There is no documentation for the Cluster Dashboard in the UI section

[jandubois]

We obviously don't want to repeat the whole dashboard documentation, but we should at least have a screenshot of the initial screen.

[chr-hen]

Hi there 👋

I was hoping to share some UI documentation with my colleagues, but I noticed that there is no Cluster Dashboard documentation on the https://docs.rancherdesktop.io/ site.

Could you please share which dashboard documentation you are referring to? I can't seem to find that in any other location, so it seems pretty difficult to find.

I'd be happy to help write this documentation too, should that be helpful.

All the best.

[jandubois]

I was sure there were UI docs for the "Cluster Explorer" in "Rancher Manager", but was surprised I couldn't find it either. The closest I found was https://extensions.rancher.io/internal/getting-started/ui-walkthrough#22-cluster-explorer

[chr-hen]

Interesting, thanks for sharing that link.

I can see that in the UI walkthrough you've kindly shared, there's a brief explanation of the "Cluster Explorer". I think I understand your initial comment in this thread now - is the ambition that the documentation for the "Cluster Dashboard" would be agnostic and reused across both the Rancher and Rancher Desktop documentation?

In the User Interface section of the Rancher Desktop docs, I would have expected to find "Cluster Dashboard" in the list of available left-hand menu items as they appear in Rancher Desktop, between "Extensions" and "Preferences". I do wonder if each of the available items within the "Cluster Dashboard" would then require its own dedicated piece of documentation ("Starred", "Cluster", "Workload", "Apps", etc)? In a similar way to the "Preferences" having its children items for "Application", "Virtual Machine", "WSL", etc.

If this documentation is indeed missing, I'd be happy to prepare a draft if that would be helpful.

As a side note, when it comes to terminology, is there a difference between "Cluster Explorer" and "Cluster Dashboard"? Or are they the same feature and there's been some drift in naming?

[jandubois]

I can see that in the UI walkthrough you've kindly shared, there's a brief explanation of the "Cluster Explorer". I think I understand your initial comment in this thread now - is the ambition that the documentation for the "Cluster Dashboard" would be agnostic and reused across both the Rancher and Rancher Desktop documentation?

Yes, the whole code base for the Cluster Dashboard comes from the Rancher Manager Cluster Explorer. The responsibility for documenting the Cluster Explorer is with the Manager team. I've reached out to see where this documentation is, but it doesn't seem to exist.

In the User Interface section of the Rancher Desktop docs, I would have expected to find "Cluster Dashboard" in the list of available left-hand menu items as they appear in Rancher Desktop, between "Extensions" and "Preferences". I do wonder if each of the available items within the "Cluster Dashboard" would then require its own dedicated piece of documentation ("Starred", "Cluster", "Workload", "Apps", etc)? In a similar way to the "Preferences" having its children items for "Application", "Virtual Machine", "WSL", etc.

I agree, that's why I filed this issue.

If this documentation is indeed missing, I'd be happy to prepare a draft if that would be helpful.

Thank you, that is very generous of you. Unfortunately the rather small Rancher Desktop team is already struggling to keep the existing docs up-to-date, so maintaining docs for Cluster Dashboard will not really work longer term. I would rather get the Manager team to provide the documentation and keep it up-to-date, but I have no idea if this will happen. They have been informed now, so we'll see.

As a side note, when it comes to terminology, is there a difference between "Cluster Explorer" and "Cluster Dashboard"? Or are they the same feature and there's been some drift in naming?

It is exactly the same code. I'm not sure why the names have diverged. I think originally Rancher Desktop was meant to be just "Kubernetes on the Desktop", so "Cluster Explorer" would just become "Dashboard". But eventually it became clear that the dashboard needs to do more than cluster (regular containers), or there would need to be more dashboards. Which is why it became "Cluster Dashboard". Not 100% sure, but this feels plausible to me.