Quarto Dashboards are missing date and modified fields

[coatless]

Description

When a dashboard is deployed into a CI/CD workflow, it's very useful to understand when the data on the dashboard was last refreshed. Usually, this information either needs to appear in the header or footer of the dashboard. (There's a preference for it being near the top.)

However, Quarto Dashboards do not respect either the date nor modified fields.

Thus, if we wanted to do a date time stamp, we'd need something like:

---
title: "Dashboard"
format: 
    dashboard:
        orientation: rows
        theme: cosmo
        scrolling: true
        pages:
          - id: overview
            title: Overview
            layout: [[0,0,0,0], # Row for timestamp
                         [1,1,2,2]] # Recent submissions table
---

# Overview

```{python}
#| output: false

# Import time functions
from datetime import datetime

# Get current timestamp
current_time = datetime.now().strftime("%B %d, %Y %I:%M %p")
```

## Row {height="0.5%"}

```{python}
print(f"Data last updated on: {current_time}")
```

This looks a bit odd as its the entire row.

[mcanouil]

It's not really that those fields are missing, it's that the original design choice was to only allow title and author (yes, only those two are available).
I think the rational was to avoid using too much of the navigation bar that could have been used for pages.

Current workaround would be to use "author" if not used to set a date manually or via a shortcode (https://github.com/gadenbuie/quarto-now).

[coatless]

@mcanouil I saw that one. though, I missed the author field trick. It works wonderfully.

Steps:

In the Quarto project's terminal, run:

quarto add gadenbuie/quarto-now

Change the dashboard to:

---
title: "Dashboard"
author: '{{< modified "on %A, %B %d of %Y" >}}'
format: 
    dashboard:
        orientation: rows
        theme: cosmo
        scrolling: true
        pages:
          - id: overview
            title: Overview
            layout: [[1,1,2,2]] # Recent submissions table
---

# Overview

## Row

```{python}
# My awesome content here!
```

[mcanouil]

As far as the trick can go, maybe a date field (probably less prominent) could be added, because if I suggested it it's because I am using it and I expect others to want to add a (global) date field.

[mcanouil]

Off topic: These days I no longer do quarto add ... 😇😎

• Streamline Your Quarto Projects with Quarto Wizard! 🧙‍♂️🪄✨ #11489 (comment)

https://bsky.app/profile/mickael.canouil.fr/post/3lgbtuji7zc2j