Visual grouping 

Users of dashboards may need to compare or view logically related information that need to be visually grouped. It is useful to be able to group the widgets showing those data. For example, the user may want to compare the applied delays with the latest calculated ones. The grouping could also allow the UI designer to move/resize/change properties such as the background colour to the entire set of widgets of the group improving productivity. The grouping could be visible for the user of the dashboard. It could be represented by a thin line, a different background colour, some texture, a text label or other visual artifacts. BTW, in HTML there is the FIELDSET tag that achieves that.

NOTE: the visual grouping is slightly more sophisticated than just putting a rectangular background in a lower visual layer. A visual container should be  fluid, in the sense that if the geometry of the browser windows changes (which may happen because you are giving a demo on a wall projector, or because you are using a PC with a smaller screen than the one usually used) then the geometry of the container changes as well (just like a FIELDSET element).

Benefit:

• During some system demo we have seen how UI designers coped with this webjive limitation; they created sets of colored labels and attempted to use white space as the separator of the SDP-related widgets from the TMC-related ones. Those effects should be achieved with these grouping but with a much nicer rendering.

Acceptance Criteria

• I can create an empty container by selecting an empty rectangular area in the dashboard;
• I can edit the presentational properties of the container, namely background color, border line color and size, textual legend, perhaps position of the legend. Possibly by directly using CSS specifications.
• I can move widgets and other groups into the new container, that are placed at a higher value of the z-axis (ie. more to the front). 
• Moving elements into such a visual container does not create a group (as per other feature on Structural Groups).

NOTE

Compare the two screenshots that are attached below: one is a dashboard that was shown during one of the past system demos (related to the CSP) and the other one is how the same UI could appear with just some simple visual touches: using conditional styles for LEDs, using visual grouping of widgets. To me the effect is striking: a UI where at a glance an engineer can detect unexpected state changes, a UI that is denser in terms of number of items, a UI where visual grouping makes it easier to locate things and understanding if  something is a VCC or an FSP.

(Thank you v.alberti for this mock)