Building an interactive Dashboard with Slicers

In this tutorial, we use the Who’s doing what where (3W) database template to create a simple Dashboard that allows viewers to drill down by sector to find details about the ongoing humanitarian response.

Using the Slicer component of Dashboards, you can create an interactive Dashboard that you can share with your Stakeholders to allow them to drill down into your data without having to use the analysis design themselves.

Create a copy of the template Database

Navigate to the database template page and click “Create your own database based on this template.” If you don’t have permission to add new Databases in your organization, you will be prompted to create a free trial.

Create a Dashboard

Create a Dashboard type of report by following these steps:

  1. Navigate to the “Projects” Form.
  2. From the “Analyze” menu, click “Add dashboard.”
Dashboard with blank grid added
Dashboard with blank grid added

Create “Partner” Pie Chart

Add a chart that shows the share of projects by partner by following these steps:

  1. Click “Add component.”
  2. Select “Pivot table.”
  3. From the “Select vizualization” menu, click “Show as pie chart.”
  1. On the left side panel, scroll down to click the “Partner” Form, and drag the “Acronym” card to the “Series” area.
  2. Drag the “Count of all records” to the “Measures” area.
  1. Click “Done” to return to the Dashboard.
  2. Click on the chart, and then drag the Move and Resize handles to cover the left third of the Dashboard.
  1. Click the “Untitled” card on the left hand side and enter the label “Projects by partner.”

Create “Province” Bar Chart

Add another chart to show the share of projects by province (Admin level 1), following these steps:

  1. Click “Add component.”
  2. Select “Pivot table.”
  3. From the “Select vizualisation” menu, select “Show as bar chart.”
  4. Drag the “Admin 1” card to the “X-axis” area.
  5. Drag the “Count of all records” to the “Measures area.”
  1. Click “Done” to return to the Dashboard.
  2. Click the new chart and position it on the right-hand side.

Add the “Sector” Slicer

Add the interactive Slicer component that allows report viewers to drill down to a specific sector by following these steps:

  1. Click “Add Component” and then select “Slicer.”
  2. From the left side panel, select “Sector Name” and drag it to the “Slicer” column.

The list of sectors in the Table are the choices that are presented to the Viewer.

  1. Click “Done” to return to the Dashboard.
  2. Click the untitled Slicer component and enter “Filter by Sector” as a label.

You have created a simple Dashboard with a Slicer component!

Using the Slicer component

The Slicer component works as a Filter on the other Charts and Tables on the page. Slicers do not yet apply to Map components.

In the Dashboard editor, you can click the dropdown with the placeholder “Filter by Sector Name” and choose one or more sectors.

The other charts are filtered by this dimension, just as if you had added Sector Name to the Filter dimension in the Pivot table.

Sharing the interactive Dashboard

You can share the Dashboard you created in one of the folllowing ways:

  • Save the dashboard as part of your Database, and grant specific roles and users permission to view the Report.
  • Publish the Report, and obtain a link that anyone can use to view and interact with the Dashboard, without logging in.

You can view an example of this published report live:

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