Field notes
What a morning ops dashboard should show before the first alarm
A practical order of panels for Hong Kong network desks: site status, feeder load, open tickets, then weather risk — and why stacking them wrong slows the floor.
On a busy Hong Kong network desk, the first fifteen minutes set the tone for the shift. If the opening screen buries feeder capacity behind decorative maps, supervisors waste time hunting for the one number that decides whether a crew rolls to Chai Wan or stays in Kowloon.
We recommend a vertical reading order. Top: sites currently off-air or degraded, with district tags. Middle: backhaul and feeder utilisation for the corridors that feed those sites. Bottom: open field tickets already assigned, so the desk does not create a duplicate visit.
Weather and event overlays belong on a second view, not the first. They matter for planning, but they compete with alarm reading when a pager is already buzzing. Keep the morning view spare: status, capacity, tickets.
Colour should mean one thing. Red for confirmed off-air, amber for approaching threshold, muted slate for informational. Mixed rainbow legends force operators to relearn meaning every panel — a cost that shows up as slower acknowledgement times.
Test the layout with a real shift change. Sit behind the glass for one handover and note which panel people actually glance at first. Rebuild around that behaviour rather than around a catalogue of available metrics.