A tour of the dashboard, sidebar and command search

SrvYard has a lot of screens, but they all hang off the same frame: a sidebar on the left, a bar across the top and a content area in the middle. Once you know what the frame offers, finding anything takes seconds, and the command palette makes it quicker still.

This tour uses the demo organisation, Acme Studio. Your own dashboard will show your own servers and sites, but the layout is the same.

Before you begin#

• An account with an organisation. See Create your account, verify your email and set up two-factor if you have not made one yet.
• A role that shows what you expect. Members see only the servers and sites their roles and teams allow, and some sidebar items are hidden for roles that cannot use them.

1. The frame: sidebar, top bar and quick actions#

1. The sidebar. Your navigation. Its two groups are explained in the next step. The small icon next to the breadcrumb collapses it to give the page more room; on a phone it becomes a drawer.
2. The organisation switcher. At the top of the sidebar. It lists the organisations you belong to and ends with Create organization. Everything else you see belongs to the organisation selected here.
3. Search. Opens the command palette (step 3). The shortcut is shown on the button: Cmd+K on a Mac, Ctrl+K elsewhere.
4. Help. A menu with Docs, Support and Command palette. See Get help: docs search, the chat widget and support tickets.
5. Notifications. The bell, with a badge counting what you have not read. Open it to see Unread and All tabs, each message with the organisation and how long ago it happened, and Mark all read. Heartbeat alerts, backup results and monitor alerts land here.
6. Your user menu. Your avatar, described in step 5. Next to it is a sun icon that toggles the light and dark theme.
7. Quick actions. New server, New site and New recipe sit under the title of the dashboard, so the three most common starting points are one click away.

The breadcrumb to the right of the sidebar button shows where you are and, on a server or site, lets you switch to another one without going back to the list.

2. The sidebar groups#

1. Platform. What you run. Dashboard is the overview; Servers and Sites are the two lists you will use most; Resources counts what the organisation runs (servers, databases, backup storage and snapshots) and lists every server with its provider and status; Import / migrate brings in a server you already run, starting with a read-only scan that changes nothing; Recipes are saved Bash scripts you can run on servers; Usage shows what the organisation uses against its plan quota, with 7, 30 and 90 day views and a CSV export.
2. Servers. Every machine, with its status, type and PHP version. Open one for its tabs, as described in Read the server overview.
3. Settings and the rest of the Organization group. Organizations, Settings, Members, Roles, Teams, Security, Source control, Server providers, Storage providers, Billing, Integrations, Notifications, Webhooks and Export / import: who is in the organisation and what it is connected to. Items you cannot use are not shown.

3. The command palette#

Press Cmd+K or Ctrl+K from any page, or press Search.

1. The search box. Type part of a name, an address or a page. The palette searches servers, sites, databases and recipes, and also the pages of the app and common actions.
2. The results. Grouped by kind: Servers, Sites and so on. Use the arrow keys to move, Enter to open and Cmd+Enter (or Ctrl+Enter) to open in a new tab.

With nothing typed, the palette lists Actions (New server, New site for each site type, New recipe, Create API token, Switch organization, Switch to dark theme, Open the docs, Log out) and Pages for every screen in the sidebar. To narrow a search, start it with a prefix: server:, site:, db: or recipe:.

4. The dashboard and its widgets#

The dashboard is made of widgets: small cards that each answer one question.

1. The dashboard switcher. The button that says Default lists your dashboards (for example Operations and Deployments) and the entries New dashboard, Manage dashboards and Widget library. Each person can keep several dashboards and choose which one opens first.
2. Recent servers. The newest machines, with status, type, PHP version and counts of sites, background processes and scheduled jobs. View all opens the full list.
3. Recent sites. The most recently deployed sites, with repository, branch and server.

Further down you will find Deployments (the latest ten across all sites), Organizations, Plan usage, Activity (what happened across your servers and sites in the last 14 days) and Your recent actions.

Change what you see#

Switch on Edit dashboard.

1. Edit dashboard. The switch next to the dashboard menu turns editing on.
2. Add widget. Opens the widget library.
3. Widget settings. Each widget has its own settings and a Remove widget control. Widgets can be reordered while you are in edit mode.

Create a dashboard per concern: one for operations (servers needing attention, pending updates), one for deployments.

5. Your user menu#

1. Account settings. Your profile, security, notifications, API tokens and appearance.
2. Manage organization. The organisation's settings: members, roles, teams, providers and more.
3. Sign out. Ends this session. The menu also has Billing, a Language picker and a Dark mode switch.

6. Resources and usage at a glance#

Two sidebar pages answer the questions that do not fit on the dashboard. Resources (which describes itself as what the organisation runs) counts your servers, databases, storage providers and snapshots, and breaks the servers down by provider and by whether they are ready, installing or disconnected. Usage compares what the organisation consumes with its plan: servers, sites, members and deployments this month, plus the features the plan includes. Check both before an audit or a plan change; the numbers shown there are the ones your plan limits are checked against.

Troubleshooting#

• A page I expected is missing from the sidebar. Your role does not include it. Ask an owner or admin, or check Roles and permissions.
• The dashboard looks empty. A new organisation has no servers or sites yet, so the widgets are empty until you add some. Start with New server.
• Cmd+K does nothing. Click once on the page first so it has focus, or press the Search button in the top bar. Some browsers keep Ctrl+K for the address bar.
• The bell shows a badge I cannot clear. Open it and press Mark all read, or switch to the All tab to see older messages.
• I changed a dashboard by mistake. The dashboard menu next to Edit dashboard can reset a dashboard to its default widgets.
• I see the wrong organisation's data. Check the organisation switcher at the top of the sidebar.

Related#

• Organisations, servers and sites: how they fit together: the model behind the sidebar.
• Get help: docs search, the chat widget and support tickets: the Help menu.
• Read the server overview: the next screen you will open.
• Create, rename and switch organisations: the organisation switcher in depth.