Open a board

A board is a custom grid of widgets — KPIs, charts, tables, asset tiles, and OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) timelines — that your team builds for one site. Opening a board shows those widgets live, refreshed from current data. You open a board when you want to read the numbers for a shift, line, or role without building or changing anything.

This page covers finding a board in the picker and opening it. Building a board and arranging its widgets are separate tasks — see the Boards overview linked at the end.

Before you start

To open a board you need:

• The "View boards" permission (boards.view). This permission is granted to the Super user, Entity admin, Manager, Operator, and Dashboards roles by default. Without it, the boards page cannot load your board list.
• A selected site. Boards belong to one site (called an entity in Bulk). Pick your site in the header site switcher before opening the Boards area. If no site is selected, the boards list will not load.
• Access to the board itself. A board with no viewer list is visible to everyone at the site. A private board — one with a named viewer list — is visible only to the person who created it and the people on that list.

Open a board

1. From the Bulk home page, select the Boards tile (labelled "Dashboards & widgets"). This opens the Boards area at the /boards address. You can also go there directly if you have the page bookmarked.
2. The boards picker opens under the heading Open a board, with a Your boards section. Each board is a card showing its name, a short reference code (such as BRD-1A2B), its description, a small preview of the layout, the widget count, and when it was last updated.
3. Find the board you want. To narrow a long list, type in the field labelled Filter by board name, code, or description. The list filters as you type; select Clear search if nothing matches and you want the full list back.
4. Open the board in whichever way suits you:
   • Double-click a card to open it straight away.
   • Single-click a card to select it. A bar appears at the bottom of the page showing the selected board and three actions.
   • In that bar, choose Open board to open it in the current window, or Open in new window to open it in a separate browser tab — handy for a wall display or a second monitor. Back to home returns you to the home page without opening anything.
   • Using the keyboard, move focus to a card and press Enter to open it, or Space to select it.

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Example: opening the shift board at Leeds

Priya, a line manager at Granite Peak Manufacturing's Leeds Fabrication Plant, starts her Monday morning shift. She opens the Bulk home page and selects the Boards tile. In the picker she types line 2 into the filter field, which narrows the list to the Leeds Line 2 - Shift Board her team built.

She single-clicks the card to check she has the right one — the preview shows the KPI tiles and OEE timeline she expects — then selects Open in new window. The board opens full-screen on the line's shared display, where it stays for the shift showing live output, downtime, and quality figures. Priya continues working in her original tab while the board updates on the wall.

What you should see

When a board opens, it fills the screen with its widgets, each loading live data for the selected site. The browser tab title changes to the board's name. A slim header sits across the top with a Boards link back to the picker, plus controls to edit the layout and open board settings (these editing controls act only if you have the board-management permissions).

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Feature state and limits

Boards is an available, generally released feature. A few things to keep in mind when opening one:

• Private boards stay hidden. If you are not the creator or a named viewer of a private board, it does not appear in your picker, and opening a direct link to it shows Board not found.
• Only active boards appear. Boards that have been removed or deactivated are not listed in the picker.
• New window depends on the browser. Open in new window asks your browser to open a new tab. If a pop-up blocker stops it, allow pop-ups for Bulk and try again.

Troubleshooting

• "Board not found" after opening a link. The board may have been deleted, or you may not have access to it. Select Back to boards to return to the picker and open a board you can see.
• A board you expected is missing from the list. Check that the filter field is empty (select Clear search), confirm you have the right site selected in the header, and remember that private boards only show for their creator and named viewers.
• The list will not load at all. Confirm a site is selected and that your role includes the "View boards" permission. If neither is the problem, reload the page.
• No boards exist yet. The picker shows a Build your first board prompt with a Create board button. Creating a board needs a board-management role; if you only have view access, ask an Entity admin or Manager to build one.

Related

• Boards overview — what boards are and how to build and manage them.
• Dashboards overview — Bulk's built-in analytics dashboards, a related way to view live data.
• Teamboards overview — plant-level visual management boards for shift and team communication.