Auto refresh Operations Dashboard

[PADEP_GIS]

We have been using Operations Dashboard in an Emergency Management situation and one thing that we cannot do that is a problem, is have the dashboard refresh automatically.  I know you set up a refresh interval on the map services in the underlying web map and these are honored in the dashboard widgets/tools, but I'm talking about a mechanism to refresh the OVERALL dashboard.  For example, I was asked to add a new element to the dashboard mid-activation.  I then had to tell all of the folks running the large screens to manually refresh the dashboard in order to see the changes.  This is unacceptable as there is no way to track or know who has the app open and it has been causing confusion because then different folks are seeing different version of the app.  And in a dynamic and always changing event, a dynamic refresh on the whole dashboard, and all of the tools NEEDS to be implemented.

[PeterGrüninger]

Great idea, this is absolutely needed!

Especially if you use dashboard in conjunction with GeoEvent Server, you have highly dynamically changing data. I would like to show changing states and numbers on the dashboard every time the StreamService updates features on the map.

At the moment there is no satisfying solution and doing a refresh manually is absolutely inacceptable.

[AndrewE]

Have you considered downloading a browser extension to auto refresh the tab that the operations dashboard is running in?.  I know Chrome has extensions that will do this.  It's not a good fix for a large scale deployment but it might be a decent workaround if you were only managing a few large displays.

[LarryMasters]

I used the auto refresh extension in Chrome to refresh a dashboard that showed my SCADA system. Worked like a charm. Would be nice if you did not have to have another variable in the equation though.

[PeterGrüninger]

Thanks for your suggestion.

I think for a more or less controlled environment this could be the solution. 

In our case, we do have two additional basic conditions:

• A wide audience with no control over the used browsers (I know, not the typical dashboard scenario)
• GeoEvent-Server with StreamService. We want to use the advantage of the StreamLayer-technology and just update when an event occurs, not just every 4 or 5 seconds.

Dashboard is really cool to bring data and some statistics to a wide audience, not only for "real" dashboard scenarios. From my point of view support of actions is a bit of incomplete.

The lack of  a fully supported "OnRefresh-Action" on the map (not pan or zoom) seems to be another one.

[AndrewE]

I have been having trouble with with elements refreshing in chrome. I have an 18 second refresh rate and after 10 - 60 mins individual elements will start to lose their connection to the data and never recover unless I refresh the entire browser window.  Surprisingly this does not seem to be an issue in internet explorer but like you I don't have control over the browsers used  

[Amanda__Huber]

Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS‌

Agreed, this is a VERY needed functionality on Operations Dashboard. 

Since Ops Dashboard uses (what I believe to be) a cached display,  it does not update the data in the dashboard automatically (as say a web map with a refresh interval would) and requires user intervention to manually refresh (F5 or Browser refresh). We are trying to avoid user intervention if we can since again this is a shared kiosk and avoid relying on a third party extension. 

Has the Ops Dashboard team thought about implementing incremental refresh in Ops Dashboard to stay true to being a ‘Real Time Solution’?

[JamesAkisanmi]

I agree 100 percent. This functionality is very much needed. Has there been an update to this yet?

[Amanda__Huber]

James Akisanmi‌, 

Update- After speaking with the Ops Dashboard team, there is a partial workaround for this issue. If you would like your data to update dynamically within the dashboard you can set up a refresh interval on a Feature Layer via item details> visualization> refresh interval setting under layer> save visualization. As for tables I believe the same can be done under the item details> settings> Cache Control settings> save (this workflow has not been confirmed yet though). That being said if you would like your dashboard elements to be updated (after administrative changes such as moved elements) the user will need to manually refresh the page. 

I agree the workaround explained above is not intuitive and is fairly cumbersome and the Ops Dashboard team does need to create a more intuitive workaround, but I hope this helps your workflow in the meantime as it has helped mine. 

Best, 

Amanda

[JamesAkisanmi]

Thank you so much, Amanda! It helped it alot