We’re super glad to tell you that the Usage Monitoring (Beta) dashboard is here!
So how is this helpful, you ask (maybe)?
Every now and then, your team might need to plan for dashboard maintenance. And to do so you would need to understand how your dashboards are being used.
That’s where this feature comes in handy! Consisting of various widgets that present different usage metrics, this dashboard will give you such an overview you require.
As we’re still actively working on the official list of metrics that best serve your need, we are looking for Beta testers to help us improve this feature.
If you would like to join our beta, please kindly submit this Beta Early Interest form. Cheers! (Update: Beta program ended)
I was going to raise this as well, these users shouldn’t be shown in the dashboard at all, and can confuse analysis to understand who is using what.
I would also like to add, it would be great for non-admins to see this data as well, or at least be able to schedule the delivery of the dashboard to slack or some other means. I think having usage information shared across teams, showing them if their dashboard is indeed having an impact and being used as expected is key to proper maintenance of a Holistics platform. If a dashboard has been launched but only used 1 or 2 times, then an engineer could see this and then reach out to the expected user base to understand why it isn’t being used, what issues there might be, and make appropriate changes.
I would also like to monitor the number of private dashboards created by other users.
use case: few users have created private reports for their use, which in turn can be optimized and cumulated into fewer reports.
The count tracker would help me track the usage count(in terms of objects) and if the private dashboard count exceeds a limit, I can discuss with the user and optimize the usage
Congratulations on adding an extremely useful feature. This is a great addition.
I agree with Craig that being able to share this with non-admins would be incredibly useful for teams to get a view on who’s using their dashboards and for stakeholders to understand the usage value of the platform.
The ‘Total Users by User Role’ widget doesn’t function the way I would expect. My expectation was that this value would be a summarised count of the distinct Users/Roles from the ‘Users and dashboard viewing activities’ where Total Views > 0. For example if I change the dashboard level filter to ‘Time Range matches last 5 days’ I would expect only the users who looked at any dashboards to be counted in the ‘Total Users by User Role’ widget. This widget seems unaffected by the dashboard level Time Range filter and would be more useful if it was affected by this filter. Note in this scenario I would continue to show any users in the relevant timeframe even if they were later deleted as they still viewed a dashboard at the time. Another way to attack this would be to put a dashboard level filter on for Total Views so we can exclude Users with null/0 views in a relevant time period.
Regarding the deleted users still getting counted:
Thanks @hari and @DataGeekDude for sharing this! It would definitely make sense to exclude deleted users from user list, e.g. in widget “Total Users by User Role”. We’ll surely work on this and get back to you with updates.
Quick questions: I wonder whether it’d be more meaningful to focus on the usage of active users only, and exclude the view count of deleted users entirely? Is this practical for your cases @hari and @DataGeekDude ?
Also, about non-admins being able to see these usage data:
Agreed & duly noted with thanks, @DataGeekDude and @Guido_Stark. On a high level, this information is crutial to anyone with the aim to maintain tenant’s objects, who are not only admins but also analysts & engineers responsible, and more.
I’ll discuss with the team for this improvement later on .
use case: few users have created private reports for their use, which in turn can be optimized and cumulated into fewer reports.
The count tracker would help me track the usage count(in terms of objects) and if the private dashboard count exceeds a limit, I can discuss with the user and optimize the usage
This use case totally makes sense to us, and we have a filter “Type of dashboard” for resolving this.
This filter is default to all dashboards (private & in public workspace), but you can use it to filter to private ones only. Please let me know if this works for you. Cheers
The ‘Total Users by User Role ’ widget doesn’t function the way I would expect. My expectation was that this value would be a summarised count of the distinct Users/Roles from the ‘Users and dashboard viewing activities ’ where Total Views > 0.
It’s indeed that we haven’t mapped the Time Range filter to the “Total Users by User Role” widget, and leave it as the total aggregated number of all users. However, I can definitely see why this can be confusing.
As I understand it, essentially you would like to see the Count of users who have viewed any dashboard within the filtered time period, is it right?
Also, could you share why counting the views of deleted users would be meaningful in your case? I’m collecting more insights on this matter, so any input would be more than welcome.
As I understand it, essentially you would like to see the Count of users who have viewed any dashboard within the filtered time period, is it right?
yes correct. This is a basic part of our reporting internally regarding Holistics platform usage.
Also, could you share why counting the views of deleted users would be meaningful in your case? I’m collecting more insights on this matter, so any input would be more than welcome.
The question for us here is whether anyone has viewed the dashboard and what the trend is over time. Take for example the marketing team who have a person leaving their team (Employee 1) and a new person joining their team (Employee 2). Employee 1 viewed a dashboard every day until they left the company. Employee 2 views the same dashboard every day once they join the company. This dashboard is critical to monitoring work for the marketing team.
Once Employee 1 leaves the company they will be a deleted user.
If I’m looking at the trend of views on this dashboard if we don’t show deleted users the historical views will not include Employee 1 and will be misleading. If we want to answer the question of whether anyone has viewed the dashboard, how many times , which teams, etc. we must include deleted users so the history remains intact and we can tell if there has been an increase or decrease in views / usage over time.
Agreed, history should always be maintained and not changed. The deleted users should be removed primarily from the individual user view at the bottom left of the dashboard, as then you can see if an “active” user hasn’t used Holistics at all, which at the moment they seem to look like a deleted user as well.
Agreed, history should always be maintained and not changed. The deleted users should be removed primarily from the individual user view at the bottom left of the dashboard, as then you can see if an “active” user hasn’t used Holistics at all, which at the moment they seem to look like a deleted user as well.
@DataGeekDude I’m assuming you’re meaning the Users and dashboard viewing activities widget? Can I clarify if you want to remove the deleted users in all circumstances? I understand why a deleted user who has done nothing in a time doesn’t add much value in terms of the information, but what if the user has done a lot in the last 90 days and has just become deleted? In that case I would certainly want to see them in that widget and understand how much of a user they were and potentially even to take action from that information for anyone incoming to replace them or to delete dashboards that were only relevant to that person.
I’m wondering if a dashboard level filter with the User status might be a way to meet all use cases required. Love your thoughts.
Thanks @DataGeekDude - that would work for us too. Cheers
For clarity I would add the status as a column (Active, Pending, Deleted) rather than a binary Deleted / Not Deleted but I’m assuming that’s what you meant anyway @DataGeekDude
Huge thanks to @Guido_Stark and @DataGeekDude for sorting out the possible cases with User status here!
Really a great discussion.
Thinking on this, I think two steps would probably make this work:
As you suggest a dashboard filter
On the Users and dashboard viewing activities widget → Add a new column which indicates if they are a deleted user or not.
Totally agreed that (1) a dashboard filter & (2) a column of User status in the Users and dashboard viewing activities widget would cover the cases you guys mentioned.
This should be a quick implementation, I’ll get back with updates soon. Cheers
Quick note: Due to the observance of our public holiday (Lunar new year) next week, our team may be behind on this update. Hopefully this is not too troublesome & I’ll be sure to get back to it asap.
A couple of extra thoughts on this dashboard @vu.duong@DataGeekDude, be interested to hear whether other users have the same experience:
In the Top Dashboards widget I always find myself removing the sort on ‘Days From Last View’, leaving just the descending sort on ‘Total Views’. This might be a better default starting point for the dashboard.
In the Users and dashboard viewing activity widget I also find myself always removing the sort on ‘Days From Last View’, leaving just the descending sort on ‘Total Views(dashboard and widget’. This might also be a better default starting point for the dashboard. Note that when doing a descending sort just on ‘Total Views(dashboard and widget’ the widget has nulls in this field ahead of the values. Suggest replacing the nulls with a zero in this widget to get the sorting correct as a null means zero.
I can see where you are coming from with the Total Views but I also like seeing this as it shows if the views are recent or if it is just an old report with many views in the past. I think this is a tricky one to get right.
Thanks @DataGeekDude - It’s an interesting balance. I would personally use the Time range dashboard filter in this instance to look at views in the last 90/60/30 days rather than the Days from last view in this case but not a big issue for us either way, more a minor inconvenience in the way we’d use it.
So how is this helpful, you ask (maybe)?
(Update: Beta program ended)
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