{"id":44952,"date":"2026-06-07T16:52:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T14:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dbi-services.com\/blog\/?p=44952"},"modified":"2026-06-07T16:52:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T14:52:05","slug":"m-files-bd-anatomy-of-a-dashboard-definition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dbi-services.com\/blog\/m-files-bd-anatomy-of-a-dashboard-definition\/","title":{"rendered":"M-Files BD – Anatomy of a dashboard definition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the previous post<\/a>, I walked through what an end user sees when they open the Business Dashboard pane in M-Files. From this post on, the audience shifts more towards the administrator’s side, looking at how a dashboard is actually defined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every dashboard is a single JSON document. The Admin tab in M-Files Admin offers a Visual Designer that builds this JSON for you, but in the end the JSON is the source of truth, so I think it is worth understanding its shape before getting into widget types and queries in the next posts. Think of this post as the reference map<\/strong> the rest of the series will refer back to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The minimum valid dashboard<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before discussing every field, here is the (almost) smallest dashboard JSON that the engine accepts. It is intentionally trivial – a single KPI widget counting all Documents in the vault:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n{\n  "schemaVersion": 1,\n  "id": "",\n  "name": "My Dashboard",\n  "widgets": [\n    {\n      "id": "",\n      "title": "Total Documents",\n      "type": "kpiNumber",\n      "query": {\n        "objectType": "Document",\n        "aggregation": { "type": "summary" }\n      }\n    }\n  ]\n}\n<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n
Note 1:<\/strong> Boolean-like fields are exposed as the strings “Yes”<\/em><\/strong> or “No”<\/em><\/strong>. This is what M-Files shows as booleans, don’t ask me why it’s not True\/False like the rest of the world ;).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Note 2:<\/strong> Display names (object types, classes, properties, value-list items) must match what the vault shows in M-Files Admin. They are case-insensitive but must otherwise be exact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. The dashboard-level fields<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The top-level object can carry the following fields: required ones are marked, all others are optional with default values that make sense, usually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2.1. Identification and presentation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
These are the main parameters of a dashboard that you will usually set at the beginning:<\/p>\n\n\n\n