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Unknown routes silently land on the Dashboard — there is no "page not found" screen #578

Description

@Aman-Mittal

Any path the router does not recognise resolves to /dashboard without a message, so a stale bookmark, a renamed route or a mistyped URL all silently put the user somewhere they did not ask to be.

Observed

Requested Landed on Tab title Any "not found" copy on screen
/system/audit-trails /dashboard Dashboard · Fineract no
/this-route-does-not-exist /dashboard Dashboard · Fineract no
/clients/totally-bogus /dashboard Dashboard · Fineract no
/zzz/qqq /dashboard Dashboard · Fineract no

The address bar is rewritten to /dashboard, so afterwards there is nothing left to show what was requested — the user cannot tell whether the link was wrong, the feature moved, or their permissions changed.

/system/audit-trails is the case that prompted this: it looks like a real route (it sits next to /security/audits), and the only way to discover it does not exist is to notice you are on the dashboard.

Why the dashboard is the wrong destination

A redirect is a claim that the requested thing lives somewhere else. Here nothing was found, so the honest response is to say so. Silently swapping the destination also means a broken link in documentation or an email can be reported as "the dashboard keeps opening" rather than "that link is dead".

Suggested fix

Add a wildcard route rendering a small "page not found" view that:

  • states the requested path could not be found,
  • offers a link back to the dashboard and to the global search,
  • leaves the URL alone, so the address bar still shows what was asked for.

Worth distinguishing the "no such route" case from "route exists but your role cannot see it", since the second should point at permissions rather than a dead link.

Reproduction

  1. Sign in.
  2. Navigate to /zzz/qqq (or any unrecognised path).
  3. The dashboard renders; the URL becomes /dashboard; nothing mentions the original path.

Tested against

Deployed build of main, Chrome, 1440x900.

Activity

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