Dashboards provide a way to display any kind of data through widgets at different levels:
Concepts and mechanisms describe below apply for both global and project dashboards.
Logged users can create as many dashboards as they need.
Click on Manage dashboards and fill the form to create a new dashboard:
The newly created dashboard will appear immediately in the left navigation bar and and can be customised by adding widgets.
When administrators create a dashboard, they have the ability to share it. This means that this dashboard can be followed by authenticated users and can also be used as a default dashboard. This is done by ticking Shared:
The content of a dashboard can be fully customized.
To change the layout of a dashboard (e.g. three columns instead of two), click on Configure widgets and then pick a layout on the right hand side:
To add a widget, click on Configure widgets. The list of available widgets is shown at the top of the page. Click on Add widget to add the desired widget:
Some widgets can be customized. To change their properties, click on Edit on the desired widget:
To move a widget within a dashboard, click on Configure widgets, then drag & drop the widget:
To remove a widget, click on Configure widgets and then click on Delete:
Click on Manage dashboards to manage available dashboards:
From there you can:
An administrator can customise the list and the content of the default dashboards. The default dashboards are the ones presented to unauthenticated users as well as authenticated users that have not done any customization. This is done by logging in, go to Settings > Configuration > Default dashboards and then select default dashboards to display and their order,
Project dashboards are the entry point when looking at a project. They display an overview of the project data: measures, violations, reviews, etc.
This default dashboard gives an overview of your projects (with widgets like Size, etc.) and its quality (with widgets like Violations, Comments & Duplications, etc.).
From there, you will be able to hunt for the 7 quality flows:
See Duplications for detailed explanation on this quality flow.
See Bad Distribution of Complexity for detailed explanation on this quality flow.
See Spaghetti Design for detailed explanation on this quality flow.
See Lack of Unit Tests for detailed explanation on this quality flow.
See No Coding Standards for detailed explanation on this quality flow.
See Potential Bugs for detailed explanation on this quality flow.
See Not Enough or Too Many Comments for detailed explanation on this quality flow.
Clicking on any measure opens the Measures Drilldown, zooming on the chosen measure.
All the widget above are compatible with differential views to help you focus on quality flows on new code.
Many other widgets are available out of the box, just give them a try. Even more are available through plugins.
The Events widget is used to highlight events occurring during the lifetime of the project. There are two kinds of events:
The Treemap is a generic component that adapts depending on the structure of the project: modules, packages and files.
It shows the components that are at the top level, regardless of the type. It is then possible to drill down into any component to get a view on the component.
Three actions are available in the treemap:
Wherever in a project, it is always possible to access the Measures Drilldown by clicking on a measure:
The component structure is displayed: hierarchy is represented from left (higher) to right (lower).
Components are sorted in a descending way, worst measure for the metric first.
An optimisation mechanism is in place whereby Sonar does not display components with best value for the metric.
By clicking on a file, you will access the Resource Viewer.
Wherever in a project, it is always possible to access the Violations Drilldown through the left menu:
The component structure is displayed: hierarchy is represented from left (higher) to right (lower).
Components are sorted in a descending way, the one with the most violations first.
An optimisation mechanism is in place whereby Sonar does not display components with no violations.
The Violations drilldown is compatible with the differential views mechanism.
By clicking on a file, you will access the Resource Viewer.
Wherever in a project, it is always possible to access the Clouds through the left menu:
On the Top risk tab, the size represents the average complexy by method in the file.
On the Quick wins tab: the size represents the lines of code in the file.
Regarding the color, blue indicates good quality according to Coverage or Rules compliance (depending the selected value in the drop down list), red indicates bad quality.
By clicking on a file, you will access the Resource Viewer.
Wherever in a project, it is always possible to access the Components dashboard through the left menu.
From there you can access the dashboard of a specific component. You will get the same information as for the project but in the scope of the sub-component.
Global dashboards are available at instance level and can be accessed through the menu on the left. One of those global dashboards is set as your home page.
Any widget can be added to a global dashboard. Thus, any kinds of information from a project or from the Sonar instance can be displayed at will.
By default, Sonar is shipped with one global dashboard:
