Einstein Analytics App

In this chapter, we will discuss lens; you can store a lens into an app, whether private, shared app, or public app. Let us discuss a bit on app before starting our discussion on lens.

You may have heard “app” term earlier in the previous chapters in this book, so let us get the right term on what “app” means in Einstein Analytics. If you look at Analytics Studio user interface, between “ALL” and “DASHBOARDS” is “APPS”; so what is this app about? Apps provide containers for sets of related dashboards, lens, and datasets.

Apps also control user visibility and accessibility to the items within that app, whether as manager, editor, or viewer. Einstein Analytics allows dashboard or lens to use the dataset from different apps; this may cause errors when the user opens the dashboard and unable to open the dataset stored in other apps, where the user does not have access to the app.

Just to be clear, the app here has nothing to do with the mobile app.

Creating App

From Analytics Studio, click Create button, then select App. See Figure 5-1.

Depending on your Einstein Analytics license, when creating an app, you may be asked if you want to create from Blank App or start from template. For now, let us use Create Blank App button, then enter the App name; I’ll enter “Regional Sales,” and we just have a brand-new app created. Figure 5-2 shows within an app there are dashboards, lenses, datasets, and details. Since this is a new app, we have nothing in that app yet.

Run App

See Figure 5-1, at the end of the App name, for example, Shared App; notice there is a link called “Run App” at the end of the app, and this is available for all apps. Click “Run App,” or open the app and click “Run App” button; this will open lens or dashboard stored; by default it would be in the alphabetical order; however, you can edit the list to hide or reorder the list (see Figure 5-3).

Share App

Sharing app in Einstein Analytics is simple; this is similar to sharing dashboard folder in Salesforce. Click the arrow at the end of the app, or open the app and click the share icon. You can share the app by user, group, or role (option to include subordinates) (see Figure 5-4).

Exploring Dataset

Once we bring the data into Einstein Analytics, normally we should verify that the data is correct, from data completeness, quantity, and quality. Completeness means the fields are complete as we expect and no missing fields; otherwise we need to re-upload the dataset or modify and rerun the dataflow. Quantity means the number of rows is complete, with no missing rows. Quality means all the field contains the right values with the correct data type.

Using Chart in Lens

From the Datasets tab, find the dataset, and click the dataset name; by default system will open the dataset as a new lens with a simple chart (see Figure 5-5) and contain the following setup :

• Bar chart.

• Bar length is the count of rows.

• No grouping.

• No filters.

With this simple chart, we can verify the data quantity, and from the chart, we can see the dataset have 1K of rows; we can verify this from dataset properties too (see Figure 5-5) and look for “Count of Rows.” However, with this chart, we still cannot verify if the dataset contains complete fields, field type, and value of fields; we can change to table mode and select Values Table to verify those items.

Before we discussed table mode, let us explore common things we can do in chart mode and analyze data using chart mode (see Figure 5-6):

• Change bar length to Sum, Average, Maximum, Minimum, Unique, Median, First, Last, Stddev, Stddevp, Var, and Varp. All of them are only applicable for measures field, with exception of Unique which can be used for any field. I am not going to explain each of the functions, but it is good to familiarize each of them.

• Add additional bar length: With this you can analyze multiple measurements, such as count of rows and sum of annual of revenue.

• Add bars: This means that we are going to have new grouping in the chart.

• Add filters: We can add multiple filters for multiple fields, but a field only can be defined once. We can can apply filter logic OR and AND.

• Change chart type: Einstein Analytics offers more than 30 chart types for us to use, but remember each chart type has its own properties, so your existing selection may be removed if the new chart does not have such properties or move as other properties. If you are confused which is the best chart suited, click “Suggested Chart” to let Einstein Analytics suggest a few options based on the data and selection.

• Apply chart formatting: You can set chart title, font size, show axis, show legend, and so on.

Using Table in Lens

Let us switch to the table mode by clicking the “Chart Mode” icon, then select “Values Table ” (see Figure 5-7).

If you remember in Chapter 4, we discussed that we can set default fields for a dataset using extended metadata. If default fields for the dataset have been configured, switching to table mode will give us those default fields as table columns.

Actions configured in extended metadata will be applied too in table mode, from rename field label, edit values, and format number.

Here are a few things you can configure on the table (see Figure 5-8):

• At the bottom of the left panel, look for Query Limit; by default it will show 100 rows only; you can edit to set the query limit up to 10,000 rows.

• Add or remove fields easily by clicking the pencil icon at the left panel; you can also reorder fields by dragging and dropping the fields accordingly.

• Click the formatting (paint) icon at the right to format the table with spacing, color, header, and so on.

• Click the table header to sort the table ascending or descending by a specific field.

Using Values Table, we will able to verify if the dataset contains all fields that we need to build a dashboard and if all fields contain correct values. We cannot verify that in chart mode; however, chart mode allows you to group data and sort it easily, so we can easily analyze the data on the fly, or get percentage of each group, or to get data trend over a timeline.

Saving Lens

After dataset opens as a new lens, hit save (floppy disk) icon on the top right corner to save the lens configured, so you can reuse the lens in the future. You can store it into “My Private App” if you do not want anyone else to touch it, or to a public app if need to share with your team or other users. Enter the lens title and optional for description.

When you save a lens, the table or chart, including all the filters, fields, grouping, sorting, and formatting, will be stored accordingly for future usage. If you have edited the chart or table with SAQL, it will be stored too.

When opening a lens and saving it to a different app, Einstein Analytics will move the app to the new app, so it is not a Save As. If you need to clone the lens, click … icon at the topright of the screen, then click Clone in New Tab (see Figure 5-9).

Explore with Conversational

When you explore lens with chart mode or table mode, you may notice there is a text box above the chart or table with the following sentences “What do you want to see? Just start typing…” . If you do not see this box, make sure Conversational Exploration has been enabled. Navigate to the Setup menu, type Analytics in Quick Find textbox, then click Settings (see Figure 5-10).

Let’s go back to the lens; if you save it earlier, click Lenses tab, and the lens should appear at the top.

Conversational exploration means to ask questions on the dataset using nontechnical language and get a quick answer as a chart. This is useful when you need to analyze dataset quickly.

How could we interact with the dataset with this method? See Figure 5-11; click the text box, and Einstein will show you a few suggestions on what you can ask. A conversation can begin with “show me,” “what is,” or begin with a dimension like “industry,” begin with a measure like “amount,” “top x,” and so on. You even can include filters in the conversation to narrow the result area.

Ideally, the question should contain a measure field for Einstein Analytics to build the chart. All parameters or filters will be automatically entered based on the questions, and you also will be able to modify the parameters and filters manually as needed (see Figure 5-11).

Clip Lens to Designer

An icon next to Present with scissors icon is called Clip to Designer. The purpose of this function is to add the lens into a dashboard. Einstein Analytics will add the lens as a step to currently open dashboards. If there is no dashboard opened, Einstein Analytics will create a new dashboard, then add the lens as a step to the new dashboard created.

When clicking this icon, Einstein Analytics will ask for a label (you can leave it blank, and a default name will be provided in the dashboard), then click Clip to Designer button to apply. Notice that Clip to Designer will not add chart or table widget to the dashboard; you need to drag the step into dashboard designer to have it as a widget in the dashboard. Furthermore, you can change the chart type or formatting in the dashboard (see Figure 5-12).

Once a lens is clipped to a dashboard, the lens is copied to the dashboard; this means that the step created in the dashboard does not relate to the original lens, and they are completely independent. Any changes to the original lens will not impact to the dashboard, and any changes in the dashboard widget will not impact the lens too. We will discuss dashboard in Chapter 6, so you need not worry about it for now.

Sharing and Downloading Lens

Sharing lens to your team or the whole company is easy, as discussed in Chapter 1; the permission to access the content of an “app” is controlled in the app, including lens and other contents such as dataset and dashboard. So, before sharing a lens, make sure the lens is stored in the app accessible by the users and dataset used for that lens also stored in an app accessible by the users.

Get URL

Instead to manually copy and paste the URL to your colleague, click … icon, then select Share. Click Get URL tab, and you will be presented with two options; open the link in Analytics Tab or Analytics Studio. So, which one should we use? Ideally, if your colleague needs to edit the lens, select URL for Analytics Studio, but if just to explore the lens, select URL for Analytics Tab (see Figure 5-13).

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed everything about lens. Usually, we use lens to explore a dataset, both from dataset and from a widget in dashboard. So far, we have not discussed dashboard, but in the next chapter, we will build a dashboard from scratch.

We learned hands-on how to explore the dataset into a new lens, including both chart mode and table mode, then we shared about saving lens, and clone lens. We also discussed how to explore lens with conversational language, so instead of manually entering fields and grouping, the system will do the job for us; we just need to enter the human-friendly language.

Clip lens to designer offers to copy lens built into an existing dashboard or to a new dashboard; here we also mentioned that lens is not related to a dashboard; anything added to the dashboard will not impact the lens or dashboard anymore; they are completely independent, just sharing the same dataset.

We end the chapter on how to share lens to your team or the whole company; we also can post lens chart or table into someone chatter feed or group feed, and with lens, we are able to download raw data from Einstein Analytics.