--- title: "Managing chart custom views" description: "A view is a saved set of highlights that colours roles and circles on your organisation chart. Create one from Highlight, apply it in one click, and share it if you are an administrator." category: structure-governance section: chart-and-circles type: Tutorial lastUpdated: 2026-08-05 locale: en canonical: https://support.talkspirit.com/en/structure-governance/how-to-manage-chart-custom-views --- # Managing chart custom views ## Managing chart custom views A view is a saved set of highlights that colours roles and circles on your organisation chart, so you can see at a glance which roles are vacant, which ones are yours, or which ones match a rule your organisation has written. You build and apply views from **Highlight**, at the top right of **Explore organisation**. Nothing is coloured until you pick a view, and your organisation does not start with any. The list is empty until someone creates one, and no view is ever applied for you automatically. The word "view" does double duty here, so it is worth separating the two meanings. **Circles & roles**, **Hierarchy** and **Network** are the three chart views, which draw the same organisation in three shapes, and they are covered in [Navigating your organisation chart](/structure-governance/how-to-navigate-your-chart). This article is about the views you save yourself, which sit on top of whichever of the three you are looking at. If your organisation has renamed circles or roles under Administration > Terminology, read your own words for them throughout. ## Where do I find my views? Open **Explore organisation** and click **Highlight**, next to **Filter** and the search box at the top right. In a narrow window the button shows only its icon. The popover holds three things: a **Search view** box, a **+** button that creates a view, and the list itself. That list shows the views you created plus the views an administrator has shared with everyone. Your own views are private, so nobody else sees them, and you never see anybody else's. When nothing has been created yet the list reads **No views**. ![The Highlight popover open on Explore organisation, with a Search view box, an orange plus button, and two saved views listed underneath: Core and cross-circle roles, carrying the Transversal and Core highlights, and Open positions, carrying Vacant and Hiring, each highlight shown with its colour dot](/images/structure-governance/how-to-manage-chart-custom-views/01-highlight-popover-with-saved-views.png) ## How do I apply a view? Click it in the list. Every role and circle the view matches takes its highlight colour, and a legend appears: - In **Circles & roles**, the legend is a panel at the top right of the canvas. - In **Hierarchy** and **Network**, it is behind the information button in the controls at the bottom right. The legend lists each highlight in the view. Click a line to hide or show that colour on its own, use the eye button at the top of the panel to hide or show all of them at once, and the chevron to collapse the panel. In **Circles & roles**, the round cross on the corner of the panel closes the view. Clicking the selected view again in the list also switches it off. A role or circle that matches several highlights at once is drawn in diagonal stripes of each of their colours. Talkspirit remembers your choice in your browser, separately for each of the three chart views, so **Circles & roles** and **Hierarchy** can each carry a different one. ## Why did my colours disappear? Filters and the search box take priority over highlights. While a filter is active, or while there is text in the search box, roles that do not match are dimmed and the highlight colours step aside. Clear the filter, or empty the search box, and your colours come back. ## How do I create a view? 1. Click **Highlight**, then the **+** button. 2. In the **Create view** window, type a name in **Template name**. 3. Under **Chart legends**, click **Add highlight** and tick the highlights you want. Each one you tick is added to the list above the button. 4. On a highlight's row, use the colour button to change its colour, or the bin button to take it out again. 5. Click **Create**. **Create** stays greyed out until the view has both a name and at least one highlight. Once saved, the view appears in the list, and you apply it by clicking it. You can keep up to 100 personal views. ![The Create view window, with Template name filled in as Time allocation, the Share with organisation switch turned off, and a Chart legends section listing two full time equivalent highlights, each with its colour button and a bin button, above the Add highlight button](/images/structure-governance/how-to-manage-chart-custom-views/02-create-view-window.png) ## Which highlights can I choose? The **Add highlight** menu groups them: - **My roles and circles**: the roles you hold, and the circles you belong to. - **Status**: Vacant, Hiring, Core and Transversal. - **Activity**: active in the last 7, 30 or 90 days, or in the last year. - **Full time equivalent**: four thresholds on the total time allocated to a role or circle. - **My organisation**: the highlights your administrators have written from your own role and circle fields. See [Managing role and circle highlights as an administrator](/structure-governance/manage-highlights-as-an-admin). ## How do I edit, duplicate or delete a view? Point at a view in the list and click the **...** button on its row. - **Edit** reopens the form with the view's name and highlights ready to change. - **Duplicate** makes you a personal copy, named after the original with **(copy)** at the end. You can duplicate any view in your list, including a shared one. - **Delete** asks you to confirm first. A deleted view cannot be restored. **Edit** and **Delete** only appear on views you are allowed to change: the ones you created, plus, for administrators, the shared ones. ## What can only administrators do? Anyone can create a view for themselves. Two switches in the form appear only if you are an administrator: - **Share with everyone in the organisation** puts the view in every member's **Highlight** list. - **Set as the organisation default view**, offered once the view is shared, marks it as the organisation's reference view. It is then listed first and carries a **Default** badge. One thing to know about that default: it is a label, not an automatic setting. The chart deliberately opens with no view active, so every member, new or not, starts on a plain chart and chooses a view themselves. ## What's Next? - [Navigating your organisation chart](/structure-governance/how-to-navigate-your-chart) - [Using the chart search in Talkspirit](/structure-governance/how-to-use-the-chart-search) - [Role and Circle Highlights in Talkspirit](/structure-governance/understanding-highlights) - [Managing chart settings in Talkspirit](/structure-governance/managing-chart-settings)