26 Mar 2020 · Semaphore News

    New Dashboard: Simpler, Faster, Responsive

    2 min read
    Contents

    The Semaphore dashboard is about to get a brand new look. The new design dramatically simplifies the layout, while improving performance under the hood. Over the next couple of days, we’ll be rolling out this update to all users.

    Previously, the dashboard included all projects that you had access to, including the status across all servers and recent branches. Their order would change based on last activity — the ones with new builds or deploys would move to the top. Even though we’ve introduced the option to collapse projects, after you’ve used Semaphore for a while, this behavior often becomes suboptimal. There’s just too much information on the screen, with its order out of your control.

    How it works

    The new dashboard focuses on two things:

    1. Communicating the status of each project’s main branch, and
    2. Providing an easy way to reach the projects you’re interested in.

    Each project forms one uniform row, with an indicator of build status for its default branch. The default branch is either master or the first branch you’ve added to Semaphore. You can change a project’s default branch in “Project Settings > Branches”.

    You can open the latest build by clicking on the status icon next to the project name, or you can click anywhere within the row to open the project.

    By default, projects are sorted alphabetically. However, you can mark a project as a favorite by clicking on the star on the right-hand side. Favorite projects will always be displayed first, but after you’ve marked a few, you may want to toggle the view to display only your favorite projects. You can do that by clicking on the star button at the top of the project list. Semaphore will remember your preferences the next time you visit the dashboard.

    As a bonus, the new dashboard is fully responsive, making it handy to view on your phone.

    We’re very excited to share the new design with you. Let us know how you like it in the comments or by contacting us on support. Enjoy, and happy building!

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    Writen by:
    Marko Anastasov is a software engineer, author, and co-founder of Semaphore. He worked on building and scaling Semaphore from an idea to a cloud-based platform used by some of the world’s engineering teams.