Publishing Dashboards

Publishing creates a frozen, point-in-time snapshot of your dashboard that Viewers can access. It is the mechanism by which executive stakeholders see organizational performance data without needing to interact with live metrics.

What Publishing Does

When an Administrator publishes a dashboard, RWRD:

1. Freezes the current state -- All metric values, RAG statuses, scoring thresholds, strategic context, and company profile data are deep-cloned into an immutable snapshot.
2. Locks RAG statuses -- The current computed RAG colors (green/yellow/red) for every entity are captured at publish time. These frozen colors are what Viewers see, even if thresholds are later changed.
3. Embeds network analysis (Strategic tier only) -- The full network analysis (nodes, links, AI-discovered relationships, centrality scores) is computed and embedded directly in the snapshot. All users viewing this snapshot — including Viewers, report generation, and AI Chat — see the exact same frozen network data.
4. Embeds executive summary (Pro tier only) -- The AI-generated executive summary is computed and embedded in the snapshot, ensuring report generation and Viewer AI Chat use the same summary data that existed at publish time.
5. Records the reporting period -- The current period (e.g., "Q1-2026") is stored with the snapshot for historical reference.
6. Notifies selected Viewers -- Email notifications are sent to chosen Viewers informing them that a new dashboard snapshot is available.
7. Optionally generates Performance Reports -- AI-powered multi-section reports can be pre-generated in the background (see Performance Intelligence Reports).

How to Publish

1. Click the Publish button in the dashboard header (visible to Admins only).
2. The Publish Modal opens, showing:
   • A Period Label field -- defaults to the current month and year (e.g., "February 2026"). This label identifies the snapshot in the publish history.
   • An optional Notes field -- add context about this snapshot (e.g., "Q1 2026 final board review")
   • A Notify Viewers checklist -- choose which Viewers should be notified by email. Includes "Select All" / "Deselect All" controls and an "Invite a new viewer" link.
   • A Pre-generate AI Reports section (Pro tier required) -- check the Executive Intelligence Report checkbox to generate a Performance Intelligence Report in the background after publishing
3. Click Publish Dashboard to confirm. The button shows "Publishing..." while RWRD computes the network analysis and executive summary. This typically takes a few seconds if the network map was recently viewed, or up to 90 seconds if AI relationship discovery is needed.
4. The snapshot is saved and Viewers are notified. Report generation (if selected) runs in the background after the snapshot is saved.

Email Notifications

Selected Viewers receive a branded email notification containing:

• The company name and who published the snapshot
• The health score badge (colored green/yellow/red)
• The period label
• A direct link to view the published dashboard

Emails are delivered via the Resend email service using RWRD-branded HTML templates. Each Viewer receives an individual email.

Viewer Experience

When a Viewer logs into RWRD, they see the most recently published snapshot -- not live data.

Key differences from Admin/Contributor views:

• All data comes from the frozen snapshot, not from live database queries
• RAG status colors reflect the state at publish time
• Metric values cannot be edited -- the entire dashboard is read-only
• A "Published" badge appears in the header, along with the publish date
• The entire dashboard is frozen and read-only
• If no snapshot has ever been published, Viewers see a welcome screen: "No dashboard published yet. An administrator will publish a dashboard snapshot for you to view."
• On Strategic tier, Viewers and Contributor+Viewers can access the Strategy view to see a frozen Network Map. The frozen map shows the same nodes, links, AI-discovered relationships, and centrality scores that the admin saw at publish time. Interactive features (AI discovery, What If scenarios, edge validation) are disabled in frozen mode.

Viewer detail modals: Clicking on any Key Result, Financial Metric, Risk, or KRI opens a clean read-only detail modal showing all relevant data (values, targets, owners, status notes, action plans) without edit controls. Severity, likelihood, and mitigation effectiveness appear as non-interactive color pills. KRI details include a trend indicator (percentage change arrow) and urgency-tinted status notes (red/amber backgrounds for at-risk items).

AI Chat for Viewers (Pro/Strategic tier): Viewers can access AI Chat in a restricted published snapshot mode. The AI analyzes only the frozen snapshot data and will refuse requests to show live data, suggest edits, or offer data proposals.

Publish History

Admins can view a history of all published snapshots by clicking the History button in the dashboard header. This opens the Publish History Sidebar (a 380px panel on the right side).

The sidebar shows:

• A timeline of all published snapshots, ordered by date (newest first)
• Health score sparkline showing how the score has trended across publishes
• For each snapshot: publish date, health score, who published it, and publish notes
• A View button to load any historical snapshot into the dashboard (replacing the current view temporarily)

The Publish History Sidebar and the AI Chat Sidebar share the same screen space -- opening one closes the other (mutual exclusion).

Retracting a Published Snapshot

Admins can retract a published snapshot if it was published in error or needs to be corrected:

1. Open the Publish History Sidebar.
2. Find the snapshot to retract.
3. Click Retract.

When a snapshot is retracted:

• Viewers who were viewing that snapshot are automatically switched to the previous active snapshot
• If no previous snapshot exists, Viewers see the "No dashboard published yet" welcome screen
• The retracted snapshot remains in the history for audit purposes but is no longer accessible to Viewers

Live Data vs Published Snapshots

Publishing creates an immutable snapshot of the dashboard at a point in time. After publishing:

• Contributors continue updating the live dashboard -- weekly and monthly metric updates are not interrupted by a publish event
• Published snapshots are never modified -- they remain frozen, preserving exactly what stakeholders saw
• Viewers always see the published snapshot, not the live data
• To capture the latest data for stakeholders, the Admin publishes a new snapshot

This design ensures both data integrity (frozen snapshots) and operational continuity (contributors keep working).

Frozen RAG Statuses

RAG statuses on published snapshots are frozen at publish time. This is a deliberate design choice:

• Live data uses computed RAG (statuses are recalculated every render based on current thresholds)
• Published snapshots store the RAG status that was computed at the moment of publishing
• If an Admin changes scoring thresholds after publishing, the old snapshot retains its original colors

This preserves historical accuracy: a snapshot represents the truth at that point in time. If a metric was green when published, it remains green in that snapshot, even if the thresholds are later tightened and the same value would now be yellow.