# Proposal: a dashboard that shows the fleet, not the row count

- Status: ACCEPTED
- Date: 2026-08-11
- Author: cproudlock
- Relates to: ADR-010 (frontend plugin hooks), ADR-013 / ADR-014 (lean per-site builds), ADR-006 (collector contract), ADR-012 (GE-Enforce manifest ownership)

## The problem

The dashboard reports totals: assets, machines, PCs, network devices, printers,
measuring tools. Those numbers are true every day and actionable on none of
them. Nobody opens the page to learn there are 417 assets.

Meanwhile the system already knows things worth acting on and shows them
nowhere:

- a bay returned 500 to every collector report for a day and a half, and the
  only evidence was a log file on the PC
- eleven part markers' backups were overwriting each other for weeks
- a PC can stop reporting entirely and nothing says so
- GE-Enforce records enforcement failures, stale manifests and repeated
  self-heals, and none of it surfaces outside a report modal

Every one of those was found by someone going to look. The dashboard should be
where they find you.

## What already exists

Two discoveries shaped this proposal.

**The plugin mechanism is built and dead.** `BasePlugin.get_dashboard_widgets`
exists, `GET /api/dashboard/widgets` aggregates across enabled plugins, skips
disabled ones, isolates a broken plugin in production and sorts by position.
Five plugins - notifications, network, machines, computers, printers - already
declare widgets.

**Nothing consumes it.** The frontend never calls the endpoint, and not one of
the declared components (`PrinterStatusWidget`, `ComputerStatusWidget`,
`MachineStatusWidget`, `NotificationsWidget`, `NetworkStatusWidget`) exists.
The declarations point at components that were never written.

So this is less "build a dashboard" than "finish one", plus a contract fix.

**The data is already collected.** Nothing here needs a new collector field:

| Signal | Source |
|---|---|
| PC reporting / silent | `computers.lastreporteddate` |
| Machine has a controlling PC | `controls` links, `collector:machine` |
| Backed up, stale, never | `backuprevisions` per asset and kind |
| Enforcement failed | `manifestenforcementreports.status`, `failedcount` |
| Which entry failed, and why | `manifestenforcementresults.action`, `exitcode`, `message` |
| Stale manifest | report `appliedversion` versus the scope's published version |
| Drift that will not stick | repeated `selfhealed` results for one entry |
| Enforcer version spread | `manifestenforcementreports.enforcerversion` |
| Installed software and versions | `computerinstalledapps` |
| Toner critical / low | printer supplies, Zabbix-fed |
| Warranty expiring | warranty plugin |
| Mis-numbered bays | the `check-shared-machines` query |

## Proposed change to the widget contract

The existing contract names a **component per widget**. That does not scale and
does not survive a lean build: every widget needs a bespoke Vue component, and a
plugin-provided component has to be staged into the frontend bundle to exist at
all.

ADR-010 already solved this for asset panels: a plugin declares `render: 'list'`
or `'keyvalue'` or `'tabs'` plus a `map` of fields, and a GENERIC core component
renders it. Do the same here. A plugin declares data and shape; core owns the
rendering.

```python
{
    'id': 'geenforce-failures',
    'title': 'Enforcement failures',
    'endpoint': '/api/geenforce/dashboard/failures',
    'render': 'exceptions',        # generic renderer
    'severity': 'critical',        # critical | warning | info
    'permission': 'geenforce.view',
    'position': 10,
    'empty': 'hide',               # hide | line
    'map': {
        'title': 'hostname',
        'detail': 'entryname',
        'meta': [{'key': 'message'}, {'key': 'exitcode'}],
        'link': '/pcs/{computerid}',
    },
}
```

Three renderers cover everything listed above:

- `exceptions` - a list of things that are wrong, each linking to the thing
- `metric` - a single number with a trend or threshold, for the cases where the
  count IS the story (toner critical: 3)
- `list` - recent items, for notifications and KB adds

## Principles

**An exception board, not a stat board.** The default view is what needs a
person today. A count appears only where the count is the story.

**Empty cards must shrink.** A card that says "nothing wrong" every day trains
people to stop reading the page. That is exactly how `ntlars-backup.log` reached
3,234 lines with 17 that mattered. `empty: 'hide'` is the default; `'line'` for
the few where absence is itself news.

**Every row links to the thing.** A dashboard that says three printers are low
without linking to them is a worse version of a report.

**Cards respect RBAC.** A card declares a `permission`; a user without it never
sees the card or its endpoint. Toner levels are not sensitive, but "which PCs
expose VNC" is, and the dashboard must not become a way around role gating.

**Thresholds are settings with neutral defaults** (ADR-015): quiet window, toner
percentage, warranty horizon. Every site will disagree with the numbers.

**One endpoint per card, lazily loaded, failing independently.** A hung Zabbix
call must not blank the page.

## Wave one

Cards whose data is already reliable, ordered by how actionable they are:

1. **Enforcement failures** - current reports with `status = failed`, showing
   the failing entry and exit code.
2. **PCs not reporting** - `lastreporteddate` beyond the quiet window, and PCs
   with no GE-Enforce report at all, which is a different and worse case.
3. **Backups missing or stale** - machines with no revision of a kind their
   PC type should produce, and revisions older than the interval.
4. **Toner critical, then low** - links to the printer, then to its admin page.
5. **Warranties expiring** - within the configured horizon.
6. **Mis-numbered bays** - `check-shared-machines`, promoted from a CLI command
   nobody will remember to run.

Then, lower and quieter: stale manifest versions, repeated self-heals, enforcer
version spread, active notifications, recent application and KB additions.

## Wave two: desired versus observed

The highest-value card and the most work. The manifest declares what a PC type
should have; `computerinstalledapps` records what it does; `filters.py` already
decides which entries apply to a given PC. Diffing those answers "which bays are
missing something they should have" - which nothing in the system answers today,
and which is the thing GE-Enforce exists to guarantee.

Deferred to wave two because it needs the resolver wired into a query path, and
because wave one needs nothing new.

## Risks

**Aggregate queries on the most-visited page.** These are fleet-wide scans on
every load. Cache 30-60 seconds, and log slow cards - a lazily-loaded card can
be slow for months before anyone mentions it.

**Cards become the new noise.** Six cards that are always empty are as useless
as one number that never changes. If a card is empty for a month, delete it.

**Plugin gating must be real.** A lean site without `printers` must render no
toner card. The existing endpoint already skips disabled plugins; the frontend
must not hardcode a card list alongside it.

## Non-goals

- Per-user dashboard customisation. Later, if asked for.
- Historical charting. This is a "what needs doing now" board; trends belong in
  reports.
- Replacing the shopfloor TV dashboard, which is a different audience with
  different needs.
