me or your organization.
Click Add Metric, pick the metric, choose how to Display as, and set the time range, Population and any filters. Click Add Text for a Callout.
Drag widgets into the order you want, then click Save.
To share a private dashboard later, open it, choose Edit details from the dashboard menu, change Who can access this dashboard?, and click Save. Only the creator sees this option.
Things to know
No dashboard is visible to everyone by default. "Your organization" means people with Manage Custom Dashboards. To share numbers with a whole team, a custom report subscription or a team Slack digest may reach more people.
Nobody can edit someone else's dashboard. If its creator leaves or is unavailable, duplicate it and keep your copy up to date.
Overrides are per viewer. Changing the team in the filter bar doesn't change the widgets' saved Population.
Worked example: a manager builds a dashboard for her team review. She adds a Callout with the team's agreement, a Metric Card for PR cycle time (Median, Last 4 weeks, Population: her team), and a Groupable Time Series for PRs merged per week over the last 3 months. She leaves it on Only me while she builds it, then switches it to the organization. Her director, a Manager, opens it and picks another team in the filter bar to compare; the director's view resets only for him, and the manager's saved dashboard is unchanged. A tech lead on the team can't open it until an admin adds Manage Custom Dashboards to the Team Leads group.
Related articles
See your team's numbers, and review them together
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Need help?
Contact your Span account team or reach out to support@span.app.
Before you publish (internal: delete this section)
Test a shared dashboard with a Team Lead account to confirm they can't open it without Manage Custom Dashboards.
Confirm the time granularity options in the app; the code showed monthly, quarterly and yearly, and there may be more.
Product question for Henry: should viewing a shared dashboard need a separate, broader permission than creating one? Today Team Members can't see shared dashboards at all.
Customer reports of slow repository filters (SPAN-12436) affect Extra filters too. Add a note if it isn't fixed by publish.