About this Guide

Introduction

Welcome to the RightScale Dashboard Users Guide! 

This document explains the easy-to-use and consistent design of the Dashboard User's Guide.

Design

The RightScale Dashboard Users Guide is our most used guide, so a lot of thought and planning went into its design. Here are a few salient points on its layout/design:

• Browseable - Navigation mimics the navigation of the Dashboard itself. Hence, the guide is very intuitive...benefiting the more advanced user as well as helping the new user learn their way around the Dashboard while learning the product itself.
• Searchable - Rather than present an overwhelming amount of information in a single monolithic document, we have taken a very modular approach. The result? In addition to being browseable, the guide is also searchable, functioning similar to a knowledge base.
• Modular - Parent pages include important information, with well organized links to additional information. Only follow the links on the topics that matter to you at the time. 
• Consistent - Each parent page is designed from a template that includes the same Sections. This provides a similar, consistent look and feel throughout the guide. The more you use the guide the easier it becomes to locate the information you need.

Sections

After displaying a Table of Contents for the current page, the following sections are included (some mandatory, some optional):

• Overview (mandatory) - Content covering overview-level information. Some of the content is pulled from the Dashboard Help Text.
• Actions (optional)- Short tutorial on most every action button/link/icon. Can also include longer, more end-to-end style tutorials. Tutorials are organized into an "Actions" folder beneath the parent or landing page for a particular topic.

Note: We are actively developing new tutorials for the Actions section. Something missing? Feel free to log a ticket with your request.

• Concepts (optional) - Additional deeper dive on current or related topics. For example, additional best practice information on ServerTemplates. Conceptual documents are organized into a "Concepts" folder beneath the parent or landing page for a particular topic.

Note: If a file named "About <TopicName>" exists, it includes additional conceptual information to help the user transition from basic understanding covered in the Overview section and performing various tasks in the Actions section.

• Index Tabs (Mandatory if Index tabs exist.) - Hyperlinks to Index tab level help from the Index page in the Dashboard.
• Show Tabs (Mandatory if Show tabs exist.) - Hyperlinks to Show tab level help from the Index page in the Dashboard.
• See also (optional) - Hyperlinks to related information. Links could point to other documents in our Support Portal or external websites.
• Related FAQs - Top 1-3 FAQs on the topic at hand (Servers, Deployments, load balancers, etc.) Based on a Lucene search engine "score" value, so the listed FAQs can change over time.

Throughout the Support Portal, most every document has attached meta data. It is tagged defining the document type and user level. Each section makes use of this. For example, tutorials are found under the Actions, conceptual information is found under Concepts, Related FAQs points to on-topic FAQs, and some of the Overview section reuses reference information from the Dashboard Help Text. (To learn more about tagging, click Document Type or User Level.)

AWS Global and AWS Regions

• Similar to the Dashboard, AWS features are split into "global" and "regions". Each feature tied to the various regions operates similar, hence each region navigates to the same AWS Region landing page.
• The AWS Region Feature Exceptions table highlights features not offered in the listed region.

Tips

• Remember that each parent page is designed the same, whether looking at Design > ServerTemplates or Manage > Deployments, etc. 
• To look at what Actions (tutorials) or Conceptual documents exist for a given topic:
  • You can simply append "/actions" or "/concepts" to the landing page URL (you will see a link for each file, unless none exist)
• You'll want to your browser's back button often when navigating about (sometimes links point outside of the Guide)
• You can search within the Dashboard Users Guide itself, or any section within it by using the Support Search checkbox option.
• See the Support Portal Site Tips (Useful Links section of the homepage)

Footer

The footer is gold in color, and contains the following helpful sections:

• About this Guide - This document
• Guide Map - Dynamically builds out links for every document within the guide. Tip: Use your browser search button to find a specific topic.
• Dashboard Topological Map - Shows the layout of the RightScale Dashboard, along with clear definitions (terminology), and "hot spots". Mouse-over the information icon (  ). If you select it, the definition for that term or section of the Dashboard is displayed. Select the Top link to go back to the top of the Topo Map.
• Single Sign On - Discussion about Single Sign On for the Dashboard. This feature is currently in beta with select Enterprises.