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Thirdlane

Dashboard

The Dashboard is the first screen you see after signing in to Configuration Manager. It answers the question you actually have at that moment - is anything wrong, and what has happened since I was last here - before you go looking for a particular setting.

Why you would want it

A phone system does not usually fail loudly. A certificate expires, a licence runs down, an emergency route loses its trunk, someone changes a routing table at the end of the day. Each of these is visible somewhere, but only if you thought to look at that screen. The Dashboard puts the handful of things that are worth knowing without being asked in one place, and links each one to the screen where you would fix it.

It is a reporting surface, not a control panel. Nothing on it changes configuration; every item is either a figure or a link.

What you see depends on who you are

There is one Dashboard, and it shows a different set of panels according to the account signed in:

  • A system administrator sees the server itself - resource use, licence, certificates, pending updates - plus call and message totals across all organizations.
  • An organization administrator sees only their own organization: what it contains, how much of its allowance it uses, and its call and message activity.
  • An end user sees their own extension: voicemail waiting, their own calls, and shortcuts to the things they change about their own phone.

You do not choose between them, and there is no setting for it. The panels follow the permissions of the account.

The system administrator view

Configuration findings

The first thing on the screen is what the last System Audit found. If it found anything critical - a problem severe enough that a call does not complete - a red bar names the count, gives the date of that check, and offers a Review link that opens System Audit already filtered to those findings.

If the last run found nothing critical, one quiet line says so, with the date. That line is as useful as the alert: it distinguishes “checked, and clean” from “never checked”, which would otherwise look identical.

The bar reports the last run, not live state, and nothing runs the audit on a schedule. An installation runs it when it finishes, so the figure is current just after an update; if you change configuration afterwards, run the audit again to refresh it.

Server resources

A row of cards across the top: days of uptime, load, memory, CPU and disk. Each turns amber and then red as it approaches a level worth acting on, so you can read the row by colour without reading the numbers.

Licence

One line showing how many extensions are in use against how many the licence allows, as a bar and as a count, alongside the expiry or maintenance date. The date is coloured by how close it is, and a licence with no expiry says so rather than showing a blank.

Calls and messages today

Two panels giving today’s totals - calls broken down into inbound and outbound, messages into sent and received. Each heading is a link to the full records: call detail records and message detail records.

Last 7 days

A bar chart of the week’s call and message volume, so today’s figure has something to be compared against. The chart is drawn on the server and needs nothing from the browser.

Recent changes

The most recent configuration changes, each showing what was changed, in which organization, and how long ago, with a coloured dot for created, updated or deleted. Click any entry, or the heading, to open the full Change Log.

This is the panel that answers “did somebody change something?” when a system that worked yesterday does not today.

System maintenance

Available to the top-level administrator, a row of cards for the things that need doing periodically:

  • Software updates - whether packages are available, and when the check last ran. The card highlights itself when there is something to install.
  • Feature upgrades - platform capabilities that are available but not yet enabled on this system.
  • Certificates - expiry of the web certificate and of the certificate phones are presented with for encrypted SIP. These are checked separately because they are two different files; a web certificate in good order tells you nothing about the one phones see.
  • System information - the installed version and when it was installed.

Each card opens the screen where the work is done.

Standby servers

On a server that is the standby member of a redundant pair, or one that has been retired from a pair, an amber notice appears above everything else saying so and naming where configuration is changed instead. It is said here because the alternative is discovering it when a save is refused.

The organization administrator view

  • Usage - extensions in use against the number the organization is allowed.
  • Summary - how many extensions, phone numbers, menus, hunt groups, queues and agents the organization has.
  • Calls today - total, answered, missed, voicemails left, and average call length.
  • Messages today - total, sent and received.
  • Last 7 days - the week’s call volume as a chart.
  • Recent changes - recent configuration changes within the organization.

Today’s figures carry a small comparison against yesterday, shown as +12 or -4. Green means the change is in the good direction and red the bad one, which for missed calls is the other way round - more missed calls yesterday than today is the green result. The comparison is left off when yesterday had no activity to compare with, rather than showing a meaningless increase from zero.

The end user view

  • A voicemail alert when messages are waiting, which opens the mailbox.
  • Calls today - total, received, dialled, missed and voicemails, with the same comparison against yesterday.
  • Active settings - a line appearing only when something is diverting calls: Do Not Disturb, or call forwarding, with the destination each is sending calls to. It exists so that a user who is not being reached can see why without hunting through their settings.
  • Last 7 days and Recent calls.
  • Quick links to voicemail, recorded calls, call history, the company directory, preferences and call forwarding.
  • A link to launch or download Thirdlane Connect.

The other tabs

The landing screen carries up to four tabs. Only the Dashboard is always present:

  • Dashboard - described above.
  • Downloads and Links - links to the Thirdlane Connect apps for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, and to the Chrome and Edge browser extensions for click-to-call and CRM integration. Shown when Show Welcome screen is set to Yes.
  • Alerts - appears only when a message has been sent to your system with its licence. Nothing to see here is the normal state.
  • Release Notes - what changed in the current and previous releases. Shown when Show Release Notes is set to Yes and you have access to system settings.

Both settings are on the General Settings & Tools > System Preferences screen.

Resource usage graphs are no longer part of this screen. They have their own, Resource Usage History, under Diagnostics, and are available when Enable resource usage monitoring is turned on in System Preferences.

The contents of that tab are read from a file, so you can replace it with your own - your support contact details, your own download links, an internal wiki address. Place a file named admin_portal.en in /etc/webmin/asterisk, using admin_portal.[lang] for other languages:

/etc/webmin/asterisk/admin_portal.en

The file holds HTML. The first occurrence of the word SERVER in it is replaced with this server’s address, so one link can be written once and stay correct on every system the file is copied to. A file placed in /etc/webmin/asterisk survives updates; the default version shipped with the product is used when no custom file is present.

The end-user equivalent is user_portal.en, in the same directory.

Best practices

  • Read the top of the screen before anything else. Critical audit findings and the standby notice are placed there because they change what you should do next.
  • Treat Recent Changes as the first stop when something that worked has stopped working. It is faster than reasoning about the configuration.
  • Do not rely on the audit line staying current. It reports the last run, and nothing schedules one.
  • Check the certificate card monthly. Certificates are the most common thing to expire without anyone noticing, and the SIP one fails in a way that looks like a network fault.