This article provides a starting point for using the dashboard authoring console in QuickSight. It offers an overview of what to expect, describes use cases, and recommends resources for authoring effective analyses.

What to expect

Dashboard Authoring Console is an embedded QuickSight session that allows users to create new analysis or modify existing analysis. Any analysis can be published as a dashboard. Analyses can be created using the standard datasets provided with Eightfold authored dashboard provisioning.

The default home page will show all the analysis associated with the provisioned Eightfold authored dashboards. The datasets page will show all the datasets provisioned with Eightfold-authored dashboards.

To see a detailed description of each dataset provided in the dashboard authoring console, read QuickSight datasets for customers.

Use cases

This section describes use cases that can be enabled using dashboard authoring console.

Creating a custom analysis or dashboard

Creating a new analysis or dashboard (referred to as custom analysis or custom dashboard) using the standard datasets provided. An editable dashboard is called an “Analysis” in Quicksight. To author a new or edit an existing analysis, you need to be in the Analysis view within the embedded console. Make changes as needed and then publish the analysis as a custom dashboard. Once an analysis is created, for a detailed description on how to provision custom dashboards, read Provisioning Custom Dashboards.

Modifying an Eightfold-authored analysis

You can modify an Eightfold authored analysis to meet your reporting requirements. To modify an Eightfold authored analysis, create a copy of the analysis as shown below.

1. Select the Analysis from the analyses page that you would like to modify. In the analysis page, click on Save as button at the top right of the page.
   
   
2. In the dialog box that appears, save a copy of the analysis with a new name.
   
   
3. Once the analysis is saved, QuickSight will automatically render the copy of the analysis.
   
   

Important considerations when modifying Eightfold standard analyses and publishing them as custom dashboards:

• Do not modify an Eightfold-authored analysis. Any changes made to the original copy will be overwritten, whenever we deploy an updated version of the dashboard.
• Whenever a copy of the Eightfold analysis is created, modified and published as a custom dashboard, it is safeguarded from any future updates. This also means that this custom copy will not be updated as new versions of the Eightfold-authored dashboards are deployed. Be cognizant of when a change is suitable for custom dashboard versus when it should be routed to the analytics team to be added to the Eightfold-authored dashboard.

Authoring analyses in QuickSight

To learn more about how to author analyses in QuickSight, check out one of the many tutorials available online, such as the QuickSight YouTube Channel and the QuickSight Author Workshop. You can also reach out to our analytics team for information on the layout of analytics data in our tables.

Other recommended QuickSight tutorial videos include the following:

• Quicksight 101
• How to get started with Analysis
• QuickSight Analysis Features
• How to set up navigation within QS dashboards
• Another video that walks through the Action feature for QS
• AWS Workshop for URL actions
• Additional AWS documentation on URL actions
• How to set up drill downs for visuals
• Row Level Security
• Column Level Security