Using Obsidian Canvas to Create Custom Dashboards

obsidian canvas is a really powerful tool but I got to be honest I don't really use it the way that it was designed you see instead of laying things out spatially and making connections from my notes I use it to create personal dashboards that show me essential information from data in my obsidian Vault and even Google Sheets hey internet friends welcome back to the channel and in this video I'm going to show you a few of the ways that I use cards in obsidian canvas to track everything from critical numbers in my Creator business to aggregating journaling data for my personal retreats to displaying the important tasks on my Essential task list but before we get there we need to explain a little bit about what obsidian canvas is so if you're brand new to obsidian canvas it's actually a core plugin that has come built into obsidian for a while now it was originally added in version 1.1.0 on the desktop back in December of 2022 as a way to lay out your notes on an infinite canvas now the idea here is that by laying out your notes spatially it could make research and brainstorming easier but I have to admit that when I first used canvas inside of obsidian I didn't immediately find it that useful it seemed to me like a very limited Infinite Canvas that was tacked onto my favorite Notes app but the functionality was pretty limited when you compared it to other Infinite Canvas apps out there like mirro and even Apple's free format now eventually canvas clicked for me but not because I found it incredibly helpful to lay out my notes visually on an infinite canvas in fact I almost never use it with my notes and files from my Vault but I do use it all the time because I found a couple of things incredibly useful about the cards that you can add to your obsidian canvas though the real power of these cards is not that obvious now the first non-obvious Power that canvas cards possess is the ability to use web URLs just copy the URL of a web page open a canvas document in obsidian and paste the URL to create a card that renders the contents of that URL on your canvas now this is cool by itself but what's really powerful about this is that you don't have to use a standard web page you can use any web URL so for example I like to keep track of a few critical numbers for my Creator business in a Google sheet and then I can use a service like notion VIP charts which takes data from that Google sheet and turns it into a chart that I can embed in an app like notion and clickup I can use the contents of that Google sheet to create a chart copy the URL for that chart and paste it into my OB iian canvas so creating a couple different charts using notion VIP charts and laying them out in a canvas gives me a dashboard that I can use to track critical numbers for my business and because these charts are web URLs based on live data from a Google sheet these charts reflect any changes made to that Google sheet instantly so now I can open this dashboard I can see the updates without having to open up my browser and go to my Google sheet Plus in my opinion this looks a lot lot better the second hidden feature in canvas cards is that you can actually add code Snippets to those cards now you probably already know that you can add a card to your canvas and then just start typing text into the card but you can also use code Snippets in these cards that you add to your obsidian canvas that render when you aren't actively editing the card so just add a code Block in the card contents like you would in any other note and obsidian and then when you click outside the card you'll see the results of the code Block in the card on on your canvas so being able to render these code Snippets and lay them out on a canvas like this makes it possible to build custom dashboards for just about anything for example I did a video a while back about how I use daily questions journaling in obsidian where I rate myself on my intentions in several key areas daily on a scale from 1 to 10 I assign those values to tags that are attached to my daily note and then I look at the trends when I do my personal Retreat using the tracker plugin now I have a whole another video on my personal Retreat process here which includes a link to download the template if you're interested but the takeaway here is that now I can take the code Snippets that I normally look at in a separate note and I can paste them into these code blocks in canvas and I can rearrange these cards to my liking so I can see all of them laid out in one place I also use code blocks for obsidian task queries to create a task dashboard where I can look over my Essential lists as part of my planning and shutdown routines I've been doing task management completely in obsidian for the last couple of months and this task dashboard helps me make sure that nothing is falling through the cracks by laying out everything I need to do side by side this helps me review my critical tasks and essential list quickly now this task dashboard may look a little bit fancy because I've actually Incorporated a few niceties from a great canvas add-on called canvas candy but we'll get to that in a second what I really want to drive home right here is that with the ability to render these code blocks canvas cards give you the ability to add customizable widgets to your canvas and because canvas cards can be resized the layout options here are virtually Limitless the only thing you have to be aware of here is that once your canvas gets zoomed out far enough the contents of your cards and the rendering of your code Snippets will be blurred out but I absolutely love the way that canvas lets you lay things out exactly how you want them there are a few limitations with canas though you don't get to choose different shapes for your cards and the layout and connection options that are built in are pretty basic but there are a few canvas add-ons that can help make Canvas even more useful and I want to share a few of my favorites before we wrap up this video so first there's a really great add-on called canvas candy that adds a bunch of new features to Canvas using custom CSS classes canvas candy lets you add new shapes customize borders add background gradients and transparencies add header and footer labels and a whole lot more I did a video on canvas candy a while back so click here if you want to see canvas candy in action but the downside to Canvas candy is that it's probably a little bit too technical for some folks and it does cost $20 but personally I think it's a worthwhile investment if you're going to use canvas frequently another simpler canvas add-on that doesn't cost anything is the advanced canvas plugin this plugin is available in the community plugins directory and it gives you some additional tools and card shapes that you can use to create workflow diagrams and even do simple presentations straight from your canvas it doesn't have as many options as canvas candy but it does add some visual tweaks to the canvas card and control menus that don't require you to remember CSS classes in order to use them the presentation feature in particular is kind of cool zooming in on the first card that you denote as the first slide and then advancing to the next card or slide based on the connection between the cards as you add things to your canvas it can be hard to stack things in the right order now fortunately this is a solved problem with another simple Community plug-in called canvas send to back that solves this by adding both a send to front and a send to back option to the contextual menu when you rightclick on a card in canvas this functionality should really be built in in my opinion but until it is this is a handy little plug-in if you use canvas a lot and as your canvas gets bigger you likely want to a way to find things using search now unfortunately the built-in search doesn't work in the canvas view but again another Community plugin solves this called Simple canvas search by adding a command that lets you use fuzzy search on Note titles or contents you can trigger the search from the command pallet or via a hotkey I have mine set to control command F then you search for what you want select the result from the modal window that appears hit enter and the canvas reenters on your selected card so there you have it that's how I use cards to create custom dashboards in obsidian canvas now if you like this video you'll probably love my email newsletter as well practical PKM each Monday I share an original essay on how to apply values-based productivity principles to help you do more of what matters and get more out of your notes and ideas I link to something cool that's usually obsidian related and I share my mindmap booknotes from a book that I've read you can sign up for the newsletter by going to practical PK am.com I also have a free obsidian starter Vault with a bunch of tips and templates to help you make more of your notes and ideas in obsidian the link for that is in the description below this video thanks for watching and we'll see you in another video

Channel: Mike Schmitz

Views: 3,963

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Id: qPgZTiA69y4

Length: 8min 44sec (524 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 08 2024