Improve Dashboard Editing Experience – Persistent Properties, Multi-Select & Format Painter

Dear team,

Description
Designing dashboards in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace currently requires a large number of repetitive clicks when formatting and configuring multiple widgets.

For almost every widget, the workflow is:

• Select widget

• Open or switch to the widget Properties

• Navigate to the required property section

• Modify the settings

• Select the next widget

• Repeat

When building dashboards containing many Selectors, Views, Single Cells, Buttons and Text widgets, a significant amount of development time is spent navigating the user interface rather than designing the dashboard. Modern dashboard tools such as Microsoft Power BI provide a much more efficient editing experience with persistent property panels, faster object switching and convenient style-copying capabilities. Reducing the number of clicks required for common editing tasks would significantly improve developer productivity and the overall dashboard design experience.

Suggested Improvements

1. Persistent Properties Panel
   Keep the Properties panel docked and always visible while in Edit mode. When another widget is selected, the panel should automatically display the properties of the newly selected widget without requiring additional clicks.

2. Remember the Active Property Section
   When switching between widgets, keep the currently opened property section (for example Appearance or Visualization) expanded. This avoids repeatedly navigating through the same property hierarchy and greatly speeds up formatting tasks.

3. Multi-Selection
   Allow selecting multiple widgets and editing common properties simultaneously. Examples include:

• Font

• Font size

• Font colour

• Background colour

• Borders

• Alignment

• Width and height

• Padding

• Opacity / transparency

• Visibility

• Synchronization settings (where applicable)

This would make it much easier to maintain a consistent dashboard design.
4. Format Painter / Copy Style Introduce a Format Painter similar to Microsoft Office or Power BI.
Example workflow:

• Select a widget

• Copy Style

• Select one or multiple target widgets

• Paste Style

Ideally, users could choose between:

• Copy all formatting

• Copy only selected style attributes (for example fonts only, colours only, borders only or sizing only)

This would dramatically reduce repetitive formatting work across large dashboards.
5. Quick Formatting Toolbar
Provide a Quick Formatting Toolbar (or Quick Style Bar) exposing the most frequently used formatting options without requiring navigation through multiple property sections. Examples include:

• Font

• Font size

• Font colour

• Background colour

• Borders

• Alignment

• Width

• Height

• Fill

• Padding

This would make common formatting tasks much faster and more intuitive.
6. Keyboard Productivity
Support common keyboard shortcuts during dashboard editing to enable faster, more efficient workflows for both occasional and power users. Examples could include:

• Ctrl + C / Ctrl + V to copy and paste widgets or widget formatting

• Ctrl + D to duplicate selected widgets

• Ctrl + Click to select multiple widgets

• Arrow keys for precise widget positioning

• Shift + Arrow keys for larger movement increments or resizing

• Delete / Backspace to remove selected widgets

• Ctrl + Shift + C / Ctrl + Shift + V (or similar) to copy and paste formatting only (Format Painter)

Providing comprehensive keyboard support would significantly reduce reliance on repetitive mouse interactions and improve productivity when designing complex dashboards. Benefits

• Significantly fewer clicks during dashboard development

• Faster dashboard creation and maintenance

• More consistent dashboard formatting

• Improved productivity for dashboard developers

• Reduced training time for new users

• Better usability for both occasional and experienced users

• User experience more aligned with modern BI tools such as Microsoft Power BI

Use Case
Many Planning Analytics Workspace dashboards contain dozens of widgets that should share the same visual style and configuration. Today, developers must manually repeat the same formatting steps for every widget. Features such as a persistent Properties panel, remembered property sections, multi-selection, a Format Painter, a Quick Formatting Toolbar and improved keyboard support would substantially reduce repetitive work and make dashboard development significantly more efficient.

Overall Vision
The goal is not to introduce isolated new features, but to modernize the overall dashboard editing experience. Planning Analytics Workspace already provides powerful dashboard capabilities. By reducing repetitive interactions and adopting established usability concepts from modern design tools such as Microsoft Power BI, the dashboard designer could become significantly faster, more intuitive and more enjoyable to use. These improvements would particularly benefit customers building large, enterprise-grade dashboards while also making the platform easier to learn for new users.

Thanks in advance.

With best regards,
Vitalij