Free dashboard designer at your service

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In my experience, a lot of people struggle with creating a good dashboard design. They might be very clear on who they are designing for and what KPIs are needed but the actual design often looks somewhat cluttered and it may be unclear what reading path to take. It should be recognized as a skill that must be developed, but there is actually a shortcut – the design style guide templated app.

Design Style Guide

Design style guides are normal to have for any brand, it defines how to visually represent your brand including fonts, font size, colors, icons etc. and it makes it easy for anyone to produce content that follows the visual narrative of a brand. So what does that have to do with dashboards? Well, you can and should create a design style guide for your dashboards to make sure your dashboards are consistent and follow the narrative you wish to set for your company.

It’s as easy as installing a templated app

You may not know how to start with creating your own design style guide, but the Einstein Analytics team has made it easy for you – all you have to do is install a templated app and the guide is ready in a matter of minutes.

The app contains two datasets and a dashboard with three pages giving you styles with fonts and colors, widgets, and a dashboard template – see the image below.

It’s really easy getting your own design style guide, all you have to do is head to Analytics Studio, click the create button and choose “App”. You may notice the view has changed slightly in Summer 20. The design style guide was a recommended app when I went to create my app, but if it isn’t then scroll down to find it or simply search for it in the search box.

Once selected click “Continue” to see a preview of the dashboard. Click “Continue” again to set your primary color. More colors will be added automatically based on the primary color. Now click “Looks good, next” to give your app a name and finally hit the create button. You should now see Astro skipping indicating the installation process has started.

Note: You will not be able to install this in Spring 20 if you do not have enabled null value handling. This is fixed with the Summer 20 release.

How should I use it?

Once the app has installed successfully you will get an email and you can open up the app – if Astro is still skipping then close the tab and reopen the app to see the two datasets and the dashboard.

The dashboard works as any dashboard and you can of course make manual modifications to it. Maybe you are not happy with one of the colors and you want to change that to fit better to your brand.

I think the most important part is that this dashboard can be used as a kickstart for any dashboard you need to build. Simply clone the dashboard by clicking on the three dots and select “Clone in new tab”. Now you are free to use any widget or page in the dashboard as a kickstart for the dashboard. Remember you can remove queries from any widget as well as clone and move widgets between pages, hence making every component in the dashboard a building block for your new dashboard.

Also remember that the dashboard has references for colors, font size etc. so you can quickly check the details to make sure the dashboard follows the defined standard and thereby aids a consistent user experience.

Once you are done with your dashboard you can simply delete the pages you no longer need.

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12 thoughts on “Free dashboard designer at your service”

  • 1
    Kevin on June 30, 2020 Reply

    How many datasets you can use for one dashboard application?

    • 2
      Rikke on June 30, 2020 Reply

      As many as you need.

  • 3
    Md. Abdur Razzak on July 1, 2020 Reply

    I got the following error while trying to create a app using the ‘Design Style Guide’ app template in the last step :

    wave.exception.Wave ServiceException: Numeric field [Stock Price] in object ‘UX_SAMPLE_DATA_csv’ has an invalid default value: Metadata JSON

    • 4
      Rikke on July 1, 2020 Reply

      Check the note in the blog – it’s a Spring 20 error for orgs where null value handling is not enabled.

      • 5
        Md. Abdur Razzak on July 1, 2020 Reply

        Can you please help me on ‘how to enable null value handling in org’. I can not find any solution by searching.

        • 6
          Rikke on July 1, 2020 Reply

          I believe it’s a checkbox in the Analytics Settings.

      • 7
        Md. Abdur Razzak on July 1, 2020 Reply

        Unfortunately I am not finding the checkbox in analytics setting.

        The path i am checking is:
        Feature Settings > Analytics > Analytics > Settings

        here is the screenshot : https://prnt.sc/t9xeo5

        and My Prg is in Spring’20.

        • 8
          Daniel on July 10, 2020 Reply

          I have the same problem. The checkbox doesn’t appear in analytics settings anywhere…

          • 9
            Rikke on July 10, 2020

            It’s probably been removed, you may have to create a case or wait a week for the Summer 20 release.

          • 10
            Daniel on July 10, 2020

            Update. It’s for that reason. Now i’m creating the app in a summer 20 environment with no problem. Thanks!

  • 11
    Daniel on July 10, 2020 Reply

    Update. It’s for that reason. Now i’m creating the app in a summer 20 environment with no problem. Thanks!

  • 12
    Jimmy Ng on September 30, 2020 Reply

    hi, such template looks pretty nice. i’ve created the app per instruction, and i was trying to find out how the Custom Style is affecting the widget default theme. But i find nothing. i am wonding how i can custom my own style since the standard style does not look good.

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