Dashboard Kiosk Display User Guide

1. Overview

Dashboard Kiosk Display turns any screen into a live business intelligence display by cycling through your Odoo dashboards automatically. The intent is straightforward — mount a monitor in a workshop, office, or meeting room and have it continuously show the metrics your team cares about, without anyone needing to interact with it.

The display works with Odoo's native Dashboard application. Charts, KPI tiles, pivot tables, and any other content you build in a dashboard are displayed exactly as they appear in Odoo, with live data refreshed on every cycle. There is no duplication of effort — if you already maintain dashboards in Odoo, those same dashboards become your kiosk content.

What it does: Cycles through a nominated set of Odoo dashboards on a configurable timer, displaying each full-screen on a dedicated monitor. The display is read-only and requires no user interaction once running.

2. Understanding How the Kiosk Works

Dashboard Sections as Playlists

Odoo organises dashboards into sections — groupings you can see in the left panel of the Dashboards app (for example, Sales, Finance, Logistics). The kiosk uses one of these sections as its playlist. Every dashboard within that section is shown in sequence, each for the configured duration, before cycling back to the first.

This means your playlist is managed entirely within Odoo's standard Dashboards interface. To add a slide, add a dashboard to the section. To remove one, remove it from the section. The kiosk picks up changes automatically on its next cycle.

One Dashboard, One Slide

Each dashboard in the kiosk section represents one slide. Because the kiosk displays the full dashboard content, the most effective approach is to design each dashboard with a single focused chart or KPI set that reads clearly at the intended screen size and viewing distance. A dashboard containing a dozen charts will be difficult to read on a wall-mounted display; a dashboard with one clear bar chart or a set of large KPI tiles will be far more effective.

The Cycle Timer

Each slide is displayed for the duration you configure (in seconds). A thin progress bar at the bottom of the screen advances as the timer counts down, giving observers a visual indication of when the next slide is coming. The slide name and its position in the sequence (e.g. "Sales Revenue — 2 / 5") are shown in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.

3. Preparing Your Dashboard Content

Before configuring the kiosk, set up a dedicated dashboard section to act as the kiosk playlist, and populate it with the dashboards you want to display.

Creating a Kiosk Dashboard Section

Navigate to Dashboards and look at the left panel. Click New at the bottom of the panel to create a new section. Give it a clear name — something like Factory Floor Display or Management KPIs — that makes its purpose obvious to anyone maintaining the system.

Building Effective Kiosk Dashboards

Within your new section, add dashboards for each slide you want displayed. Each dashboard is built using Odoo's standard spreadsheet-based dashboard editor. When designing for kiosk use, keep the following in mind:

View distance matters. A chart that looks fine on a laptop screen may be unreadable from three metres away. Use large font sizes in chart titles, minimise detailed data tables, and favour visual chart types (bar, line, pie) over raw numbers wherever possible.

Keep each dashboard focused. Resist the temptation to put everything on one slide. A single bold metric — this month's production count, current open faults, revenue against target — communicates instantly. Complex multi-chart layouts require the viewer to stop and study the screen, which defeats the purpose of a rotating display.

Name your dashboards clearly. The dashboard name appears in the kiosk status bar, so names like Monthly Production or Open Faults — This Week give context at a glance.

4. Configuring a Kiosk Display

Navigate to Dashboards → Kiosk Displays and click New.

Name — Give the kiosk configuration a descriptive name, typically reflecting where the screen is located: Workshop Floor, Reception Display, Management Office.

Dashboard Section — Select the dashboard section you created as your playlist. Only dashboards within this section will be displayed.

Display Duration (seconds) — Set how long each slide is shown before advancing. Ten seconds is a reasonable starting point for simple charts; more complex dashboards with tables may warrant fifteen to twenty seconds to give viewers time to read the content.

Once saved, the form shows a Kiosk URL. This is the address you open in the browser on your display screen. Copy it for use in the next step.

5. Deploying to a Screen

The kiosk runs in any modern web browser. The typical deployment is a dedicated machine or single-board computer (such as a Raspberry Pi) connected to a wall-mounted monitor, with the browser set to open the kiosk URL automatically on startup in full-screen mode.

Opening the Display

Open the kiosk URL in a browser on the display machine. You will be prompted to log in to Odoo if no active session exists. Log in with the credentials of a user who has read access to the relevant dashboards (see the Security section below for guidance on setting up a dedicated kiosk user).

Once logged in, the display begins cycling immediately. No further interaction is required.

Full-Screen Mode

Press F11 (or the browser's full-screen shortcut) to hide the browser chrome and maximise the display area. Most kiosk deployments also configure the operating system to suppress the mouse cursor and prevent the screen from sleeping.

The kiosk URL is specific to the kiosk configuration record. If you create multiple kiosk configurations for different screens or locations, each has its own URL. Navigate to the relevant configuration record to find the correct URL for each screen.

6. Security and Access

A common concern with any always-on display is whether having a browser permanently logged into Odoo creates a security risk. The following explains how the kiosk is designed and what controls are available.

What the Kiosk Can Access

The kiosk session operates under the credentials of the Odoo user account used to log in. It has exactly the same access as that user — no more, no less. If the user account cannot access payroll data, neither can the kiosk session. The display is read-only by design; there are no interactive controls that would allow someone standing in front of the screen to modify data.

Using a Dedicated Kiosk User Account

The recommended approach is to create a dedicated internal Odoo user specifically for kiosk use, with access restricted to only the data intended for display. This user should be a standard internal user with access only to the Dashboards app and the underlying models whose data appears in the kiosk dashboards.

This approach means that even if someone were to access the kiosk browser session directly, they could only see what the kiosk is designed to show — nothing beyond the dashboards in the configured section.

Physical Security

The browser session on the kiosk machine remains logged in. Physical access to the keyboard and mouse on that machine would allow someone to navigate away from the kiosk URL within the browser. For screens in public or semi-public areas, consider locking down the operating system so that keyboard input is ignored or restricted, or use a browser kiosk mode that prevents navigation.

Network Considerations

The kiosk communicates with your Odoo server over your internal network using standard HTTP/HTTPS, the same as any other browser session. No data is transmitted outside your network. If your Odoo server is only accessible on your internal network, the kiosk screen must also be on that network — it cannot be accessed from outside without a VPN or similar arrangement, which is an additional layer of protection.

Session Expiry

Odoo sessions expire after a period of inactivity. Because the kiosk cycles continuously, the session remains active. If the display machine is switched off or the browser is closed, the session will eventually expire and the user will need to log in again when the display is next started. This is standard Odoo session behaviour.

Summary: The kiosk is as secure as the user account it runs under. Create a dedicated, limited-access user for kiosk use, restrict it to the data you intend to display, and the system presents no meaningful security exposure beyond what is already on the screen.

7. Standard Workflows

Adding a New Slide to an Existing Kiosk

Scenario: You want to add a new fault-count chart to the workshop floor display.

Build the new dashboard in Odoo's Dashboards app and place it in the section that the kiosk is configured to use. The kiosk picks it up automatically on the next cycle — no changes to the kiosk configuration are required. The new slide will appear in the rotation in the order it sits within the section.

Changing the Display Duration

Scenario: Staff feedback indicates the slides are advancing too quickly.

Navigate to Dashboards → Kiosk Displays, open the relevant configuration, and increase the Display Duration value. Save the record. The change takes effect the next time the kiosk page is loaded or refreshed in the browser.

Setting Up a Second Screen at a Different Location

Scenario: You want a separate display in the management office showing financial KPIs, while the workshop floor continues to show production metrics.

Create a separate dashboard section in the Dashboards app for the management office content. Then create a second kiosk configuration record pointing at that section with an appropriate display duration. The Kiosk URL on the second configuration record is the address for the management office screen. The two displays operate entirely independently.

8. Troubleshooting

The screen shows "No dashboards found in the configured section"

The dashboard section selected in the kiosk configuration either contains no dashboards, or the logged-in user does not have access to the dashboards it contains. Verify the section has at least one published dashboard and that the kiosk user account has access to the Dashboards app.

The display is cycling but showing the wrong dashboard

Hard-refresh the browser on the display machine (Ctrl+Shift+R or Cmd+Shift+R). This clears cached content and forces the kiosk to reload its configuration.

The display stopped cycling after the screen was left overnight

The operating system's power management settings may have put the display machine to sleep or turned off the monitor. Disable sleep and screensaver settings on the display machine. Most operating systems have a "presentation mode" or "kiosk mode" setting for this purpose.

The Odoo login screen is showing instead of the kiosk

The kiosk session has expired. Log in again with the kiosk user credentials. If this happens frequently, check whether Odoo's session timeout is configured too aggressively for your environment, or consider increasing it for the kiosk user.

Charts appear very small or the layout looks compressed

The dashboard was designed at a different screen resolution than the display. Open the dashboard in the Dashboards editor and resize the charts to fill the available width. Test by viewing the kiosk URL at the resolution of the target display screen before deploying.