[AppInsights] Features - Basic Styling: Changing dashboard theme options

The quality and relevance of your KPIs should be your primary focus as you begin designing your AppInsights dashboards.  However, it doesn’t hurt for your data to look good as well...especially if you plan to show-off your dashboards in a board room, on a sales floor, or as an element of your NOC.

If you intend to make comprehensive changes to our default styling, you might be interested in exploring our Advanced Styling feature.  But for those users that would like to make some basic tweaks, our Basic Styling feature may do the trick.

To get started, navigate to the large gear icon at the top right of your AppInsights dashboard environment and select the “Basic Styling” menu.




Enable a Color Theme

If the default, dark styling of our app is not fitting for your use-case, enabling a light color theme is an easy way to brighten things up.  Please note that both background and font color fills will change to optimize for your new theme.




Dark theme



Light theme



Show widget backgrounds in Display Mode

If you’d prefer not to see the subtle background colors for individual widgets when in Display Mode -- you can enter Display Mode by clicking the eyeball icon at top left of app -- check this box to create a flatter dashboard look.



With backgrounds



Without backgrounds



Hide the dashboard header / footer in Display Mode

If you’d like to free up some additional space for your widgets, removing the dashboard header and/or footer in Display Mode will expand the available space.  Please note: removing these elements from your dashboard means you will no longer see your dashboard title in Display mode, nor will you see the date, time, or AppInsights logo (or any custom logo you’ve uploaded).



Header removed



Footer removed



Header & footer removed



If you’d like to maintain the footer, but prefer your own company logo instead of the AppInsights logo, simply enter the URL for the hosted image and hit “Save”.  Please note: the logo image file you upload will automatically re-size to fit the available space, with a max height of 48 pixels.



Use a dashboard background image

The final Basic Styling option is to customize the dashboard background.  To do so, check the box and select from the available options, or click the “+” button to upload an image of your own.  Depending on the size of your uploaded image, you may want to stretch the dashboard background image to fit.



Regardless of the changes made, be sure to hit “Save” once you’re finished making styling decisions to see the change take effect.