Color Themes, Color Templates and Widget Formatting: Style Every Dashboard at Once
Your dashboards can carry your brand. Quick stats, display titles, charts, quick filter buttons, dashboard tabs and the dashboard page itself can each be given their own colours (for light and dark mode), fonts and sizes. You don't have to style them one by one: save a look once and reuse it everywhere.
Three building blocks work together:
Color template: a saved look for one kind of thing, for example "our quick stats" or "our tabs". Everything that follows a template updates when you edit it.
Color theme: a bundle with one template for every kind, built around a palette of approved colours. Apply a theme to a dashboard and everything on it is styled at once.
Widget formatting: the Format editor, for fine-tuning a single widget, tab, filter button or the dashboard page on top of its template.
Formatting only changes how things look. Metrics, filters and data stay exactly as they are.
Before you start
The feature must be turned on for your account. If you don't see Color Themes under Settings, contact your Qvasa representative and we'll enable it. An admin can then switch Widget formatting & color templates on or off in your account settings.
Formatting follows four permission levels. Nobody has them automatically, not even admins, so an admin needs to grant them first (see Who can do what below).
You need edit access to a dashboard to change how it looks.
Step 1: Grant the color permissions
Go to Settings → Manage Account Members and open the user.
Find the Color Template Permissions group and check the level the user needs. Each level includes the ones before it.
Save the user.
Can apply color themes: put one of your account's themes on a dashboard, or take it off.
Can apply color templates: give widgets, tabs, filter buttons and the dashboard an existing template, and set a dashboard's defaults. The Format button appears at this level.
Can set custom widget colors: pick colours and fonts by hand, and save a look as a new template.
Can manage color templates: create, rename and delete templates and themes, and edit palettes. Give this one to whoever owns your brand.
A common setup: one or two people manage templates and themes, dashboard editors can apply them, and everyone else simply sees the result.
Step 2: Create a color theme
Go to Settings → Color Themes and click New theme.
Give it a name, then choose where its palette comes from:
From brand colours: enter one to three of your brand's colours. Qvasa builds a whole palette from them for light and dark mode, adjusting each colour so text and data stay readable.
From a description: describe the look in words, for example "warm, like our terracotta logo", and AI picks the colours.
A starter palette: start from a ready-made palette such as Classic, Ocean or Forest.
Start empty: choose templates kind by kind yourself.
Leave Create a template for every kind from the palette checked, check the preview swatches, and click Create.
The theme's page shows its palette and the template it uses for each kind (quick stats, display titles, quick filter buttons, dashboard tabs, basic charts, multi data charts, donut charts and the dashboard page), each with a live preview. You can swap any kind's template from its dropdown.
The templates refer to the palette's colours rather than copies of them. When you click Edit palette and change a colour, every template in the theme, and every dashboard using the theme, updates.
Step 3: Apply the theme to your dashboards
There are two ways to apply a theme:
Many dashboards at once: on the theme's page, click Apply to dashboards… and pick the dashboards.
One dashboard: open the dashboard's settings page and choose the theme under Color templates → Color theme. The same section lets you set a different template for any one kind on this dashboard, which takes priority over the theme.
Everything on the dashboard now follows the theme: tabs, filter buttons, quick stats, titles, chart series colours and the page itself.
Step 4: Fine-tune with the Format editor
When one widget needs to stand out, for example a red KPI tile for breaches, format it directly:
Open the dashboard and click Edit.
Click the paint roller on the widget (Format widget). The same editor opens from Format dashboard in the top bar, from a tab's menu (Apply a color template to tabs…) and from the quick filters bar's menu (Format all filter buttons).
Pick a Color template, or set individual colours, fonts, sizes and alignment. Fields you leave empty keep following the template, and the palette's colours are offered as swatches.
Use the Light mode / Dark mode switch to check both looks in the live preview, then click Save.
Save as template… turns the look you just built into a new template that other widgets can follow.
Reset to default removes the widget's own styling, so it goes back to following the dashboard's theme.
To give several widgets the same template at once, use Multi-Select in edit mode, select the widgets, and apply a color template to all of them.
What wins when several apply: the item's own formatting first, then its own template, then the dashboard's template for that kind, then the theme. Anything nobody has formatted keeps Qvasa's standard look.
Manage templates and themes
Settings → Color Themes lists every theme with its palette, how many dashboards use it, and where its palette came from. From there, Color templates opens a sortable table of every template with its colours, kind, theme and last update.
Edit a template and everything that follows it restyles. Template managers can edit any template. A user with Can set custom widget colors can edit the templates they created.
Users without a management level can still browse every theme and template under User Settings → Color Themes.
Faster: style your dashboards with Claude
Everything above can also be done through the Qvasa MCP and the User Access API. Because every template, theme and palette colour is adjustable, this is often the quickest way to brand a whole account. Clicks that add up across dozens of widgets, tabs and dashboards become one sentence:
"Create a color theme called Acme from our brand colours #0f766e, #f97316 and #6d28d9, with a template for every kind."
"Apply the Acme theme to the Support Overview, Escalations and Team Leads dashboards."
"Make the quick stats on the Executive dashboard use the KPI template, and make all its tabs match."
"Show me a palette for 'calm, like our ocean-blue logo' before you save anything."
"Darken the accent colour in the Acme palette."
Claude works with exactly the permissions of the user who connected it. If that user can only apply themes, Claude can only apply themes. Admins grant the levels in Step 1 the same way for the app and for Claude. To connect Claude, see User Access Tokens and the Qvasa MCP: Connecting Claude to Your Account. For Claude to make changes, give the token the Write everything scope. To let it create and edit templates, themes and palettes, also give it Manage color templates and themes.
Troubleshooting
I don't see Color Themes in Settings, or the paint roller on widgets. Check that the feature is on for your account (contact your Qvasa representative), and that Widget formatting & color templates is enabled in your account settings.
I'm an admin but can't create a theme. Admins don't get the color permissions automatically. Grant yourself Can manage color templates under Manage Account Members.
The Format button is missing in edit mode. You need at least Can apply color templates, plus edit access to the dashboard.
One widget ignores the theme. It has its own template or its own formatting. Open its Format editor and click Reset to default, or choose the dashboard's template.
Claude says it isn't permitted to change colours. Claude has the same color level as the user who connected it. Ask an admin to grant a higher level, or ask Claude to apply an existing template instead of picking colours by hand.