Hi Matt,
I'd like to share dashboards I have created with respective departments. We don't want departments to be able to view all of our website data, just their custom dashboards. How can I go about this?
Regards,
Redacted Colleague
Hi Redacted,
Unfortunately there is no way to give a user permission to see a live dashboard without granting them access to the rest of the You could however set up Scheduled Email reports and have the dashboard emailed on a regular basis.
Sharing dashboards
Dashboards in Google Analytics are just one of many reports owned by the View which all share the same permissions.
Dashboards have two types of visibility, Shared and Private:
Shared dashboards are visible to anyone who has permissions in the View. Anybody with permission can edit shared dashboards as well as share their own dashboards. When a shared dashboard is edited, the change is reflected for all users.
Private dashboards are only visible to the logged in user. Anybody with permissions can create their own personal dashboards but can't add them to the Shared dashboards. They can however share the dashboard template using the Share template link functionality. This creates a copy of the dashboard. The downside to this is that the template needs to be re-shared each time the dashboard is edited.
This button changes a dashboard from private to shared. It is only available to users with permission.
This shares dashboards between Views and users. When pasting the link in your browser it will ask which View you would like to add it to. The dashboard is priviate by default.
This allows you to make your beautiful display of data publicly available in the Google Analytics Solution Gallery. Potentially your first steps towards analytics fame and fortune.
The only way to allow somebody to see dashboard data without given them access to all of the reports is to either
- export as PDF and send it to them, or
- set up Scheduled Email reports.
Setting up scheduled Emails
When viewing a dashboard, there's an button at the top of the page which allows you to send as an automated scheduled email. Weekly reports will report on the past week, monthly reports will report on the past month etc.
Unfortunately the emailed dashboards won't be interactive and hovering your mouse over data points won't reveal more information.
To modify your Scheduled Emails, navigate to the Admin page, and Scheduled Emails will be available under Personal Tools & Assets.
Common gotcha's with Scheduled Emails
Scheduled Emails are owned by the logged in user. Users can't add, delete or modify each others entires.
Scheduled Emails are only active for six month by default. This can be changed under the Advanced options tab to be active for up to 12 months. You can renew the expiry date at any time.
Make sure to check your Segments and "Compare to" in date range settings before setting up your Scheduled Email. Once set up it's very difficult to change. You'll need to delete your set up and start again.
Thanks for your email Redacted,
– Matt