Everything in Tessera.

12-column drag-and-drop grid

Resize, reorder, and arrange widgets the way you think. Live preview while you edit so you never save guesses.

Rename / duplicate / delete from the card

No drilling through menus — every dashboard card has a one-click action menu.

Per-dashboard light or dark theme

Some dashboards (analytics) read better dark; some (executive reports) read better light. Switch per dashboard.

Dashboard-level date-range filter

A single dropdown above the grid overrides every widget's date range at once — last 7 days / 30 / 90 / YTD / 1 year.

Welcome tour + setup checklist

On first activation, an auto-checking checklist guides you through license, SMTP, demo data, first dashboard, first widget, first share.

Revenue

$48,290

↑ 12.4%

Active users

1,247

NPS

72

Avg ticket

$157

↓ 3.1%

Submissions / day

Top regions

KPI card

One big number — total revenue, active users, average response time. Threshold colors flip red/yellow/green based on target.

Comparison KPI

KPI with a vs-previous-period delta and a sparkline. Shows direction at a glance.

Line / area charts

Trend over time. Submissions per day, signups per week.

Bar chart

Compare across categories — top regions, channels, products.

Pie / doughnut

Parts of a whole — channel mix, status breakdown.

Leaderboard

Ranked list with horizontal bars — top performers, biggest accounts.

Funnel

Stage-by-stage conversion with auto-computed % between steps.

Gauge

KPI against a target — NPS, satisfaction, SLA attainment.

Calendar heatmap

GitHub-style year grid — reveals weekly cycles and seasonal patterns.

Data table

Searchable, sortable, paginated. Click a row to view or edit the underlying entry inline.

Formula widget

Custom math across other widgets — ratios, averages, derived metrics.

KPI

Comparison KPI

Line

Area

Bar

Pie

Doughnut

Leaderboard

Funnel

Gauge

Heatmap

Data table

Formula

Click anything → see the rows behind it

Chart segment, leaderboard row, funnel step, heatmap day, KPI tile, table row — every drill-down opens a modal with the matching Formidable entries.

Edit entries without leaving the dashboard

Click an entry in the drill modal, hit Edit, save. Goes straight back to Formidable's entry storage.

Field-type-aware inputs

Dropdowns stay dropdowns, dates stay date pickers, radios stay radio groups. Matches how the form was built.

Permission-gated

Read for share-token holders, edit for admins (or anyone with the Formidable Pro frm_edit_entries capability).

Customer

Region

Amount

Acme Co.

North

$2,400

Edit

Vortex LLC

North

$1,180

Edit

Zenith Inc.

North

$3,600

Edit

Helios Group

North

$890

Edit

Dashboard-level field filters

Add dropdowns above the widget grid so viewers can narrow the dashboard by any form field — Chapter, Region, Status, Owner, anything that exists in your entries.

Single & multi-select

A filter is either a normal dropdown or a checkbox-list multi-select. Multi-select widgets refetch with `IN (Alpha, Beta)` semantics.

Cascading filters

Chain filters parent → child. When the parent changes (Region = North), the child's option list re-fetches automatically and shows only Districts inside North.

Scope per widget or per form

A filter can target every widget on the dashboard, every widget bound to one form, or a hand-picked subset — so global KPI tiles can stay un-filtered while everything else refilters.

Auto-populated or custom values

Auto pulls distinct values from real entries; custom lets you type a fixed list. Mix and match per filter.

Deep-linkable filter state

Filter selections write to the URL as `?f_chapter=Beta` so a pre-filtered dashboard URL can be shared, bookmarked, or emailed. Reloading the page restores the view.

Combines with widget filters

Filter overlay is merged AND-style with each widget's own configured filters — never replaces, never silently overrides.

Revenue

$12,840

Members

347

NPS

78

Per-segment color palette

8 swatches per widget — every slice, bar, or row can be its own color.

Curated palette presets

Tessera Default, Pastel, Bold, Mono Indigo, Earthy, Sunset — one click to restyle.

Display label overrides

Show "Website" instead of "web", "In-person visit" instead of "ip". Per widget, persisted.

Regex group extraction

Bucket on a piece of a field — pull "Urgent" out of "[Urgent] Bug report" without modifying the form.

Conditional formatting

KPIs / gauges / trends turn red, yellow, or green based on thresholds you set.

Segment palette

Presets

Display label overrides

Multi-form joins (SQL-style)

One widget reading across two forms via a shared field — like an intake form joined to a follow-up survey.

Auto-refresh widgets

Set per-widget refresh interval; KPIs and trend tiles stay live without page reloads.

Instant cache bust on new entries

Formidable / Gravity / WPForms / FluentForms entries fire hooks that invalidate Tessera's cache so dashboards reflect submissions immediately.

Custom field + date filters

"Closed status, last 30 days, region = North" — combine any number of filters per widget.

Dashboard anything in your WP database

Tessera isn't limited to Formidable. Point it at any allow-listed MySQL table in the same database — WooCommerce orders, GiveWP donations, BuddyBoss activity, LearnDash progress, your own CRM table, anything.

Explicit allow-list (no surprises)

Tables are invisible to Tessera until you pick them in Settings → Custom MySQL data sources → Pick tables to allow. Until allow-listed, even an admin can't query them — defense in depth against accidental exposure.

Auto-detected primary key + datetime

When you allow a table, Tessera inspects its schema and proposes the right `id` column and the right `created_at`-style datetime column. Confirm or override, then save. No SQL to write.

Same widget editor, source-aware fields

The metric / group / columns dropdowns repopulate from MySQL columns (with type hints) when a widget is bound to a custom-table source. Same drag-drop UI, polymorphic underneath — KPI tiles, leaderboards, calendar heatmaps, all work.

AI dashboard builder sees them too

The AI builder's schema includes your allow-listed tables. Ask "build me a dashboard for WooCommerce orders" and it proposes widgets bound to that table — group by region, KPI for revenue, calendar heatmap of orders, etc.

Read-only by design

Tessera never writes to custom tables. Inline editing and "+ New entry" actions stay scoped to Formidable forms — your WooCommerce orders / CRM rows are dashboards-only, never destinations.

Lock the list via wp-config

Define `TESSERA_CUSTOM_TABLES` to hardcode the allow-list. Useful when a client should never gain access to new tables — the Settings UI flips to read-only and only the constant can change the list.

Auto-publish to a public WP page

Click Publish — Tessera creates a real WordPress page with the dashboard rendered on it. Hidden from theme nav by default.

Revocable HMAC share links

Send a clean, theme-free URL anyone can hit without WP login. Revoke any time and the link dies.

Bare share view

Share URLs bypass the WP theme entirely — visitors see just the dashboard, branded with your logo + colors.

Embed a Formidable form anywhere

?tessera_form=ID renders any Formidable form chromeless and dark-themed — perfect for iframing on a non-WP site.

Public entry table embed

Share-token-gated read-only table of a form's recent entries. Same URL pattern.

Role-based access per dashboard

Private to admin / public / role-gated for specific WP roles.

Daily / weekly / monthly cadence

Plus a time-of-day picker so reports land at 9 AM site-time, not whenever the cron tick happens.

Branded HTML email

Gradient header, your logo and brand color, structured field/value table — matches the rest of your transactional email family.

Click-to-download PDF link in the email

Recipient clicks → their browser renders the dashboard → PDF auto-downloads with full charts. No login required.

Pick recipients from WP users

Dropdown picker fed from your installed users so you don't retype emails.

Pause / resume / edit / Send Now

Full control of every schedule. Send Now surfaces real errors (not silent "Sent" toasts).

"X reports" badge on dashboard cards

Glance the list — see immediately which dashboards are actively emailing.

Weekly report · May 14–21

Operations Overview

Submissions / day

View dashboard →

Multi-page US Letter format

Tall dashboards split into proper printable pages instead of one absurd scroll.

Light mode forced for printing

Even if your dashboard is dark, the PDF renders light. Saves ink and matches expectations.

Compressed + paginated automatically

JPEG-q82, smart scale based on dashboard width. Typical PDF is ~500 KB, not 30 MB.

Footer with filename + page count

Looks like a real document, not a screenshot.

Operations Overview

May 21, 2026

AI dashboard builder

Describe what you want — "Operations overview for our chapters with member counts, top performers, and a chapter filter" — and the model proposes a complete dashboard: title, theme, widgets configured with metric / group / date_range, plus dashboard filters and create-entry actions where it makes sense.

Editable proposal — review before commit

Click any proposed widget to tweak title, type, metric, group field, columns, or size in-memory. Delete the ones you don't want. Nothing hits your DB until you click Build.

AI widget builder

Need just one widget? Click "Add Widget → ✨ Describe with AI" and the same model translates a sentence into a fully configured widget you can drop into any dashboard.

Smart server-side defaults

When the model forgets a `group_field` on a bar chart or `columns` on a table, Tessera auto-picks the most likely categorical / numeric / displayable field from the form schema. No more empty tiles when the AI gets distracted.

Chat with your dashboard data

Ask "what's driving the spike in October?" and get a written answer. Tessera ships widget snapshots only — never raw entry data — so your customers' rows stay on your server.

Bring your own provider key

Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, Google Gemini, or Groq — pick whichever you have credits with. Groq + Gemini have free tiers, no credit card needed. Switch providers from Settings → AI Insights at any time.

Results cached

Repeat dashboard chats don't re-spend tokens unless the underlying data changed. Builder proposals are one-shot — cheap to regenerate if the first cut is off.

Your prompt

Operations overview for our sorority chapters. Show member counts per chapter, top performers this month, dues by district, and let me filter by district.

Custom brand name + logo

Your client sees your agency name in headers, footers, and share views.

Custom brand color cascades everywhere

Set it once — applies to chart accents, share-view gradient, email templates, CTAs.

Branded transactional emails

Scheduled report emails and admin notifications all carry the customer's brand, not Tessera's, when white-label is on.

Hide "Powered by Tessera"

Optional in share view — your clients don't see our brand at all.

Brand name

Acme Analytics

Logo

Brand color

Activity / audit log

Every dashboard, widget, schedule, and data-source create/update/delete recorded. Click any event for a full before/after diff.

Auto-update via WordPress

Updates show up in the standard WP Updates UI. One click to install.

Magic-link customer portal

No passwords. Enter email → click link → manage sites, billing, downloads.

Setup checklist with live state

8-step checklist auto-checks license, Formidable, SMTP, entries, dashboard, widget, publish, schedule as you complete each one.

Demo data seeder

3 forms, 500+ realistic entries, 4 prebuilt dashboards — explore the product before building anything yourself.

Pre-built dashboard templates

Operations Overview, Customer Satisfaction, Executive Snapshot, Service Lifecycle — start from a working dashboard, customize from there.

Formidable Forms (free + Pro)

Native — reads directly from Formidable's tables. No exports, no syncs, no API rate limits.

Stripe billing

Self-service customer portal — update card, change plan, cancel without emailing support.

Any SMTP plugin

WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP, Post SMTP — Tessera uses your existing mail config. No proprietary mail dependency.