The Curriculum Management Dashboard provides a centralized, real-time view of your institution's entire curriculum pipeline, helping you spot bottlenecks in the approval workflow and ensure compliance at a glance.
Depending on your campus configuration, you may have access to multiple targeted dashboards, such as the My Items dashboard for actionable workflow tasks, or an Archive Proposals dashboard for approved proposals.
1. Interface Anatomy
Every dashboard is structured to help you filter down a high volume of curriculum proposals into a highly manageable worklist. The interface consists of three primary regions:
- Dashboard Selector: Located at the top of your Curriculum Management page, this allows you to toggle between different dashboards you have access to (e.g., My Items, Archived Proposals).
- Filter Bar: Tools to narrow down the viewable list by specific criteria, such as Form Type, Name, or Workflow Step.
- Proposals Grid: The main ledger displaying all proposals that meet the dashboard’s specific criteria. From here, you can view the real-time status of items or click into a proposal to take action.
2. How Dashboards Function
Once your dashboards are configured and in place, they operate dynamically based on real-time curriculum data.
Filtering and Navigation
As users move proposals through workflows, the workflow indicated on the dashboard will update to allow users to quickly filter or see the status of proposals in-progress. Users can use the top-level filters to quickly slice through massive catalogs of data to see exactly what they need for a specific committee meeting or review cycle.
Bulk Actions and Error Handling (e.g., My Items Dashboard)
On actionable dashboards like My Items, users can select multiple proposals within the same review phase and promote them to the next step of approval all at once.
⚠️ Handling Bulk Errors: If a proposal runs into an issue during a bulk action (such as missing a mandatory field or experiencing a workflow conflict), the dashboard will flag it immediately. The system displays targeted error messaging on the specific proposal row that failed, making it simple to isolate the problematic item, understand why it didn't move forward, and resolve the underlying workflow issue without stopping your entire queue.
For more details see the article Error Messaging on My Items Dashboard
3. Requesting and Customizing Dashboards
Important: System Limitations
Dashboards in Curriculum Strategy are structurally built at the system level. Because of this architectural layout, campus administrators cannot create, modify, or delete dashboards independently on their own.
All custom dashboard creation and logic adjustments must be handled by the Watermark Support and Configuration teams. The Watermark Support team will review your request to determine feasibility prior to configuration. Additionally, we suggest limiting the number of dashboards for optimal performance and user experience.
Customizing Existing Dashboards (Column Adjustments)
You don't need to request an entirely new dashboard if you simply want to change the information displayed on your current screen. We can easily adjust the visible columns on your existing dashboards to better fit your team's review processes.
A common request is adding a Department or College column to the Proposals Grid so reviewers can sort items geographically.
⚠️ Note on Custom Columns: The system can pull custom fields into your dashboard columns as long as that exact field exists on your underlying proposal forms.
Whether you are adding columns on an existing view or requesting an entirely new dashboard (for instance, a dashboard to display removed proposals or proposals in Draft), your campus administrator must submit a formal request to Watermark Support.
What to Include in a New Dashboard Request
If your institution needs a new dashboard (for instance, a dashboard to display all removed proposals or a custom archival view), your campus administrator must submit a formal request to Watermark Support. To ensure a swift setup, please provide the following technical requirements in your ticket:
- Dashboard Name: The clear, short, user-facing title that will appear in a tab along the top (e.g., "Archived Proposals").
- Target Audience: For whom is this dashboard being created and a short description of how the dashboard will be used. Permissions are limited and not all specific permission requests are possible.
- Filtering Criteria (The Underlying Logic): Explicitly define what proposals belong on this dashboard. For example:
- Should it filter by a specific Form Type (e.g., only Course Deletions)?
- Should it isolate a specific Workflow State/Step?
- Should it display items matching a certain custom attribute field?
4. Common Use Cases
Institutions leverage custom and standard dashboards to keep their curriculum moving efficiently throughout the academic year. Here are the most common ways campuses utilize this feature:
Use Case 1: Streamlining Bulk Committee Approvals (The "My Items" Dashboard)
- The Scenario: A curriculum committee chair or dean logs in following a weekly meeting with 15 proposals to approve.
- The Solution: They access their My Items dashboard, filter for their current step, and check the boxes next to all discussed proposals. Using the bulk actions feature, they push them all forward simultaneously. If one proposal fails due to incomplete form data, they easily spot the row-level error message to fix it later while the other 14 successfully advance.
Use Case 2: Tracking Workflow Bottlenecks
- The Scenario: The Provost's office wants to know why the new program approvals are taking longer than expected this term.
- The Solution: By opening a centralized pipeline dashboard, administrators can sort the proposals list by their current workflow location. This instantly highlights if a high volume of proposals is sitting stuck at a specific departmental review or committee step.
Use Case 3: Historical Audits & Compliance Tracking (The "Archive" Dashboard)
- The Scenario: During an accreditation review or a catalog transition period, an administrator needs to verify exactly what changes were finalized over the last calendar year.
- The Solution: Users navigate to the Archive Proposals dashboard. Because this dashboard is locked specifically to finalized, historical states, it serves as a clean read-only catalog ledger, removing the clutter of active "in-progress" drafts so staff can pull precise compliance data.