After discussing dataflow, dataset, and lens in previous chapters, we are going to start building a dashboard in this chapter. We will start with permissions, layouts, dashboard templates, widgets, steps, pages, facets, and using multiple datasets in a dashboard; we should use most of those items when building a dashboard, but probably not all of them in a dashboard; it is not a must to use template, or to have multiple pages, or to use multiple datasets in a dashboard.
What can we expect from a dashboard in Einstein Analytics? With Einstein Analytics, we can build a dashboard that shows numerous key metrics for our business, from sales, support, marketing, adoption, and so on. When building a dashboard, you can easily add dashboard filters using any fields available in the dataset, so you will be able to analyze data, including the use of widget faceting and brodcasting.
For users on the road, Einstein Analytics also comes with mobile app that can be downloaded from App Store or Google Play Store. By default, all dashboards built will work in the mobile app; however, the layout is not optimized for mobile, until you create a layout optimized for mobile.
Permission
Layout
Template
Widgets
Steps
Pages
Faceting and global filter
Using multiple datasets
Permission
We discussed “app” in Chapter 1, “app” controlled user permission in accessing items within that app, whether as a viewer or editor or manager. Only users with editor or manager access (defined in the app) will be able to store dashboard into that app; otherwise, they will not able to store the dashboard to that app.
On top of permissions in the app, users also need to have Create and Edit Analytics Dashboards permission assigned in the Salesforce permission set to create dashboards. Depending on your Salesforce admin setup, it could be a standard or custom permission set.
Layout
When we create a new dashboard, the default layout is called “Default,” and it is optimized only for viewing the dashboard with a web browser from a computer, not from the mobile app. You can have multiple layouts for a dashboard that are optimized for web browser, tablet, and mobile.
- 1.
Log in to Salesforce, and open Analytics Studio.
- 2.
Click the “Create” button, then select “Dashboard.”
- 3.
Select “Create Blank Dashboard”; this will bring you to Dashboard Designer with a blank canvas.
- 4.By default, a new dashboard designer will have 12 columns, see layout panel at the right, notice there are multiple properties, and start from general, device, and background image. If you can’t find layout panel, click the gear icon below dashboard name; check out Figure 6-1.
Figure 6-1Dashboard designer without widgets
- 5.
From this panel, we can change the layout name and other layout properties like column, row height, cell spacing, background color, and so on. Let us change the layout name from Default to “Web Browser” and Columns to 18. Notice that the label next to the filter icon is also changed to web browser.
- 6.
Next to the gear icon, there is + icon and untitled tab with an arrow. When you create a dashboard, it will start with one page only, and the page name as “Untitled”; we can rename this by clicking the arrow and selecting Rename; other options are hide from navigation, clone, and delete. For now, let us rename the page name to “Page-1”.
- 7.
Dashboard in Einstein Analytics can be up to 20 multiple pages; click + icon to create a new page, and enter the name; for now, let’s stick with one page. We’ll discuss multiple pages dashboard later in this chapter.
- 8.Let us also rename the dashboard name from “New dashboard” to “Global Accounts”; click the pencil icon next to “New dashboard” to change the dashboard name. See what we have now as in Figure 6-2.
Figure 6-2Change in layout name, columns, page name, and dashboard name
- 9.To manage layouts, click arrow for layout (next to filter icon); in our case, it is called “Web Browser” now, then click Manage Layouts. From here, we can see the current layout selected; add new layout (select layout template and enter layout name), or delete existing layouts. You cannot delete the current used layout, and you need one layout set as current (see Figure 6-3).
Figure 6-3Manage layouts to see the current layout, add and delete layout
- 10.
If you create a layout using phone template, this template will be auto-selected when the user opens the dashboard from the mobile app. For now, we will not generate a new layout; when we generate a new layout, all existing widgets will be copied from the current layout to the new layout.
- 11.
Let us save the dashboard by clicking Save icon at the top right corner; name the dashboard title as “Global Accounts,” and store it to “My Private App.”
Template
Comparison Dashboard
Details Dashboard
Metric Trend
Performance Summary
Summary Dashboard
Table Expansion
Three-Columns Dashboard
Tile Dashboard
Time Series
Using dashboard template, you can speed up development process in creating a new dashboard. The new dashboard will come with widgets and layouts based on the selected template but also give you the flexibility to move, add, and delete widgets too. Some templates come with filter, container, main chart, supporting charts, table, and key metrics.
Questions for Dashboard Template
Metric Trend | Performance Summary | Table Expansion | Time Series | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Choose a dataset | ❖ | ❖ | ❖ | ❖ |
Choose a metric | ❖ | ❖ | ||
Choose a date | ❖ | ❖ | ❖ | ❖ |
Choose groupings | ❖ | |||
Choose filters | ❖ | |||
Choose dimensions | ❖ | ❖ | ||
Choose measures | ❖ | ❖ | ||
Choose a confidence interval | ❖ | |||
Indicate if seasonality impacts your data | ❖ |
Some of the templates are also marked as “smart”; this means the dashboard requires little to no additional configuration; example for Time Series template, the dashboard visualizes how metrics change over time and predicts future metrics trends based on historical data.
- 1.
Log in to Salesforce, and open Analytics Studio.
- 2.
Click the “Create” button, then select “Dashboard.”
- 3.
Select “Create Dashboard from Template.”
- 4.
Select “Time Series” template; click Continue button.
- 5.You need to select a dataset and fields for a few questions, then click “Looks good, next” (see Figure 6-4).
Figure 6-4Create dashboard with Time Series template
- 6.
Enter dashboard name as “Time Series,” and store it to “Shared App.”
- 7.Time Series dashboard is now created with filters, timeline as main chart, supporting charts, links, and table added to the dashboard based on fields selected in previous screen. The timeline chart also predicts future metrics based on historical data (see Figure 6-5).
Figure 6-5A Time Series dashboard
Widgets
When you create a new blank dashboard, you will get only 12 columns box and a list of icons on the left panel; see the blank dashboard created earlier for “Global Accounts” as in Figure 6-2. Each of the icons can be dragged to the dashboard designer for different usage; let us walk through each of them and how can we use them.
Each items added to the dashboard designer is called as “widget.”
Chart
- 1.
Open Global Accounts dashboard created earlier.
- 2.
Drag chart widget to the dashboard designer.
- 3.
Click the “Chart” icon in the widget.
- 4.You will be asked to select a dataset. Once a dataset selected, by default you will get
Bar chart
Bar length is count of rows
Without filter
Without grouping
This looks similar when we explore dataset by creating a new lens, with the difference at the top left corner “Untitled Step”, and additional Back and Done button at the bottom.
- 5.
Change “Untitled Step” to “Step No of Rows.”
- 6.
Click the Done button and Save icon to save the dashboard.
- 7.
Notice the step created at the right panel of dashboard designer, and it shows all steps created for the dashboard; we also can create step manually from there. We’ll discuss “step” later in this chapter. See what we have now as in Figure 6-6.
Blank dashboard with a widget and step
Table
- 1.
Assume Global Accounts dashboard has been opened; if not, open it and switch to edit mode by click pencil icon at top right.
- 2.
Drag the table icon into dashboard designer, below the chart widget.
- 3.
Click the “table” icon in the widget created. You may notice that the system no longer asks you to provide a dataset; this is because Einstein Analytics remembers that you have selected a dataset previously, so the same dataset will be used; however, if you need to select a different dataset, click “Back” button.
- 4.
Even if this is a table widget, by default, we’ll get a bar chart with a count of the number of rows; if you do not change the chart to table mode, you will get number of rows only in the table. To get record detail in the table, let us change into the table by selecting table mode then Values Table.
- 5.
Select fields that we would like to show in the dashboard.
- 6.
Change the step title to “Step Record Detail”.
- 7.
Click the Done button.
- 8.
To get better visibility of the table content, you can move and resize the widget size accordingly.
- 9.
Click the Save icon.
Blank dashboard with a widget and step
Tips
To have columns occupy the whole table width, go to the widget properties, find the Spacing section, then set Column Width = Fit to Widget; with this setting, the width of the columns will be auto adjusted when the web browser size changes.
Filter
- 1.
Open Global Accounts dashboard, and switch to edit mode.
- 2.
Drag filter icon into dashboard designer, below table widget.
- 3.
By default, single global filter is selected.
- 4.
Click the “Filter” icon in the widget.
- 5.
Select a dataset, then select a field from the selected dataset.
- 6.
Click the “Create” button.
- 7.
Click “Preview” (eye) icon at the top right to test if the filter added is working properly; notice the dashboard is no longer in edit mode (no blocks in the background). See Figure 6-8.
- 8.
To edit the dashboard again, click the pencil icon next to save icon.
- 9.
Click save icon.
Dashboard with global filter
Tips
In edit mode, you can simply hit “e” to switch to preview mode and hit “e” again to go back to edit mode. Hit “s” key to save the dashboard.
Container
- 1.
Open Global Accounts dashboard, and switch to edit mode.
- 2.
Drag container widget to dashboard designer.
- 3.
Make it wider and occupy the whole width of the dashboard.
- 4.
Drag both chart and table created into the container.
- 5.
Change the container widget background color to green; you can do this by selecting container widget, then look for widget style at the right panel, click the arrow under background color, and select green color.
- 6.
Hit “e” then “s” key to exit from edit mode, then save the dashboard. The result should be similar with Figure 6-9.
Dashboard with container
Date
- 1.
Drag date widget to the dashboard designer.
- 2.
Click the “Date” icon in the widget.
- 3.
Select a date field as a filter; only date fields will be shown here.
- 4.
Click the “Create” button.
- 5.
Select the widget, and look for widget properties at the right of the window.
- 6.
Change widget title, and enable “Update instantly.”
- 7.Click Step tab; few things to notice are as folows:
Apply global filter: Enable this to implement value selected in the global filter widget discussed earlier.
Apply filter from faceting: If this is enabled, when the user selects a chart for a group and broadcast to other widgets, this will filter available date based on that selection.
Selection type: To configure if the selection is required as single or multiple selections.
Broadcast selection as facets: When the user selects a period (range) of dates, this selection will broadcast to other widgets; this is related to “Apply filter from faceting.”
For now, let us not change abovementioned; just use the default values.
- 8.
Move and resize the widget accordingly; I’ll move this widget to the top right of the container created earlier and move chart and table widget below the date widget.
- 9.
Click Preview icon (or hit “e” key) to verify the Date filter is working correctly.
- 10.
Hit “e” then “s” key to exit preview mode, then save the dashboard. The result should be similar with Figure 6-10.
Dashboard with Date filter
Links
Saved lens: Defined a saved lens
Saved dashboard: Defined a saved dashboard
New lens: Defined an existing step using in dashboard
URL: Open any URL into a new tab
Page in layout: Only available if there are multiple pages in the dashboard
- 1.
Continue Global Accounts dashboard.
- 2.
Drag links widget to the container and drop it at top right corner.
- 3.
Change the Text to “Search with Google.”
- 4.
Set “Link To” to URL.
- 5.
Destination: http://www.google.com
- 6.
Link Tooltip: “Click to open Google.”
- 7.
Hit “e” then “s” key.
- 8.
Clicking the button “Search with Google” should open Google web site in a new tab in the web browser. The result should be similar with Figure 6-11.
Dashboard link at top right
Tips
To get round corners for the link button, click the widget; from the widget properties, look for widget style section, then set the border radius to 8 or 16. You also can change the background color and border color.
Image
- 1.
Open Global Accounts dashboard, and switch to edit mode.
- 2.
Move date widget to the right, so we will have space at the top left corner for image widget.
- 3.
Drag image logo to the top left inside the container widget.
- 4.
Click the Image icon within the widget.
- 5.
Click Browse Files icon, and select the image for a logo, image format supported gif, bmp, jpeg, jpg, png, and svg.
- 6.
From widget properties, change image scale to fit width or fit height; arrange image alignment, and you also can resize the widget.
- 7.
Hit “e” then “s” key. The result should be similar with Figure 6-12.
Adding image to the dashboard
List
- 1.
Open Global Accounts dashboard, and switch to edit mode.
- 2.
Drag list widget after Date widget.
- 3.
Resize the widget height to occupy two blocks.
- 4.
Click List icon in the widget.
- 5.
Select a field – I will choose Account Type – and click Create button.
- 6.
Hit “e” then “s” key.
- 7.Click Type drop-down; in my case, I see three radio buttons with number at the right – for radio button, you only can select one value, and the number at the right means number of records for each value. The result should be similar with Figure 6-13.
Figure 6-13Adding list widget
- 8.
Let us edit the dashboard; in the list widget, click Step tab, and change selection type to “Multiple selections”; now the radio button changed to check box, where you can select multiple values.
Number
- 1.
Open Global Accounts dashboard, and switch to edit mode.
- 2.
Resize the container to be bigger, and move the table to the bottom and chart to the right, so we’ll have space under the logo.
- 3.
Drag number widget below the logo.
- 4.
Resize the widget height to occupy three blocks.
- 5.
Click Number icon in the widget.
- 6.
Let’s use default value, which is count of rows; click Done button.
- 7.
In widget properties, look for Text Style section, change number size to 48, and change alignment to center.
- 8.
Hit “e” then “s” key. The result should be similar with Figure 6-14.
Adding list widget
Range
- 1.
Open Global Accounts dashboard, and switch to edit mode.
- 2.
Drag range widget to an empty space in dashboard designer.
- 3.
Click Range icon in the widget.
- 4.
Select a measure field; click the Create button.
- 5.
Hit “e” then “s” key. The result should be similar with Figure 6-15.
Adding range widget
Text
- 1.
Open Global Accounts dashboard, and switch to edit mode.
- 2.
Drag Text widget to an empty space in dashboard designer.
- 3.
Look at widget properties at the right panel; modify the Text to Global Accounts.
- 4.
Click the Text Style panel, and change the color to red.
- 5.
You will notice the changes at dashboard designer as you work.
- 6.
Hit “e” then “s” key. The result should be similar with Figure 6-16.
Adding Text widget as dashboard title
Toggle
- 1.
Open Global Accounts dashboard, and switch to edit mode.
- 2.
Drag toggle widget to an empty space in dashboard designer.
- 3.
Click Toggle icon in the widget.
- 4.
Select a field to use for the toggle.
- 5.
Click Create button to continue.
- 6.
Adjust the widget size as necessary; ideally make all values visible; otherwise, the user needs to scroll.
- 7.
Click Step tab, and change selection type to “Multiple selections”; this is to allow the user to select multiple values.
- 8.
Hit “e” then “s” key. Figure 6-17 shows a toggle with two values selected (background in blue).
Adding Text widget as dashboard title
Navigation
- 1.
Open Global Accounts dashboard, and switch to edit mode
- 2.
Click + icon at the top left next to the gear icon
- 3.
Enter page name, enter “Page-2”, and click Add button.
- 4.Now we have a blank dashboard designer, and Page-2 tab is selected (see Figure 6-18).
Figure 6-18Adding Text widget as dashboard title
- 5.
Click Page-1 tab; now you will see all widgets added previously.
- 6.
Drag Navigation widget to the dashboard designer.
- 7.
By default, it will show page-1 and page-2 as available page; you can add color and style to the widget.
- 8.Step 6 will add Navigation widget to page-1 only, not page-2, so select the widget added, at the bottom right.
- a.
Select “Add to Page.”
- b.
Click “Page-2.”
- c.
Click the “Apply” button.
- a.
- 9.
Now the widget is copied to page-2.
- 10.
Hit “e” then “s” key. Play around by navigating to page-2 and back to page-1. See Figure 6-19.
Dashboard with Navigation widget added at the bottom
Page
As mentioned earlier, a dashboard can have multiple pages. For admin, this is good in terms of maintaining dashboards; instead of having many dashboards in Analytics Studio, dashboard with multiple pages will be shown only as one dashboard. From the user perspective, this offers better experience as the user will not open the wrong dashboard, such as if we have a “main” dashboard with multiple supporting dashboards. We can use link widget to link dashboards, but it may cause confusion; every time the user opens a new link, it will open a new tab, and the user will end up having a lot of tabs opened.
However, it depends on the needs; sometimes we must use multiple dashboards, instead of one dashboard with multiple pages. We will go through each use case in this chapter, when we should use multiple pages in a dashboard, and when we should use multiple dashboards. We will have no hands-on in this section, but you can refer to hands-on at Figures 6-18 and 6-19 when we discussed Navigation widget.
Sharing Widget
Multi-pages dashboard offers the ability to share widgets across pages. When you add a widget to other pages, they will share the same widget style, meaning changing the widget style in a page will impact the widget style shown in other pages; however, moving the widget in a page will not impact the location of the widget in other pages.
Unlink widget used in multiple pages
Dataset Filter
When you use one dataset across multiple pages and there are filters added, the filter selected in one page will also filter the result in other pages; this includes faceting from chart too. If you totally need to separate them, you must use multiple dashboards, not a dashboard with multiple pages.
Dashboard tab
One of the benefits using multiple pages is transparency for users; the user will not know if they have multiple pages open, because the tab and URL are not changed. Using the link widget will open the new dashboard into new tabs, so there will be multiple tabs open.
Performance
Because the dataset has been loaded when opening the first dashboard, dashboards with multiple pages will offer better performance compared to opening multiple dashboards; this is also because the steps spread across pages.
Adoption and Maintenance
Using a dashboard with multiple pages will easily allow admin to monitor the usage and adoption of a dashboard. Using Event Monitoring (it is another product from Salesforce), the admin just needs to monitor a dashboard instead of monitoring multiple dashboards. Dashboard with multiple pages will only show once in the Analytics Studio; this is cleaner in maintaining overall dashboards.
Faceting
Faceting is one of the most useful features in Einstein Analytics for a user in analyzing data. Faceting is enabled by default when a widget added.
When the user selects a widget, other widgets using the same dataset or have connected data source will be filtered based on the selection on a widget, for example, selecting a product in widget will filter the dataset to the specific product selected, so other widgets using the same dataset will be automatically filtered.
- 1)
Apply filters from faceting
- 2)
Broadcast selections as facets
Both options are enabled by default. The first option is to accept filter from the other widget that broadcast faceting, and the second option is to broadcast selection as facets to other widgets, so if other widgets have “Apply filters from faceting” enabled, their data will be filtered based on the selection in the selected widget (see Figure 6-21).
Faceting options in widget step
Global Filter
When you need to use partial data from a dataset based on some criteria, adding global filter is the easiest option rather than recreating a new dataset using dataflow or recipe, which will give the admin another item to maintain. It will save us number of rows used by Einstein Analytics as we did not create a new dataset. Another benefit: using global filter will not slow down the dashboard performance.
To achieve partial data usage, we should make the filter locked, so our users will see only data applicable for the dashboard, for example, we need to build a customer dashboard, but our dataset is combined between customer and prospect, so we can add a eglobal filter to filter only customers, then lock the filter.
Start with adding the filter widget, click “Filter” icon in the widget, select the dataset, then field will be used as filter. Click … (ellipsis) icon, then select “Pick Initial Values”; click the filter widget, and select the values you want to include, exclude, or contain; click “Apply” button to continue. Next, click “Manage Global Filters” button, click pencil icon next to the field you want to lock, then enable “Locked” and click “Apply” button again.
Dashboard with global filter and filter properties
Using Multiple Dataset
So far, we have discussed to use one dataset in a filter; however, we can use multiple datasets in a dashboard. When you add the widget from a different dataset, filtering and faceting will not work for widgets using different dataset.
However, we can link them using a common value, for example, we have a dataset called order for actual sales and another dataset called target, so when we select a sales rep name from a widget, we would like to show target only for the selected sales rep; in this case, we will use User Name to connect both datasets (ideally it should be User Id, as User Name can be duplicated).
- 1.Prepare the data for a new dataset, for this I’ll sample use Microsoft Excel.Table 6-2
Target Dataset
Sales Rep
Target Customer
Johan GS0
10
Jack GS0
3
- 2.
Create new dataset using CSV file upload.
- 3.
Open Global Accounts dashboard, and switch to edit mode.
- 4.
Drag a chart widget to dashboard designer.
- 5.
Click the “Chart” icon in the widget.
- 6.
By default, it will auto select the last dataset used; since we are going to use a new dataset, click Back button.
- 7.
Select target dataset just created.
- 8.
Select a field for grouping; for this scenario, select sales rep, and change bar length to “Sum of Target Customer.”
- 9.Click Done button (see Figure 6-23).
Figure 6-23Dashboard with two datasets
- 10.
To relate the dataset, click … (ellipsis) button at the top right corner, and select Connect Data Sources.
- 11.
Click New Connection button.
- 12.Enter Connection Name = Sales Rep; and select a field for both data source: Data Source 1, owner from Account owner dataset; Data Source 2, sales rep name from the target dataset (see Figure 6-24).
Figure 6-24Build data sources connection
- 13.
Click Save button then Close button.
- 14.
Done and now let us try.
- 15.
Exit from edit mode by hitting “e” key.
- 16.When selecting a name from the Account owner widget, the target values will be selected, and the same when selecting a name from the target widget, Account owner value will be filtered accordingly with faceting. We have discussed faceting and broadcast in this chapter earlier. Wes should have end dashboard similar with Figure 6-25.
Figure 6-25Dashboard with two connected datasets
Summary
In this chapter, we discussed everything a dashboard builder needs to know to build a dashboard from scratch in Einstein Analytics. We start with the permissions needed for the user to build a dashboard. Layout and template are something that a dashboard builder should know to fully make use in building a good dashboard.
We discussed all widgets available in Einstein Analytics, including hands-on exercise for most of the widgets. Then, we look into building dashboard with multiple pages; we explained the benefits of using multi-pages in a dashboard and when we should not use multiple pages dashboard.
We discussed how faceting works across widgets; faceting is one of the most frequently used features in analyzing data in the dashboard. Then we share using global filters in a dashboard. With global filters, we can use only a partial data of the dataset and lock it according to the dashboard purpose.
We end with hands-on to use and connect multiple datasets in a dashboard. In the next chapter, we’ll discuss how to explore and make use of dashboard in analyzing data.