Containers are the structural building blocks of a dashboard. Every tile, every chart, text tile, and filter, lives inside a container. Containers group related content together, create visible hierarchy, and make dashboards easier to read, navigate, and maintain.

Think of a container as a section. A dashboard built around containers has named, organised sections: "Stay Period Breakdown Header & Description," "Accommodation Revenue by Stay Period." A dashboard without containers is a flat wall of tiles with no structure, harder to scan and harder to update.

The container hierarchy maps directly to the document hierarchy you would use in any structured report:

This means building a well-structured dashboard and building a well-structured container hierarchy are the same task. If the sections are clear, the containers are clear.

There are two container types. Choosing the right one for each situation keeps layouts consistent without manual spacing work.

Stack arranges items in a row or column, a sequence. Use it for content that belongs together: a row of KPI tiles at the top of a section, a section heading with its charts below it, a set of filters displayed side by side. Stack containers auto-align their contents and can be configured for direction, spacing, and wrapping.

Grid allows free-form positioning and resizing within a defined area. Use it for page-level layout, the outer structure that holds different sections at different widths.

Rule of thumb: if items belong together in sequence, use a Stack. If you are composing a whole page from distinct sections, use a Grid.

In FLYR templates, the page layout is a Grid with a full-width container for each section. Within each section, tiles and filters are arranged in Stacks.

In edit mode, select Add > Container and choose Stack or Grid.

Give every container a meaningful name that describes what it holds. An unnamed container, left as the default "Container," makes the dashboard harder to understand and maintain, especially when working across multiple pages.

FLYR templates follow a consistent naming pattern:

Use static labels when naming, for example "Stay Period Breakdown" rather than "Stay Date Breakdown," and "Dimension Breakdown" rather than "Macro Segment Breakdown." This keeps container names stable regardless of what a filter is currently set to.

When a dashboard is handed to a colleague or revisited months later, consistent naming makes the structure immediately readable in the editor without needing to open each container to understand what it holds.

Presets automatically apply the right padding and spacing for the container's role. Using presets avoids manual spacing work and keeps the dashboard visually consistent.

Filters and controls placed directly on the page (not inside a tile) automatically receive Tile Align formatting.

Containers can be nested inside other containers. A Stack inside a Grid, or a Stack inside another Stack, lets you build structured layouts without losing the benefits of auto-alignment.

Example: a Grid container holds the full page layout. Inside it, a Stack set to column direction holds a section header, a description, and a section-scoped filter, one container for that entire header block. Separately, another Stack holds a single chart tile. Nesting keeps each unit aligned without manual positioning.

Deeper nesting makes a dashboard significantly harder to maintain: containers become difficult to select, move, and rename, and small layout changes require navigating multiple levels of structure. If you find yourself nesting three or more levels deep, it is usually a sign the layout needs to be simplified rather than made more complex.

In a column Stack, drag the resize handle between items to adjust their relative heights. The minimum height is 12px. To remove a custom size from an item, right-click it and select Reset sizing.

Row Stacks do not support manual resizing of individual items.

Because each section of a well-built dashboard is already its own container, converting a single-scroll dashboard to a multi-page layout is largely structural rearrangement rather than redesign. Each top-level container becomes a page. The grouping is already correct, the work is moving containers into pages, not rethinking the content.

This is a practical reason to use containers well from the start: it makes future layout changes, including splitting a dashboard into pages when it grows, much faster and lower risk.

Locking a container prevents its contents from being accidentally rearranged in edit mode. Child containers are also locked when a parent is locked. A locked container can still be repositioned by its parent container.

To lock a container: select it in edit mode and use the lock option in the properties panel.

Right-click a container and select Duplicate, or use Cmd+D / Ctrl+D. Duplicating a container copies its layout and any tiles inside it.

Note: pages, filters, and controls cannot be duplicated this way, only containers and their tile contents.

Placeholders are wireframing tiles that let you sketch out a dashboard layout before the actual content is ready. They are visible in both edit mode and when the dashboard is shared, making them useful for communicating a structure-in-progress to colleagues or reviewing a layout before connecting all the analyses.

In edit mode, select Add > Layout > Placeholder.

Choose the type that matches what the placeholder will eventually become:

Change the type in the properties panel or via right-click.

The placeholder label defaults to "Placeholder [type]" and is editable. Use the label to describe what goes there, for example "Occupancy vs. LY trend chart," so colleagues reviewing the layout understand the intent.

Click the Insert button on the placeholder to replace it with real content. The options shown depend on the placeholder type. You can only select from analyses and filters that already exist in the workbook, you cannot create new content directly from a placeholder.