# Working with widgets

Every panel on a composed workspace is a working widget, not a picture of one.
What you can do depends on what it draws: a table's rows can be searched,
sorted, filtered and exported, most widgets can be renamed, resized and redrawn
as a different kind of chart, and any widget can be removed — all without
leaving the canvas or starting a new workspace.

Two routes reach the same controls. Use the widget's own header if you know
what you want to change, or ask the AI chat if you would rather describe it.
Neither is a shortcut for the other: the chat performs the same actions you
would perform by hand, and the results are identical.

## The widget header

Every widget carries the same controls in its top-right corner.

| Control | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| **Refresh** | Asks the widget for its data again. A widget backed by a live query re-runs it; a widget holding a fixed set of rows — a chart composed from chat, for instance — redraws the rows it already has. |
| **Chat** | Opens a chat thread scoped to this widget alone. |
| **Three-dot menu** | The vertical **⋮** button. Opens **Edit**, **Export**, and **Remove**. |

The time shown beside these controls is when the widget was last loaded or
refreshed on your screen. It is not a statement about when the underlying data
last changed.

![The Top 10 Assets to Address widget with its vertical three-dot menu open, showing Edit, Export, and Remove](/img/generative-ui/widget-overflow-menu.png)

## Finding the rows you want

Table widgets carry a search box, sortable column headers, and a **Filters**
control. How far they reach depends on the widget: on some, the search or filter
is answered by the server and looks at every row behind the widget; on the rest
it narrows the rows the widget has already loaded. Mesh tells you which one you
have rather than leaving you to guess — see the search box wording below.

### Search

Type into the search box to match against the widget's name column. The match is
anywhere in the value, and case does not matter.

**The label tells you how far the search reaches.** A box reading **Search this
widget** asks the server and matches every row behind the widget, whether or not
it is on screen. A box reading **Search loaded rows** matches the rows the widget
has already fetched. Hovering either one spells out the same distinction.

Every table widget has a box. A widget that draws a single number or a summary
has nothing to search, so it shows no box rather than a box that does nothing.

### Sort

Select a column header to sort by it, and select it again to reverse the
direction. Columns that can be sorted show the sort arrows beside their label.

### Filter

Select **Filters** to build a condition. Choose a **Field**, a **Condition**,
and a **Value**, then select **Add filter**. Each filter you add becomes a chip
above the list, and **Clear filters** removes them all at once.

![The Filters panel on a table widget, with Field set to Type, Condition set to contains, and an active filter chip reading Type contains certificate](/img/generative-ui/widget-filters.png)

A filter reaches as far as the widget's data source allows, the same way search
does. On most widgets it narrows the rows already loaded, so a filtered **Top
10** can come back with fewer than ten rows even though more than ten match —
the filter is choosing among the ten, not re-ranking everything behind them.

Where the data source filters for itself, the **Field** list offers only the
columns it can genuinely answer on. A column that is displayed but cannot be
filtered is left out rather than offered and silently ignored.

## Changing how a widget looks

Open **Edit** from the three-dot menu to rename a widget, resize it, change how
its data is drawn, and choose which columns a table shows.

![The Edit widget dialog showing a Name field, Half and Full width options, and an open Display list offering Table, Bar chart, Horizontal bar chart, Radial bar chart, Pie chart, Donut chart, Treemap, Radar chart, Single value, and Heatmap](/img/generative-ui/widget-edit-panel-display.png)

- **Name** — rename the widget. Leave it empty to go back to its default name.
- **Width** — **Half width** or **Full width** on the canvas.
- **Display** — the chart or table this widget is drawn as.
- **Columns** — which columns a table widget shows, for table-backed widgets.

### The Display list is built for each widget

The displays offered are the ones this widget's own data can actually fill. A
list of assets with a category and a count can be drawn as a bar chart, a pie,
a donut, or a treemap; a single measured number cannot, so those options are
not offered for it. You will see different choices on different widgets, and
that is the data talking, not an inconsistency.

**Default for this widget** is always the first entry, and choosing it puts the
widget back the way it was composed.

![The Top 10 Assets to Address widget redrawn as a donut chart, with a legend naming each slice and its share](/img/generative-ui/widget-display-donut.png)

![The same widget redrawn as a pie chart](/img/generative-ui/widget-display-pie.png)

Some displays stay readable only up to a point — a pie of four hundred slices
tells you nothing. Where that applies, the widget draws the largest rows and
says on the card how many it is showing out of how many there are. Nothing is
hidden from you silently.

> **tip**

Changing a display keeps the widget's data, filters, search term, title, size,
and position. You are changing how the same rows are drawn, not asking a new
question — so a filtered table that you redraw as a pie chart is a pie chart of
exactly the rows you had filtered to.

## Exporting a single widget

Open **Export** from the three-dot menu to download what the widget holds as a
CSV file. Mesh asks which rows you want:

| Scope | What lands in the file |
| --- | --- |
| **Visible rows** | Exactly what is on screen, in the order and columns you are looking at. |
| **Filtered results** | Every row matching your current filters and search, not just the loaded page. |
| **All results** | The full dataset behind the widget, ignoring your filters. |

**Filtered results** and **All results** are offered only on widgets whose data
source can serve them. If the dialog shows you **Visible rows** alone, that is
the whole of what this widget can export.

![An Export in progress notification reading that the asset report is being generated, that a notification with a download link will appear, and that a link will also be emailed](/img/generative-ui/widget-export-progress.png)

A few things worth knowing before you rely on an export:

- **A summary widget exports the summary**, not the records behind it.
- **Every export is recorded in the audit log**, attributed to whoever ran it.
- **Exported timestamps are always UTC**, whatever your tenant's display
  preference. See [Reports and exports](../reports-and-exports.md) for the full
  export story, including FAIR reports and bulk retrieval.

## Removing a widget

Open **Remove** from the three-dot menu to take a widget off the canvas. It is
available from the menu in normal view — you do not need to enter an edit mode
to reach it.

You can also remove a widget from its own chat thread, which offers **Remove
this widget from the view** and asks you to confirm before it acts.

## Asking the chat instead

Every action above can be requested in plain language. Use the widget's own
chat thread when you mean *this* widget, and the workspace chat when you mean
the canvas as a whole.

| Ask for | What happens |
| --- | --- |
| "Export this widget" | Mesh runs the export and tells you what it started. |
| "Remove this widget" | Mesh removes it, after confirming with you. |
| "Convert this widget to a treemap" | Mesh redraws the existing widget in the display you asked for. |
| "Add a pie chart of this data" | Mesh composes a second widget presenting the same data that way, beside the original. |

![The Algorithm Posture Matrix redrawn as a treemap after asking the chat to convert this widget to tree map, with the assistant explaining each posture band appears as a proportionally sized block](/img/generative-ui/widget-display-treemap-chat.png)

![A PQC Readiness workspace where asking for a widget in pie chart format has added a Fixable Now pie chart beside the original table, with the assistant noting the new chart is a snapshot that will not refresh on its own](/img/generative-ui/widget-display-pie-chat.png)

Two habits make the chat much more useful:

- **It tells you what it actually did.** When a request succeeds it says so and
  names the widget; when it fails it says that instead. It does not announce a
  download or a change that did not happen.
- **It declines what it cannot do.** A refusal with a reason is the assistant
  working correctly, not a fault. If it says a widget cannot be drawn a
  particular way, that widget's data genuinely cannot encode it.

## Going deeper into a row

Selecting a row, a slice, or a node opens a focus view about that one thing.
Those views carry their own search, filters, columns, and **Export**, and they
stack so you can follow a thread several steps and come back. See
[Drill-downs and more panels](./drill-down-widgets.md).

**Related:**

- [Generative UI overview](./index.md) — composing a workspace and what it will
  and will not do
- [Drill-downs and more panels](./drill-down-widgets.md) — focus views and the
  panels you can ask for
- [Reports and exports](../reports-and-exports.md) — FAIR reports, the
  Analytics OData API, and bulk retrieval