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. Locks the reporting period -- The current period (e.g., "Q1-2026") is recorded and becomes a locked period that Contributors cannot edit retroactively.
4. Notifies selected Viewers -- Email notifications are sent to chosen Viewers informing them that a new dashboard snapshot is available.
5. 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 summary of the current dashboard state (health score, metric counts, period)
   • A Viewer selection checklist -- choose which Viewers should be notified by email
   • A Pre-generate reports checkbox -- when checked, RWRD generates Performance Intelligence Reports in the background after publishing
   • An optional Publish notes field -- add context about this snapshot (e.g., "Q1 2026 final board review")
3. Click Publish Dashboard to confirm.
4. The snapshot is saved and Viewers are notified. Report generation (if selected) runs in the background and does not block the publish action.

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)
• A direct link to view the published dashboard
• Publish notes (if provided)

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
• Lock icons appear on metrics to indicate the data is frozen
• 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."

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

Period Lock

Publishing creates a period lock on the current reporting period. This means:

• The published period (e.g., "Q1-2026") is recorded in the snapshot
• Contributors who own metrics for that period see a lock badge on those metrics
• The Save button is disabled for locked periods -- Contributors cannot retroactively edit published data
• Contributors can still edit metrics for future periods (e.g., if Q1-2026 is published, Q2-2026 remains editable)

This ensures data integrity: once a snapshot is published and distributed to stakeholders, the underlying data cannot be silently changed.

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.