Question

Dashboard email layouts

  • 17 February 2016
  • 18 replies
  • 385 views

Userlevel 1

Is there a way to maintain the dashboard layout in an email? Whenever I schedule an email based on a dashboard it disregards the layout I’ve created, and just shows the elements one after another, much larger than intended.


18 replies

Userlevel 3

Hey Kallin,


This is no currently possible but I’ve passed your feedback along to product/engineering to get it on the radar!

This is a huge issue for us as we tend to use emailed dashboards to highlight changes to the business

Agree, this is a huge problem for us - no one likes receiving the email versions as they are so visually different.

Userlevel 2

Agree. Here, as well. The format of a dashboard just doesn’t translate to an in-line email.

+1


I use emails to keep our exec team and other teams across the business informed of what’s happening. The formatting is not good / non-existent.


Replicating the dashbaord as is would be fine.

Userlevel 3

+1


10chars

Userlevel 2

+5


Even if it was just the replicated format of the dashboard in PDF form that would be a huge upgrade.

Userlevel 2

Hey @Dan, @brayden, @Niall_Byrne, @Bridge, @cliftonc, @Horus, @Kallin_Nagelberg wanted to make sure you specifically knew that this experience is going to be improving in our 3.48 update.


Checkout the 3.48 Release Notes for full details, or read about the update below. Can’t thank you enough for your patience here!


Improved Dashboard PDFs

Dashboard PDF downloads now look like they do in the browser and include vector based rendering. This includes dashboard PDFs sent as attachments from Scheduled Looks.



Note the following requirements:



  • Looker Labs feature must be enabled

  • The default layout for scheduled emails will change to the new format

  • On-premise installations must be running PhantomJS 2.11. Check your version and update.

Userlevel 2

This is awesome - can’t wait to start using it. Thanks!

Thanks for the update @blaf . Doesn’t solve for the layout of emailed dashboard and what I need, but it looks nice. Any thoughts on when we might be able to see a similar style embedded into emails?

HI again @blaf,


used the new PDF download feature but some of the content from my dashboard was missing. I have some text section on my dashboard to give context but there were completely missing on the pdf email and direct download version of the dashboard. Screenshot below, though blurred to hide some internal data.


Niall


Original Dashboard

@blaf I can only post one image at a time, so here’s the next:


Downloaded Dashboard

Userlevel 2

Hey Niall,


Would you mind sending me the details of this PDF download to my email at brian@looker.com? Would love to take a look as to what text is missing from the PDF dashboard. As for your first question, around replicating this style of dashboard for “in-line visualization options” I’ve added your feedback to that particular feature request. Certainly something that makes sense to put into the body of the email, if possible.

hi @Niall_Byrne, sorry for the late response. the missing text section was a bug which we fixed in 3.50.

Is there a way that when you print the PDF it does not try to fit it into 1 page (causing the font to be microscopic? It would be great if it would print on to multiple pages (without cutting off any graphs). Perhaps a printer friendly layout for PDFs?

hello @p_talkad


If you use the “Legacy Vertical Dashboard” option when downloading or scheduling the dashboard PDF, you will get a document with page breaks. Of course it won’t reflect the layout of your actual dashboard as nicely.


Is there a way to add text to the email being sent? Some type of canned response or a place to edit the body of the email?

Userlevel 2

Hi @p_talkad,


That is currently not possible but is something I can loop in my Product team about. What I recommend in the time being is to create a note on the dashboard, put it at the very top, and use that for any kind of message you would like to display.


Cheers,

Vincent

Reply