I imagine the 'engine' for this to be Dashboards.

We are aiming to start with something as simple as

Is there a config option for this, or does it need to be hardcoded in some file? Do you know how https://developer.blender.org/ got that custom left sidebar?

It currently needs to be hard coded.

We probably aren't going to implement this ahead of T4103, since we'd have to undo it and migrate customizations when that lands. Roughly:

• We're building at least a prototype/beta of Dashboards now/soon (T3583) to make sure they'll really solve the problems we'd like them to solve.
• They'll come online as a standalone app first.
• If they look like a plausible fix for homepage content, we'll provide some kind of UI to let you do the "role profile" stuff (T4103); that will also let you set applications. I'm not 100% sure what this will look like yet, but whatever it looks like will solve this. This will probably be called "UI Presets" or something like that instead of "Role Profiles" by the time it gets built, since "Role" and "Profile" are both highly overloaded terms.

The timeline on this is a bit fuzzy. We're putting some work into dashboards right now to prove that they're a good fit, but if we build them and they turn out to be terrible we might need to reevaluate things a bit. If they feel good and it's clear that they improve the homepage content situation, we'll do the profile/ui-preset stuff pretty soon to get them deployed.

Couple of minor permissions issues here:

• If you can't see a panel, the UX isn't so great. We should make this error more clear.
• The default panel view policy is USERS, but should probably be the most open policy on the install (or maybe customizable).

Things mostly look OK otherwise.

Thanks to Dashboards, now the body of the homepage can be customize in multiple ways, for everybody and each user for themselves. What ius still missing is a decent way to define the items in the left navigation column.

If you can see my upload gif , then it‘s ok !just{F1115848}

How exactly is this currently possible? I am trying to change the default homepage for all users but not managing to do that. Have tried creating a Dashboard, but not sure how I can use that to 'replace' the homepage for everyone.

For now, "Edit Menu" on your home, click "Global" and add the Dashboard. "Default" is the topmost dashboard. You can disable "Home" then. This will be easier after D17492 lands.

Ahh that did the trick - thanks.