Explore dashboards provide a customizable space for organizing and sharing information. They are primarily made of reports about your business information stored in Zendesk, though you can add other elements like logos, text, and shapes. It's common to add filters to a dashboard that enable people who you share the dashboard with to change what's displayed like the report dates, groups, users, and many other items. For some examples of dashboard filters, see Explore recipe: Getting to know dashboard filters.
A challenge can arise when multiple people want to use the same dashboard with different filter settings. For example, John wants to look at problem tickets from the documentation group and Judy wants to look at task tickets from the finance team. To prevent users from having to set the filters they need each time they look at the dashboard, you can bookmark dashboard states and then return to them with a single click.
In this article, you'll learn how to create and use bookmarks in your Explore dashboards. You'll also read about some of the frequently asked questions that customers like yourself often ask.
This article contains the following sections:
Setting up bookmarks
- A time filter that enables you to change the time period that the report covers.
- A change metric filter that enables you to change the Solved tickets metric to Unsolved tickets, Open tickets, or Pending tickets.
For more information about dashboard filters, see Adding interactive dashboard widgets.
- Department 1 wants to quickly see the number of tickets solved yesterday.
- Department 2 wants to quickly see the current total number of unsolved tickets for each assignee.
When the dashboard is first opened, you want it to default to show the configuration for Department 1.
To accomplish this, you'll add bookmarks to the dashboard with buttons to set the dashboard up for Department 1 or Department 2.
To add bookmarks to the dashboard
- First, configure the dashboard filters to show the settings for Department 1. Set the time filter to Yesterday and the change metric to Solved tickets.
- From the Add menu, click Bookmark.
- In the Bookmark panel, click Create bookmark from current state.
- In the name field, enter the name "Department 1" for the bookmark. As you want Department 1 to be the default, click the pin icon (
).
- When you are finished, click Close. Your new bookmark for Department 1 is now displayed in your dashboard. You can move and resize the bookmark to suit your needs.
- Now, you'll set the dashboard up for Department 2. Set the time filter to All history and the change metric to Unsolved tickets.
- From the bookmark you previously added, click Edit.
- In the Bookmark panel, click Create bookmark from current state.
- In the name field, enter the name "Department 2" for the bookmark.
- The Reset button on the bookmark, when clicked reverts the bookmark to its pinned state, in this example, Department 1. If you don't want users to have this option, enable Hide reset button.
- When you are finished, click Close. Department 2 is added to your existing bookmark. You can now click each department to see the relevant settings.
Choosing bookmark sets the dashboard filters to a previously saved state. The dashboard viewer can still manually reconfigure the dashboard filters if they want to look at other filter configurations.
Using bookmarks across multiple dashboard tabs
Sometimes, dashboards get too big for a single page and you'll split them into multiple pages known as tabs. To learn more about tabs, see Working with dashboard tabs.
By default, a bookmark works on a single tab. Bookmarks need to be applied to all tabs to ensure all filters are preset.
To use bookmarks across multiple dashboard tabs
- Add the filters that your bookmark will use to each applicable tab of your dashboard. For instructions on adding filters, see Using filters across multiple tabs.
- Set a bookmark on all tabs that you added your filters to.
15 Comments
We are also experience problems where a time filter bookmark affects only one of the tabs...
Hi Joel,
Yes, bookmarks will be applied to the dashboards sent to external users/end-users via scheduled deliveries or shared thru an external link.
The bookmarks DO NOT work across multiple tabs, despite having Enterprise Suite and using live data filters. The live dataset is buggy and short of a lot of useful data
Having the same issue here with bookmarks not being applied on some tabs. They reset when I switch between them and/or close the browser and go back in
I find that I consistently have to set my filters and pin the bookmark 2-3 times before it saves. It seems really buggy and I wonder if anyone else has gotten to the root cause of this.
I can confirm the same issue, since we started using Explore 2 years ago. I've been confused by the existence of "do not share across tab" because no filter ever has shared across a tab.
Update:
Support has confirmed that the documentation is worded in such a way as to be hard to get to the correct outcome.
"Share across tab" does NOT "work across all of your dashboard tabs", it only works on tabs with the exact same filter as the one that you just set up. If I have a time filter for Tickets Solved on Tab 1, it will not apply to Tabs 2-5 unless they also have that same filter on it, and the box "do not share across tab" is not ticked on the filter on tab 1.
This is not at all what the text conveys, so I'm not surprised I wasn't the only one posting here confused.
CJ Johnson I've updated the Using bookmarks across multiple dashboard tabs topic in this article, along with the Using filters across multiple tabs topic in the Best practices for using dashboard filters article, to clarify how to get filters to work across multiple tabs.
Why is the bookmark "menu" in the dashboard itself and not in the ribbon?
I can't find this feature in beta dashboards. Is there an equivalent feature?
If you don't want to share the filters across tabs but want to keep the current state of each filter you have selected in each tab, then you will have to bookmark each Tab separately.
It should work as expected when bookmarking each Tab!
Can you please clarify whether saved (pinned) bookmark filters are applied when doing an external share of an Explore dashboard?
HI Jo Tatti,
I would recommend upvoting this thread: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4450861730458-Bookmark-component-for-the-new-dashboard-builder-Gathering-interest
Zendesk have not yet confirmed that bookmarks will be present in the beta Dashboard builder (which is extremely disappointing, because I think they are a critical feature in Explore).
I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing issues where the time filter bookmark affects only one of the tabs. To investigate further, I will open a ticket for you and reach out via Email.
Illation Zendesk Team!
I would like to investigate this further for you, so I am creating a ticket for this comment and you can provide me with some extra information there.
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