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Overview

The homepage is the first thing users see when they open Portal. It provides a customizable dashboard made up of widgets — self-contained cards that surface relevant information and shortcuts. Portal ships with several built-in widgets and supports adding custom widgets from installed plugins.

Built-in widgets

Portal includes the following widgets out of the box:

Managing the homepage

Portal admins can customize the homepage for all users in the organization through the Manage Homepage menu, which appears in the top-right area of the homepage. Individual users cannot customize their own layout — all changes made through this menu apply organization-wide.

Edit Widgets

Open Manage Homepage > Edit Widgets to show or hide widgets on the homepage. Widgets contributed by installed plugins appear here alongside the built-in ones. Toggle a widget on or off to control whether it is visible on the homepage.

Edit Layout

Open Manage Homepage > Edit Layout to enter drag-and-drop mode. In this mode, admins can reorder and resize widgets on the grid. Click Save to persist the layout for all users, or Cancel to discard changes.

Add Shortcut Widget

Open Manage Homepage > Add Shortcut Widget to create a new shortcut link collection. Each shortcut widget is a set of curated links that admins can configure with titles, URLs, descriptions, tags, and icons. A maximum of four shortcut widgets can exist at a time.

Custom widgets

Plugins can contribute their own widgets to the homepage using the HomePageWidgetBlueprint from the Backstage frontend system. Custom widgets appear alongside the built-in ones and can be managed by admins in the same way. For a step-by-step guide on building a custom homepage widget, see Add a custom widget to the homepage.