# Choose dashboard solution

**URL:** <https://discourse.nodered.org/t/choose-dashboard-solution/81789>\
**Category:** Dashboard\
**Tags:** flexdash, uibuilder\
**Created:** [5 October 2023 06:50 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/choose-dashboard-solution/81789 "2023-10-05T06:50:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 6

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**Author:** ![joepavitt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/discourse.nodered.org/joepavitt/32/59722_2.png) [@joepavitt](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/joepavitt)\
**Post date:** [6 October 2023 10:20 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/choose-dashboard-solution/81789/6 "2023-10-06T10:20:21Z")

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Just to chime in, I'm the lead dev on the Dashboard 2.0 project so thought I'd provide a bit more info on what I'm up to, and how I see the other options.

As @TotallyInformation mentioned, it will depend a little on what you're trying to achieve, but the high-level summary:

- **Dashboard 1.0** : Feature-rich, lots of out-of-the-box widgets, mostly drag and drop, but a little customisation should you need it, generally constrained to the grid/card layout, but as you've stated is on life support due to Angular 1.0 dependencies.
- **UI Builder** : ([link](https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-red-contrib-uibuilder)) Steeper learning curve as generally requires more HTML/JS knowledge, but way more customisation and flexibility.
- **FlexDash** : ([link](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@flexdash/node-red-flexdash)) Is a bit of a middle ground between UI Builder and Dashboard, and focusses on the visualisation of IoT data via MQTT topic subscriptions. It's not quite as easy as drag and drop for setup, but once running can be quite powerful.

Now, for **Dashboard 2.0**. We are quickly catching up to support everything that Dashboard 1.0 did, and then some (e.g. Markdown support, Mermaid Charts, Notebook Layouts), with a Roadmap of plans exceeding beyond what Dashboard 1.0 was capable of. Some useful resources:

- [Dashboard 2.0 Widgets List](https://dashboard.flowfuse.com/nodes/widgets.html) - Showcases all of the fully released nodes that are available _now_.
- [Dashboard 2.0 Roadmap](https://github.com/orgs/flowfuse/projects/15/views/1) - Gives you an idea of what I'm working on right now, what I have planned next, and issues opened by community (more are very welcome if you have new ideas and feature requests) that we plan on getting to asap.

As @TotallyInformation points out, we are still "officially" in Alpha, but won't be for much longer, and are already using Dashboard 2.0 internally at FlowFuse for all of our own projects. I will also be writing a Dashboard 1.0 to Dashboard 2.0 Migration Guide next week, which will also clear that piece up too.

Both Dashboard 1.0 and Dashboard 2.0 allow for mutiple pages, but all contained within a single "UI", so you can navigate between these in a side panel.

Also have a few articles about the latest work we've done in Dashboard 2.0 too if you'd like to take a look:

- [Dynamic Markdown, Tables & Notebooks with Dashboard 2.0](https://flowfuse.com/blog/2023/09/dashboard-notebook-layout/)
- [Custom Widgets with Templates in Dashboard 2.0](https://flowfuse.com/blog/2023/10/custom-vuetify-components-dashboard/)
- [Charting REST API Data in a Dashboard](https://flowfuse.com/blog/2023/09/dashboard-chart-for-rest-api-data/)

Happy to answer any more questions, and advise accordingly. Hope that helps.

_Edit:_ Just noticed that your main requirement was to retrive data and then visualise, we do support hat, but it requires (as with all existing Dashbaord solutions) some data manipulaton. upfront.

I'm actively working on [Expose ChartJS "parsing" option to define nested data values for x and y axes · Issue #230 · FlowFuse/node-red-dashboard · GitHub](https://github.com/FlowFuse/node-red-dashboard/issues/230) at the moment though, which will expose an option in Node-RED for our `ui-chart` node, meaning you shouldn't need to do _any_ data manipulation upfront, you can just give the `ui-chart` node your data, and it'll work its magic. Hope to have that out in the next week or two.

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