Add custom links to the dashboard

[Lonkle]

This was a recently upvoted feature that was closed out but I see it as an important one for casual users. Customization of the UI by adding or removing the various links and elements is part of the “Branding” experience that was recently released. @andres-moya put it this way in Gitlab which I very much agreed with:

“ One of the useful features of Cloudron is to give users a single panel with all the apps they need in one place. But if we need to use some app that is not viable to be packed into Cloudron, this feature is lost.

But if we were able to add custom buttons to external apps, this would be great.”

[nebulon]

Generally this feature would not be too hard to implement, however we have to see how this can work with filtering apps a user has access to as well as the other domain and tag based filters.

The simplest way to add this would of course be to ignore all that and simple be able to add an icon+url+title to the dashboard for all users. Would this already suffice?

[luckow]

@nebulon a kind of "empty" app? with access control to show it to different users or groups?

[nebulon]

Even for an empty app, there are caveats around database constraints for like the domain, which in this case might not make much sense to first having to add domains with like the noop provider, only then to add an empty app with an external link.

[Lonkle]

@nebulon said in Add custom links to the dashboard:

The simplest way to add this would of course be to ignore all that and simple be able to add an icon+url+title to the dashboard for all users. Would this already suffice?

Don't get me wrong, the tag-based filters would be cool. But maybe in the future. For now, I personally think your basic solution suffices. Though, I imagine people will want to start re-organizing their apps eventually...also future food for thought.

[girish]

Is the use case here for admins to add links for all users or for users to add their own links? I assume it's the former but just checking.

[Lonkle]

@girish All users, yup!

[Lonkle]

Just wanted to put it out there that I'd still like to be able to tag these "external" / "empty" apps so I can keep them just as organized as my other Cloudron apps.

[jdaviescoates]

Perhaps another option would be to use something like @thetomester13 made here:

https://forum.cloudron.io/post/9938

I'd love something like that to be available as a Cloudron app.

Or perhaps even better, to just have Heimdall available as an app https://github.com/linuxserver/Heimdall (as others have mentioned in the above thread).

@NCKNE has added it to the app wishlist, so upvote here:
https://forum.cloudron.io/post/6133

[Lonkle]

@jdaviescoates Super interesting! You actually gave me an idea.

I don’t have to ask the Cloudron dashboard developers make an “empty” app . I can just make my own and configure Apache to forward to the external site based on whatever external site I want to add. Unfortunately that takes away server resources than simple direct custom links for the dashboard so I still want this, but I can get around it for now.

[thetomester13]

@jdaviescoates thanks for the shoutout if it's wanted, I can extend my Homepage app's functionality to include a list of custom URL's in addition to Cloudron apps.

[thetomester13]

I just updated the other related thread, but wanted to keep everyone here in the loop as well. The Homepage app has been updated to officially support custom links, reordering the apps, as well as the option to force links to open in a new tab.

[Lonkle]

Omg, and I can run this without using the subdomain "my" can't I? Is this...the answer!

[Lonkle]

Just checked it out, I do too much dev to not have everything the Cloudron Dashboard provides in a single click (especially now that I found out about adding custom admin links in the Cloudron manifest).

[Lonkle]

I'll keep living with the "my" subdomain for now.