Presentation
Presentation sends your dashboard out of the Designer and into an ordinary browser window — on the projector, the second monitor, or a colleague's laptop — while you keep editing. What they see is the real dashboard, and it follows your changes as you make them.
Starting a presentation
Click Present in the toolbar.
Dashboardx Designer starts a small local web server and opens the dashboard in your default browser. The browser tab is the presentation: full canvas, no toolbars, no panels, no risk of accidentally dragging something while you are talking.
Click Present again to stop. Open browser tabs close gracefully.
What viewers can do
Someone at the screen can explore — click a chart, use a filter, drive a slice — and the dashboard responds right there: the selection is written, the workbook recalculates, and every chart or KPI linked to that slice repaints. Their interaction is local to their own view: it does not change your design, and it does not move your canvas while you are mid-explanation.
The recalculation runs in a background worker inside the browser tab, so a heavy workbook keeps answering clicks instead of locking the page — the browser they use does not have to be fast, your machine just has to keep up.
Because it is a browser, a viewer on a phone or tablet sees the same dashboard without installing anything (any current mobile browser works; on iOS that means Safari 15 or newer).
Changes follow you
While presentation is running, the dashboard you are designing is pushed to the open browser tabs. Adjust a chart, re-lay a section, switch the canvas theme, and the presentation catches up without a reload and without a re-export.
This makes presentation mode useful as a working mode, not just a delivery one: review a dashboard on the big screen with the designer open beside you, and let the room watch edits land.
Ports and networks
The server listens on a port inside a range you can set in Settings → Presentation — 4000–4009 by default. It picks the first free port in the range. If every port in the range is busy, the app tells you to widen the range rather than failing quietly.
Two practical consequences:
- Anyone on the same network can open the address while you are presenting. There is no passphrase on it. Present on networks you trust, and stop presenting when you are done.
- To reach people beyond the local network, you need your own arrangement — a VPN, a reverse proxy, or a tunnel. Dashboardx Designer does not relay anything through its servers, so nothing is shared with the world unless you make it so.
Preparing before you present
- Check the calculations. Present mode shows your dashboard honestly, including a
#REF!in the corner. - Test the filters. Click every interactive element once; slices that were never bound reveal themselves fast on a big screen.
- Know your first move. Start on a summary, then drill in. Presenting is easier when the opening view is already the one on screen.
- Widen the port range if you run several dashboards or other web services on the same machine.
Troubleshooting
| Problem | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Browser shows "Failed to load" | The presentation was stopped, or the Designer was closed | Click Present again |
| Nothing opens in a browser | All ports in the configured range are in use | Widen the port range in Settings → Presentation |
| Viewers on another device cannot connect | Firewall prompt was dismissed, or a different network | Approve the connection when macOS or Windows asks; confirm both machines are on the same network |
| Viewers see a stale dashboard | Their tab lost the live connection | Reload the tab; it re-fetches the current dashboard |
| Interactions feel slow | A lot of data is recalculating per click — the page itself stays responsive, the numbers just take time | Aggregate the source data and reduce widgets reading the same large range |
Where to go next
- Settings → Presentation — the port range
- Data Slice — what viewers are driving when they click
- Datasets — aggregate before you bind