Dashboard workflow

The workspace Home page shows the projects you can access and the conditions that need attention. Home stays reachable from the project switcher while you work inside a project; the Activity link is in the sidebar when no project is selected. The project switcher carries compatible list destinations between projects; task and worker identities are always scoped to a project.

Connect a worker

An empty project offers Connect an agent. A project administrator creates a credential on Agents, then copies the bearer token and HMAC secret from the one-time credential screen. Choose the framework and task engine to get the install command and links to the correct startup instructions.

Set the brain URL to an address reachable from the worker. A container's localhost is the container itself. Fill in both credential placeholders in the environment template, use the project UUID shown by the dashboard, install the startup hooks and restart the worker. Check connection verifies whether an agent is online and task activity has arrived in the project. Run a task through your own worker to confirm event capture.

Keep credentials in your deployment's secret store. They are not saved in the browser's appearance or navigation preferences.

Find and investigate work

Monitor contains Overview, Tasks, Dead letters, Issues and Trends. Task state, priority and text filters are reflected in the URL; links opened from the task list carry those filters into Back to tasks. Issues groups failures by a stable fingerprint and distinguishes ongoing from recovered failures. Expand an issue to inspect its signature and search the related task name.

Task detail leads with state, execution timing and recorded failure evidence. Payloads and raw event JSON are expandable. If several agents support the task's engine, choose the agent that owns the task before issuing a command. A queued command is not evidence that the task was retried or cancelled; follow its result in Commands.

Dead letters shows what an engine has given up on and parked, read live from an online agent whose adapter advertises the listing (RQ's failed job registry, Dramatiq's .XQ queues). The engine selector offers only engines a connected agent can list; narrow to a queue, page through the entries, and requeue one where the adapter also advertises requeue_dead_letter. When no online agent can read the engine's store, the page says so instead of showing an empty list.

Configure scheduled work

Schedules offers calendar, interval, one-time and solar timings when the engine supports them. Calendar presets fill in a standard expression. Custom expressions remain editable, and the server validates the configuration when you save. The saved schedule shows its next-run timing.

Choose how missed runs recover: skip them, run the most recent missed occurrence (the default for a new schedule), or replay all missed occurrences. The form says what each choice does; replaying missed work may enqueue extra tasks. A schedule's detail page shows how many occurrences were skipped in the last 24 hours when that count is above zero. Task arguments remain available under advanced JSON.

Build an automation rule

The guided editor supports exact engine, queue and fingerprint conditions, plus task-name and exception substring conditions. Conditions combine with AND. Empty conditions match every event of the selected trigger.

Use Edit advanced JSON for grouped conditions, patterns, multiple actions or other advanced settings. Existing advanced configurations stay in JSON mode; the guided editor does not discard fields it cannot represent. New rules start in dry run. Destructive rules retain their existing administrator and fresh-MFA requirements, circuit breakers and project kill switch.

Keyboard and appearance

Open search with Ctrl+K (Windows/Linux) or ⌘K (macOS). In a project it includes task search and the destinations available to your role. Press ? for the shortcut reference. The / shortcut focuses a visible list search field. Shortcuts do not take over text fields or open dialogs.

Appearance settings support light, dark and system themes and an accent color. The navigation rail can collapse on desktop. On smaller screens the menu opens as a drawer with keyboard focus contained until it closes.

Understand what the dashboard knows

“API connected” reports the brain's HTTP health check. It does not certify worker health or event freshness. Zero registered agents means setup is incomplete; offline agents indicate degraded connectivity. A failed query displays an unavailable state rather than claiming that no failures exist.

The public demo uses sample data and blocks mutations. Its scenario selector opens a healthy project, an incident, scheduled work or a mixed-engine project. Install z4j to try real connections and commands.