English (US)
  1. Zendesk help
  2. Explore
  3. Using Explore for reporting and analytics
  4. Creating dashboards

Comparing features available in the dashboard builder

Erin O'Callaghan
  • Edited
Zendesk Documentation Team

In Explore, the dashboard builder is where you create dashboards, customizable spaces for organizing and sharing information. There are two versions of the dashboard builder: a legacy version, and an improved beta version that is still evolving.

This article compares the features currently available in the two different dashboard builders. With this information, you can decide which dashboard builder meets your needs in terms of currently available functionality.

Tip: In a hurry? Check out the comparison of the most-used features to see which dashboard builder meets your needs.

This article will be updated as new features are released for the beta dashboard builder.

Legacy dashboard builder

Beta dashboard builder

For more on creating dashboards with the legacy dashboard builder, see Creating dashboards. For more on creating dashboards with the improved dashboard builder, see Working with the new dashboard builder (Beta).

This article contains the following topics:

Most-used features

Feature Legacy dashboard builder Improved dashboard builder
Beta phase open to Explore Enterprise customers (Current) Beta phase expanded to Explore Professional customers General availability Post–general availability
Sharing
Exporting
Scheduling
Drill in

Viewing and sharing

Feature Legacy dashboard builder Improved dashboard builder
Beta phase open to Explore Enterprise customers (Current) Beta phase expanded to Explore Professional customers General availability Post–general availability
Restricted data (New)
Embeddable dashboards (New)
Sharing
Cloning
External sharing
Exporting
Scheduling

Components

Feature Legacy dashboard builder Improved dashboard builder
Beta phase open to Explore Enterprise customers (Current) Beta phase expanded to Explore Professional customers General availability Post–general availability
Templates (New)
Drill into live agent status (New)
Tabs
Text
Image Gathering interest
Submit your comments and votes here		 Gathering interest
Submit your comments and votes here
Bookmark Gathering interest
Submit your comments and votes here		 Gathering interest
Submit your comments and votes here
Change metric
Change attribute
Top/Bottom
What if
Shape
Drill into reporting data

Component options

Feature Legacy dashboard builder Improved dashboard builder
Beta phase open to Explore Enterprise customers (Current) Beta phase expanded to Explore Professional customers General availability Post–general availability
Edit report
Exclude filters
Background and visualization color
Tooltip
Legend
Send to back
Other report settings

Filters

Feature Legacy dashboard builder Improved dashboard builder
Beta phase open to Explore Enterprise customers (Current) Beta phase expanded to Explore Professional customers General availability Post–general availability
Data filter
Time filter
Metric filter

Filter options

Feature Legacy dashboard builder Improved dashboard builder
Beta phase open to Explore Enterprise customers (Current) Beta phase expanded to Explore Professional customers General availability Post–general availability
Hide filters


(Restricted data)


(Restricted data)
Link filters

Layout

Feature Legacy dashboard builder Improved dashboard builder
Beta phase open to Explore Enterprise customers (Current) Beta phase expanded to Explore Professional customers General availability Post–general availability
Single layer layout (New)
Compaction type (New)
Snap to grid (New)
Height
(Manual)
(Dynamic)
(Dynamic)
(Dynamic)
(Dynamic)
Undo/redo
Paint size
Paint format
Automatically reorganize components
(Snap to grid)
(Snap to grid)
(Snap to grid)
(Snap to grid)
Font
Tab fill color
Fit to one screen

Dashboard options

Feature Legacy dashboard builder Improved dashboard builder
Beta phase open to Explore Enterprise customers (Current) Beta phase expanded to Explore Professional customers General availability Post–general availability
Export options
Interaction options Gathering interest
Submit your comments and votes here		 Gathering interest
Submit your comments and votes here
Slide options
Title options

Permissions

Feature Legacy dashboard builder Improved dashboard builder
Beta phase open to Explore Enterprise customers (Current) Beta phase expanded to Explore Professional customers General availability Post–general availability
Role per dashboard (New)

Auditing

Feature Legacy dashboard builder Improved dashboard builder
Beta phase open to Explore Enterprise customers (Current) Beta phase expanded to Explore Professional customers General availability Post–general availability
Dashboard activity (New)
Version control (New)
Return to top

15 Comments

  • Qin Brian

    We have global business and to follow laws of privacy data protection from each country, we cannot let country A agents to see the data of country B. 

    Can Live data dashboard be flexible to show only country B's data to specific agents?

    0
  • Dion
    Zendesk Customer Care
    Hey Qin,

    The dataset permissions and other miscellaneous Explore permissions does not look like they can prevent agents from viewing the default Dashboards in Explore and this included the Default Live Dashboard, however, if this is a custom dashboard then you can decide who to share with and datasets may kick in there. 

    Regards,

    Dion
    -1
  • CJ Johnson
    • Edited

    Drill in appears to be completely missing as a feature on the beta. Is this an intentional change? 

    Opening a report to full size also appears to be gone, is this something that is planned to return? 

    How do we access Version Control? This is shown as a feature on this product but I can't find anything. 

    EDIT: Hold up, does an X mean that you won't have that feature in these charts?? What is the difference between a checkmark and an X for reading these? 

    1
  • Gerald Jaime

    Since you will now have role permission per dashboard, will you make all dashboards visible to Admins? Shared or not

    0
  • Shayan Moussawi
    • Edited

    I seem to have an issue editing the dashboards from the Beta release. 
    When I click on "edit" on a Beta dashboard, nothing seems to happen.

    I can "create" infinite amount of Beta dashboards by clicking on the "try now" button with the banner on top. But once created I cannot edit them.

     

    CJ Johnson X seems to mean that the feature is not considered in that state of release.

    Which is rather odd, since that basically means a lot of features seem be be removed for 3 new features.


    Especially for the bookmark feature this seems problematic since bookmarks helped a lot to sync filters across different datasets.

    4
  • Stephen
    • Edited

    Hi,

    I am seeing the same issue Shayan mentioned - I can create beta Dashboards, but can't edit them. In addition, a bunch Zendesk Templates (named Teemplates) have been added to my Dashboard list that are inaccessible.

    On another note - looking at some of the feature additions / removals from this list, it seems a lot of functionality will be lost altogether:

    • Hiding filters
    • Change metrics / attributes
    • Top / bottom
    • Tooltips
    • Legends
    • And more...

    These are fundamental things used in my organisation currently in our Dashboards - particularly those shared with customers.

    Is my understanding correct based on this table that these features will be gone once the new Dashboard Builder is released?

    Best regards,
    Stephen

     

    1
  • Sy Sussman
    • Edited

    The block of text on my dashboard page that says, "Try out new improvements in Dashboard Builder beta" takes up over a quarter of the page and there's no option to click an x to get rid of this box. Therefore I can see far fewer of my dashboards at one time than I previously could. This is a major annoyance.

    1
  • Tom Erik Skjønsberg

    What exactly am I supposed to try?

    Clicking "Try it now" creates a new dashboard which I can't do anything with. Clicking New dashboard just opens the regular dashboard builder.

    Trying to look at the templates, or Teemplates, does nothing. They cannot be opened.

    At the moment this "beta" looks more like a pre-alpha release.

    1
  • CJ Johnson

    This article is really unfriendly to the visually impaired. I'm not sure you're aware of this, but all the marks that indicate whether a feature is included or not, is an image with no alt text. This makes it impossible to tell what features are coming when if you can't see the images.  I was trying to build a version of this that was easier to tell what was going on, but it's not copy/past-able into a sheet because of all the images as well. This is making a lot of extra work for me, just so that I can take the information in this article and create a summary for affected teams of what features are being removed, that is accessible to everyone. 

    1
  • CJ Johnson

    Could you clarify what it means that you're removing "Legends" as a feature in the new builder? 
    I'd also really like to know what "Other report settings" are being discontinued, as that sounds like it may have an impact down the road and I'd like to be sure of how it would effect our reporting. 

    0
  • Walter Bellante
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hello CJ Johnson, thanks for your feedback and questions. 
    Below you can find the answers to your questions.

    • Drill in appears to be completely missing as a feature on the beta. Is this an intentional change? 
      • Support for Drill in will be available starting from the “General availability” phase
    • Opening a report to full size also appears to be gone, is this something that is planned to return? 
      • At this stage, it is not planned, but it might come in the future. Currently, you can select the report and click “More options” from the side panel. This will redirect you to the report builder and allow you to see the report in full size.
    • How do we access Version Control? This is shown as a feature on this product but I can't find anything. 
      • Version control is not currently available and will be shipped after the “General availability”
    • Could you clarify what it means that you're removing "Legends" as a feature in the new builder? 
      • We've removed the ability to configure from the dashboard builder how the legend is displayed however you can still configure it from the report builder.
    • I was trying to build a version of this that was easier to tell what was going on, but it's not copy/past-able into a sheet because of all the images as well.
      • Got it. We’ll check how we can allow this table to be easily exportable. 
    • I'd also really like to know what "Other report settings" are being discontinued
      • The dashboard builder will no longer support settings that are not listed in the “Component options” section however they will still be available in the report builder. 
      •  We decided to remove them as having them duplicate both on the dashboard and the report builder caused some inconsistencies. Some customers performing a change to the report from the dashboard builder were expecting to perform an update to the original report while this wasn’t the case. In order to simplify the report editing workflow, we decided to keep these settings exclusively on the report builder and to propagate any change to the new dashboard builder.

    Thanks,
    Walter

    0
  • Walter Bellante
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hello Stephen, Shayan Moussawi and Tom Erik Skjønsberg, apologies for the inconvenience, I’ve checked with the team and you should now be able to edit the dashboards you’ve created with the new builder.

    Regarding the features you’ve mentioned, I’ll try to shed some light:

    • Bookmarks: we haven’t yet made a decision on their availability. We are currently gathering interest in the importance of this feature here. Feel free to upvote the post and share how you use it.
    • Hiding filters: this feature is currently used to prevent viewers from seeing unnecessary data. “Restricted data” will replace hidden filters and allow to easily adapt the content of the dashboard based on the viewer that is accessing the dashboard.
    • Tooltips, Legends and Top/Bottom:  the ability to configure these settings will be kept in the report builder while we currently do not plan to have them in the dashboard builder. 
    • Change metrics / attributes: @Stephen, I would love to learn how you use them and why they are a key use case for your business. Would you mind sharing how you currently use them?

    Thanks,
    Walter

    0
  • Walter Bellante
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Gerald Jaime,
    we are still defining how permissions will impact dashboard visibility for admins. I will come back to you once we have a clear scope of the feature.

    0
  • Shayan Moussawi

    Walter Bellante Hello  Walter,
    Unfortunately not. The banner for creating Dashboards with the new Dashboard builder disappeared for my account. The two dashboard I created while it was still there, are not editable.

    0
  • Tom Erik Skjønsberg

    Hi Walter Bellante

    Bookmarks: If these disappear, then so do I as a Zendesk Explore user. There are no ifs or buts about that one. Zendesk has been telling us since the introduction of Explore to use bookmarks in dashboards rather than filters in reports. Removing the bookmarks would undo years of work, and if that happens I have no choice other than to view that as a mark of how valued customers are by Zendesk. Harsh maybe, but the truth.

    Hiding filters: This is used together with bookmarks to make the reports useful for the viewers. So again this is something that is used extensively, and something I would expect to be kept.

    1

Please sign in to leave a comment.

Related articles

Powered by Zendesk