The Launcher

The Launcher is the first thing you see after signing in to a workspace. It gathers what you work with most — projects, workflows, tables, dashboards, panel apps, dimensions, data editors, and documents — onto one page of tiles, so you can pick up where you left off without hunting through each app.

Lanes

The page is organized into three lanes, top to bottom. A lane only appears when it has something to show.

• Needs attention — workflows whose most recent run failed, so problems surface the moment you land. Each card links straight to the failed run, and you can Dismiss one you’ve already dealt with.
• Pinned — everything you’ve marked as a favorite, in the order you pinned it. Any item type can be pinned here (see Pinning).
• Recent — projects, dashboards, and panel apps you’ve opened or edited recently.

Note

Only projects, dashboards, and panel apps appear by recency — there are usually far too many workflows, tables, dimensions, data editors, and documents to list that way. Surface the ones you return to by pinning them, and they’ll wait for you in the Pinned lane.

Project Tiles

A project tile summarizes the project at a glance:

Statistic	Meaning
Workflow Runs	Completed workflow runs in the recent window
Last run	When the most recent run finished
Workflows	Workflows the project contains
Tables	Tables the project contains
Records	Total rows across those tables (a ~ marks an estimate)

A project with no run history shows Last edited instead of run figures, and counts are omitted entirely when they’re zero.

Tile Images

Each project tile carries a faded background image. By default that’s the PlaidCloud fan, but you can give a project its own picture — a customer logo, say, or something that identifies the work at a glance — so it stands out on a busy Launcher.

To set one:

1. Open the project and go to its Home tab.
2. Scroll to Launcher Tile Image at the bottom of the left column.
3. Choose the document account holding the image, then Browse to the image file.
4. Use Clear to go back to the default.

The image is faded behind the statistics so they stay readable, so pick something that reads well when washed back. Wide images suit the tile’s shape better than tall ones. You need permission to edit the project to set this; a read-only viewer sees the picker disabled.

Note

Anyone who can see the project sees its tile image, but the image is served only to people who can also read the document account it lives in. A viewer without that access simply sees the default fan.

Dashboard tiles work differently — they show an automatically generated thumbnail of the dashboard itself, so there’s nothing to choose.

Opening Things

Every card and list row has a primary action and, where it makes sense, extra actions:

Item	Opens	Also available
Project	The project
Workflow	The workflow	Run, Open latest run, live Running status
Table	The table	Open in Table Explorer
Dimension	Its hierarchy editor
Data editor	Its project
Dashboard	The dashboard	Open in new tab
Panel app	The app	Open in new tab
Document	The file, or the folder

A running workflow shows a live status indicator that updates on its own — no need to refresh.

Pinning (Favorites)

Click the star on any Launcher card or list row to pin it. Pinned items always appear in the Pinned lane regardless of how recently you used them, so what you care about never scrolls out of reach.

You can also pin from where you already work, without opening the Launcher first — look for the star column:

• Projects, workflows, tables, dimensions, and data editors — the star column in the list of each, inside the project.
• Dashboards and panel apps — the star column in My Dashboards and My Panel Apps.
• Documents — right-click a file or a folder in the document browser and choose Pin to Launcher.

Click a lit star anywhere to unpin. Pins made anywhere are reflected on the Launcher immediately.

Note

Folder pins resolve for most storage accounts. Folders in some object stores (S3 and Wasabi, for example) can’t be resolved back to a pin and won’t appear — pin a file inside the folder instead.

Tiles or List

Use the Tiles / List toggle in the toolbar to switch between the roomy card view and a dense, single-line list. Your choice is remembered, and switching is instant — it redraws what’s already loaded without fetching again.

Filtering by Type

The chip row at the left of the toolbar has one chip per type, each with its own icon — Projects, Dashboards, Panel apps, Workflows, Tables, Dimensions, Data editors, and Documents. A pressed chip means that type is shown; click it to hide that type from the Recent and Pinned lanes. Your filter is remembered between visits.

The Needs attention lane is never filtered — a failing workflow always surfaces, even when its type’s chip is off.

Search

Press Ctrl/Cmd-K — or click Search in the toolbar — to search across projects, workflows, tables, dashboards, and panel apps at once. Start typing (two characters or more) and results appear grouped by type as you type, each with the same open actions and pin star as on the board.

• Up / Down move the selection.
• Enter opens the selected result.
• Escape closes the search panel.

Dimensions, data editors, and documents aren’t searchable — reach those by pinning them, or from the project they belong to.

Clicking a result opens it; clicking its star pins it and leaves the panel open, so you can pin several things in one pass.

Refreshing

The Launcher refreshes on its own when you return to it and its data has gone stale. To pull the latest immediately, click Refresh in the toolbar.

Starting Elsewhere

The Launcher is where PlaidCloud opens by default. To start on a different app instead, turn off Start on Launcher in the Options menu.