Create a System Dashboard from a Personalized Dashboard

In this blog, we are going to see how you can create a system dashboard from a personalized one.

Requirement: One of my clients created a personalized dashboard and wanted it to be available to all users. We need a system dashboard for that. There is no out-of-the-box (OOB) feature that allows you to convert or copy the personalized dashboard to a system dashboard. One way to achieve this is through a manual process where I have to review each component from the personalized dashboard and then replicate the same in the custom dashboard. This process takes some time, as we also need to check all the properties of each component in the dashboard before copying.

I wanted to implement this in a better and quicker way. Let's see how I achieved it.

This is the personalized dashboard created by the client.

First of all, assign this dashboard to yourself (the Admin user).

Create a new empty system dashboard inside your solution. Don't add any components; just create and save it. 

Export the solution with the dashboard, open the customization XML. Find the form Id for the system dashboard.

Now, open SQL 4 CDS tool in XRMToolbox. Retrieve the personalized dashboard formxml and formjson attribute value. Note - As mentioned above, personalized dashboard needs to be assigned to the admin user who is querying the data.

Take out the formjson text and replace the form Id with the system dashboard form Id. There will be 2 instances, so perform a Find and Replace, replacing the personalized form Id with the system form Id.

Now get the formxml  and formjson (updated with system formid) and update those in our system dashboard form using SQL 4 CDS.

Now, go back to the solution and click Publish All Customizations. 

That's it. We have now created a system dashboard from a personalized dashboard.