Einstein Analytics: Working with Multi-Pages Dashboard

Einstein Analytics offers a multi-pages feature in the dashboard, where we can design the pages similar one to another, or totally different across pages. If the new page similar to an existing page, you can simply clone the page. 

Clone Page

Click the arrow next to the page name (the default page name is "Untitled") and select Clone.

This will create a new page located at the last with the page name "Clone of xyz", xyz is the original page name.

But what actually happened at the backend?

The page is defined as pages key under gridLayouts, so when you clone a page:

1. a new section will be added with the label "Clone of xyz" under the pages key
2. the number of widgets in the new page section is exactly the same as the source page
3. all the keys in the new widgets are exactly the same as the widgets on the source page, including name

With this knowledge, you can easily move the page order and label as needed

If we open one of the widgets and look for the "name" key, as mentioned above, it would be the same, and the name here actually is widget ID when you see it in dashboard designer UI.

For our sample of "chart_3", in addition to the "name" key in the widget, it also has: 

• colspan
• column
• row
• rowspan
• widgetStyle

While the widget details such as color, label, action menu, etc. are defined in the "widgets" section. So "chart_3" from gridLayouts refer to "chart_3" under widgets, then further, "chart_3" in "widgets" refer to a step (which is query) called "Dept_1".

Checkout the below screenshot from the dashboard designer for widget ID = "chart_3", if you click the Query tab, the ID should be "Dept_1".

From the above screenshot, the red arrow tells us that the widget is used on multiple pages, so if we change anything on the widget, it will change for the same on the other page using the same widget, e.g. title, font size, background color, etc. 

Now, let us click unlink and see what will happen, but before that let us summarize:

• chart_3 widget used in Page1A and Page1B page
• chart_3 widget use step "Dept_1"

Click unlink will change the widget name on that page from chart_3 to something else such as chart_4, however, the query/step remain the same, now if you change the widget background color in one page, it will not change the other one, although the step used still the same. Step refers to the data query from a dataset.

What happened on the backend?

1. The "name" on the page where we clicked unlink, the widget name under gridLayouts will change to the new name and no change for other pages.
2. In the "widgets" section, there will be a new widget added "chart_4", which uses the same step use in "chart_3", which is "Dept_1".

How to re-link again?

if we decide to link back the widget across pages or layout (e.g. for mobile), you can change the widget name under "page" to the name used by other widgets, Einstein Analytics will auto-link the widgets back and you will see the "unlink" panel again.

Widget created under the "widgets" section when we "unlink" earlier will remain, you can delete it manually to clean-up dashboard JSON from unused items.

A few more things worth to note:

1. If you remember that we mentioned row, rowspan, column, colspan of the widget in the page section; this means, location and size of linked widgets in a page can be different from other pages.

2. A page can be clone multiple times, from the original or cloned page. Unlink a widget from a page only applicable for that page, the widgets could be still linked to other pages.

3. For a widget has been unlinked to use different query (such as from different dataset), the step needs to be changed manually.

4. You can use faceting (include/exclude) if need to prevent selection in one page not to impact results in other pages.

Benefits of using pages compare to using many individual dashboards:

For dashboard builders:

- it is cleaner and easier to maintain only one dashboard, instead of many dashboards in Analytics Studio.

- ability to re-use the same step across pages.

For end-users, working only with one tab, opening a new "page" will not open as new tabs, including when bookmarking the dashboard.

Copy Widget

Einstein Analytics also offers another capability for us to clone widget, select the widget, and click the "Copy Widget" icon. So, what is behind the screen?

1. Create a new step
2. Create a new widget, and assigned with step created (1)
3. Add the widget created (2) to the current page

Compare this to the Clone tab:

• No new steps created
• No new widgets created
• Create a new page under gridLayouts