OP5 Monitor - Dashboards - How to copy dashboards between users

In OP5 Monitor version 7.2.6, Sharable Dashboards were introduced. There is also a how-to guide that features a Python script to clone multiple dashboards to another user.

This how-to guide, however, goes more involved in what happens when you copy a dashboard from one user to another. We include here some extended features that also delete the target user's dashboard.

Step-by-step guide

Preconditions

1. Start with a preconfigured dashboard that will be propagated to users;
2. You need to remove the existing dashboard for the user before copying the new one. This must be done after the upgrade to 7.2.6, since the database layout has changed;
3. Make sure that none of the users to whom you will be propagating the dashboards are logged in;
4. Have a look at the database for dashboards:

dash-copy.sql

 # mysql merlin  mysql> select * from dashboards;  This will give you a long list of usernames with corresponding dashboards:  +----+-----------------------------------+--------------+--------+  | id | name | username | layout |  +----+-----------------------------------+--------------+--------+  | 1 | Dashboard for <user> | <user> | 1,3,2 |  | 2 | Dashboard for reports | reports | 3,2,1 |  | 3 | Dashboard for readonly | readonly | 3,2,1 |  [..] 

Steps

1. Save this information to a text file for later use.

   ID-Column

   Notice the column 'id', this is very important to have to be able to delete the user's dashboard from two tables: 'dashboards' and 'dashboard_widgets'.

2. To remove the current dashboard for the user 'readonly', execute the following:

   removing after copying

   mysql> DELETE FROM dashboard_widgets WHERE dashboard_id = '3'; mysql> DELETE FROM dashboards where id = '3'; 

3. Repeat the procedure above for all users that should have a predefined dashboard.

4. Download the custom script that you can find at the bottom of this article in zip format (contains copy-dashboard.php). It has been developed for this process to your op5 server

5. Edit the script and change the parameters below, in this example I will copy the dashboard from the user '<user>' as the source user:

   // Name of the dashboard to copy to the users  $dashboard_name = 'Dashboard for <user>';  // Name of the user that owns (created) the dashboard  $dashboard_user = '<user>'; 

6. Use the aforementioned list of users that was saved from the database to insert into the array below:

   // List of usernames to copy the dashboard to,  // could be fetched from multiple locations  $target_users = array('reports, 'readonly'); 

7. Once you have double-checked the target and the source users, execute the script:

   # php copy-dashboard.php 

8. Log into OP5 Monitor with one of the target users that were specified as a target in the script to verify.