Outcome
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to match each preset to its audience, describe the widget set for each, and choose the right starting point for a new dashboard.
| Prerequisites | T1, Associate tier · M4.5, Showback dimensions |
| Time | 9 minutes |
1. Concept
Four ready-made dashboards come with the product: Executive, Engineering, FinOps and All Widgets. Each is a set of widgets chosen, sized and ordered for one audience, drawn from a registry of 13 widget types.
None of them can be edited. That is deliberate, and it is why L2 exists: you take a copy and change the copy.
PRESET AUDIENCE WIDGETS (in order)──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────Executive Leadership, Finance Key metrics Cost trend Cost reports Budget health Top costly resources Cost saving opportunities
Engineering Platform / DevOps Key metrics Cost trend Cost reports Cost saving opportunities Schedule activity Scheduler success rate
FinOps FinOps practitioners Executive's six widgets + Schedule activity + Scheduler success rate
All Widgets Evaluation, new orgs The same eight widgets as FinOps, in a different order and sizingExecutive preset
For leadership review and finance check-ins. Six widgets: headline numbers, the spend trend, where the money goes, budget health, the biggest line items and the open savings. No schedule detail.
EXECUTIVE preset widgets: Key metrics: resources, spend, savings and savings rate Cost trend: daily and accumulated cost over time Cost reports: providers, teams and tags in one tabbed card Budget health: budget utilisation Top costly resources: highest-cost resources this period Cost saving opportunities: top open recommendations by savings
WHAT IT ANSWERS: "How much are we spending?" "Are we on budget?" "What is the biggest spend?" "How much could we still save?"Engineering preset
For day-to-day platform team use. It swaps budget health and top costly resources for the two schedule widgets: did the start and stop runs happen, and what is due next.
ENGINEERING preset widgets: Key metrics Cost trend Cost reports Cost saving opportunities (recommendations to triage) Schedule activity (past runs and upcoming actions, one card) Scheduler success rate (successful vs failed runs)
WHAT IT ANSWERS: "Where is engineering spend going?" "Did all schedules fire as expected?" "What recommendations should I act on?"FinOps preset
For the dedicated FinOps practitioner. It is the Executive set plus the two schedule widgets: attribution and budgets up front, with schedule health below, because schedules are where much of the realised saving comes from.
FINOPS preset widgets: Key metrics Cost trend Cost reports (team and tag attribution live here) Budget health Top costly resources Cost saving opportunities Schedule activity Scheduler success rate
WHAT IT ANSWERS: "Where is the money going right now?" "Which budgets are close to their limit?" "Are the schedules delivering their savings?"There is no Sankey, anomaly, tag coverage or unit-economics widget. Cost flow and the tag views live on the Cost Reports page, and unit economics has its own page under Cost.
All Widgets
Despite the name, All Widgets does not hold all 13 widget types. It carries the same eight widgets as FinOps in a slightly different order, and it is the dashboard every new org lands on until someone sets a default. The other five types (Cloud spend breakdown, Showback, Quick insights, Schedule execution, Upcoming actions) are added from the widget picker when you build your own.
ALL WIDGETS preset: 8 widgets, the same set as FinOps The fallback default for orgs that have not set one
WHEN TO USE: Initial onboarding / evaluation Org default before customizingChoosing the right preset
QUESTION TO ASK PRESET──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────"What am I optimizing for at this view?" Executive summary, leadership review Executive Daily engineering work Engineering Cost analysis and optimization FinOps Exploring / evaluating All WidgetsThe choice is per-audience, not per-team. A FinOps lead might use both Executive (for leadership prep) and FinOps (for their own work) on different days.
Customization path
Presets are starting points, not endpoints. Most mature orgs end up with:
1-2 saved dashboards based on cloned presets Cloned + customized (added or removed widgets) One of them set as the org default
The original presets remain visible: never edited, alwaysavailable as a re-clone source if ZopNight updates them.The cloning + customization workflow is L2.
How ZopNight uses presets
The presets are served from memory, not stored per org, so every org sees the same four and a new org needs no setup. They come back from the dashboards list marked as system dashboards with a category: leadership, engineering, finance or comprehensive.
2. Demo
Different audiences picking different presets:
ORG: 80-engineer SaaS, with mature FinOps + monthly exec reviews
WEEKLY ROUTINE: Monday 9am: FinOps Lead opens dashboard Dashboard: FinOps preset (her browser bookmark) Scans: cost trend, budget health, top recs, schedule success Time: 5 minutes
Tuesday: Platform engineer logs in Dashboard: Engineering preset (her browser bookmark) Scans: schedule activity, open recommendations Time: 3 minutes
Friday: Engineering leader's weekly review Dashboard: Engineering preset (org default) Scans: Teams tab of the cost reports card, success rate Time: 5 minutes
MONTHLY EXECUTIVE REVIEW: Monday of month-end week: CEO meeting CTO opens Executive preset Walks through: Total spend and the cost trend Budget health Open savings opportunities Top costly resources Time: 10-minute slot
ORG DEFAULT: All Widgets New joiners land on it; experienced users keep browser bookmarks to their preferred preset.The preset matrix matches role to need. Each user reaches their working canvas immediately.
3. Hands-on (5 min)
Browse the four presets in ZopNight:
PRESETS reviewed: □ Executive □ Engineering □ FinOps □ All Widgets
BEST FIT for your role today: __________WHY: __________________________________________________________
ORG DEFAULT (currently): __________ Is this the right default for your org? Yes / No If no: what would be better? __________
YOUR BROWSER BOOKMARK / preferred view: __________________________________________________________If your team has mixed roles, the org default usually pairs with browser bookmarks to /dashboard/<id> links for individuals.
4. Knowledge check
Q1
The Executive preset is best for:
A. Day-to-day engineering work, where the per-resource detail matters most of all to them daily
B. The engineering team, who need per-resource and per-cluster detail every day
C. Audit reviewers, who need the mutation history rather than the spend figures
D. Leadership and finance; key metrics, cost trend, budget health, top costly resources, savings
Show answer
Correct: D. Six widgets for leadership and finance: key metrics, cost trend, cost reports, budget health, top costly resources and open savings. No schedule widgets; designed for review meetings, not daily ops.
Q2
The FinOps preset includes:
A. Just the cost trend widget alone, with no other widget present anywhere on the whole of the dashboard page
B. The Executive preset’s six widgets plus the Schedule activity and Scheduler success rate widgets
C. Per-resource cost only, with no team or tag breakdown available at all anywhere
D. A random selection of the available widgets, chosen at org creation time itself
Show answer
Correct: B. Eight widgets: key metrics, cost trend, cost reports, budget health, top costly resources, savings opportunities, schedule activity and scheduler success rate. Team and tag attribution live inside the cost reports card; there is no Sankey, anomaly or unit-economics widget.
Q3
Customizing a preset:
A. Edits the shipped preset for all of the users
B. It is not possible to customize any preset
C. Requires cloning: presets are immutable templates
D. Per-user, from each person’s own profile page
Show answer
Correct: C. Clone creates a new saved dashboard; modify the clone freely. The original preset remains untouched. This pattern lets ZopNight update presets without breaking customer customizations. Clone pattern preserves preset immutability. L2 covers the cloning workflow.
5. Apply
Browse presets at Dashboards. Open a preset card to view it. To customize, use the card’s Clone action: it opens a new dashboard pre-filled with the preset’s widgets, which you can edit and save. The org default (L4) is set per org by anyone holding dashboard:update, which Admins and Editors have by default.
For new orgs, leave the default at “All Widgets” for the first week of onboarding; switch to a more focused preset once the team knows which widgets it actually reads.
Related lessons
- L2: Cloning and customization (next)
- L3: Per-widget RBAC
- L4: Default dashboard governance
- T4.M4.5.L1: Pick the showback dimension