Admin Default Overview

[avalynnrose]

Admin should be able to set the Default Overview. Most of my family members are not going to want to or know how to change the Overview. The admin should be able to set what the default is and then the family members can change it from there if they want.

[ulsklyc]

Yes, and this is closer to done than it looks - most of the mechanism is already there.

Dashboard layouts are stored per user, and the lookup already falls back to a household-level value when a member has none of their own. That fallback is read on every request; what is missing is simply that nothing ever writes it. So the admin-facing half is a settings screen and a write path, not a new concept.

Two details worth getting right, because they decide whether the setting actually works for the people you are describing.

It only applies to members who have not arranged their own overview. That is the point - the family members you mention will never touch it, so they get whatever you set, and anyone who has customised theirs keeps it. But it also means an admin cannot flatten someone's layout by changing the default, which is deliberate: a household setting that overwrites personal arrangements is the kind of thing that gets used once and regretted.

The consequence is that "reset to the household default" has to exist, or the setting becomes invisible to everyone who ever moved a single widget. And it has to work by removing your personal layout, not by copying the household one into it. Copying would freeze today's default onto your account, and you would silently stop following any later change the admin makes. Removing means "I follow the household" and keeps meaning that.

Filed with #814 and #825 as the three parts of "the overview is too rigid". #825 turned out to be a bug and is fixed; this one and #814 are the two that need building. No date to promise.

[ulsklyc]

Built, and it works the way I described above.

An admin arranges the overview the way it should be for the family and publishes it from the customize toolbar ("Set as household default"). Everyone who has not arranged their own overview sees it from that moment - including every later change you make to it. Nobody's personal arrangement is overwritten.

"Reset" is now the way back, and it deletes your own arrangement rather than copying the default into it. That difference only shows up weeks later: a copy freezes today's default onto your account and you stop following anything the admin changes afterwards. It is also hidden for anyone who has nothing of their own to reset, and it is undoable like any other save.

Two details from the build that were not obvious from the outside. The default gets its own storage key rather than reusing the household value that was already being read as a fallback: that older value is a leftover from before the overview became personal and carries whatever the last person happened to save, so promoting it would have presented an accident as a decision - and the settings screen could no longer tell "nothing published yet" from "this is how it should be". And publishing deliberately writes nothing personal for an admin who is currently following the default, because otherwise you would detach yourself from your own default and quietly miss the next change a second admin makes.

Released in v2.35.0.