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Custom Textbox Overview
Custom Textbox Overview

Everything you need to know about the custom textbox widget.

Tatum Savage avatar
Written by Tatum Savage
Updated over a week ago

Custom Textbox Overview

When creating reports and dashboards, sometimes stats and charts are simply not enough to communicate what your agency is doing for your client. The custom textbox widget allows you to add notes, comments, images, links, and supplemental information to your dashboards and reports to better explain the data you're sharing with your clients.

Custom textboxes are perfect for adding a summary to your report, listing the work that you've completed, or highlighting goals and targets. You can also add links to resources or your contact details to let your clients know how to contact you.

How to Add Custom Textbox Widgets

Textboxes are added just like any other widget, via the add widget menu you'll see when editing reports or custom dashboards. When adding widgets, you'll find the textbox widget under "Objects" > "Textbox". Drag and drop the widget to add it to your report or dashboard.

How to Add Content to Custom Textbox Widgets

Once you've added your textbox widget, hover over the widget, click the ellipsis “...” in the top right-hand corner and click "edit". A What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor will appear.

The editor's toolbar has various options to modify the textbox content:

  1. Format your text (bold, italicize, underline).

  2. Add a numbered or bulleted list.

  3. Change your text alignment.

  4. Undo your changes.

  5. Add links.

  6. Add images.

  7. Add tables.

  8. Change the text style and font.

  9. Change the text size.

  10. Change the text and background color.

Adding Text

To add text, click into the text area and start typing. Use the formatting buttons at the top of the textbox to edit the size, styles, colors, and more.

Adding Images

Click on the "Add Image" button in the editor's toolbar.

A pop-up window displaying the image properties will appear. You'll need to link directly to the image rather than uploading the image to our servers.

Note: All images must be hosted externally and must be publicly accessible. There are a number of free image hosting services out there (like imgur.com), or you can host images on your own server.

Once you have the image's URL, add it to the URL field in the pop-up window.

You can set an alternative text for the image, adjust the image's dimensions, and preview the image you're adding. You also have the option to turn the image into a link by going to the "Link" tab at the top.

Once you're finished editing, click 'OK' to add the image to your custom textbox.

Adding Links

Click on the "Add Link" button in the editor's toolbar.

A pop-up window displaying the link properties will appear.

Set the display text for your link. Alternatively, you can highlight text in the editor to turn into a link before clicking on the "Add Link" button. This will automatically use the selected text as the display text.

From there, add the URL where you want the link to direct to. This option is useful for linking to resources for your clients.

You can change the link type to "e-mail" to create an email link on your textbox. Clicking this link will automatically open an email client. Add the email you want the link to mail to as well as pre-fill the email's subject and body:

You can also use the "phone" link type to create a link to your phone number. Clicking this link will automatically dial the phone number you set (if supported by your client's device).

Understanding Character Limits

Please note that each custom textbox widget in both reports and dashboards has a limit of 5000 characters. Both standard keyword characters and HTML characters count toward this limit.

Even though you're seeing the text and its formatting in real-time while editing, the widget actually uses HTML to format the textbox and the HTML characters count toward the limit. This is why you might see a different number of characters used in the top left corner of the widget compared to the actual number of characters you're adding.

In the example below, even though the text has 19 characters, the actual number of characters used is 69.

This is because additional HTML characters are required to change the color of the font to red.

If you reach the 5000 character limit, you can add more text by simply adding another textbox.

Saving Your Progress

Once you've finished editing your textbox, simply save the report or dashboard that you're editing and your textbox changes will be saved as well. Lock in your changes by clicking Save, found in the upper right hand corner of both dashboards and reports.

What's Next

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