Learn how sharing Adobe Analysis Workspace projects as “read only” can create executive-ready dashboard reports with a clean user interface and predefined filtering options, as well as how the “mobile scorecard” can simplify sharing digital experience KPIs with executives on the go.
Sharing Adobe Analytics Workspace projects with colleagues is an essential use of Analytics to make better business decisions. We can share projects with other users for “edit original”, “edit copy”, and “read only” access rights. Most of the time, we probably share projects with edit original or edit copy access rights so we can collaboratively update the project or other users can duplicate the project as their own for further updates. However, sometimes read only sharing is a surprisingly good sharing option beyond the access control as suggested by the access right name.
Why read only
When a project is shared as read only, all editing functions and features are completely disabled and recipients can only change the dropdown to apply a filter to the panel in a predefined manner. Compare this to “edit copy” sharing, where the recipients can “save as” the project to make that their own, all editing features are available but only the “save” function is disabled. By disabling all editing functions and features, the left rail for panel/visualization/component and palettes is gone, giving the full-screen estate for the project content, and more space for tables and charts which simply looks better.
Moreover, since all components are read-only if there are any segments and calculated metrics being used in the project, we can ensure that recipients, even if they are administrators, cannot change the definition so they won’t accidentally mess up project or any other reference to the same segments or calculated metrics.
This helps the read-only project become an executive-ready dashboard report with a simple and clean user interface and predefined filtering options. If used with a panel/visualization link, it can also provide a “drill-down” feature as a complete BI solution.
The read-only project is also helpful for sharing data with users who have little Adobe Analytics experience, such as product marketing colleagues driving product launch campaigns and providing them with a campaign dashboard with predefined conversion and marketing channel breakdowns.
Another way - The Mobile Scorecard
Apart from read-only project sharing, Analytics Dashboard is another approach to sharing executive-ready dashboards with predefined experience. It is the “mobile scorecard” when creating a new project in Analysis Workspace and the resulting project will be available in the “Adobe Analytics” mobile app. This allows us to share digital experience KPIs with executives in a simple and easy-to-use mobile app which is accessible anywhere and anytime.
A good executive dashboard should be simple and on key points. By adding only KPIs to the first screen of an Analytics Dashboard, with an optional one-level drill-down to break down a KPI by one dimension from a predefined set of choices. The Analytics Dashboard allows us to tell a story we want to executives.
Even if your bosses are not using the Analytics Dashboard directly, have those KPIs ready in the Analytics Dashboard and get the answer right the way when being asked, you just look cool and well-prepared.
When adopting Adobe Analytics within an organization, we would probably want to enable all users with the full capabilities to create/modify Workspace projects for analysis. However, there are users with different skills and focuses, some of them only need to consume data in some predefined workspace projects and not going to do any further analysis with little experience in Adobe Analytics. The read-only project or analytics dashboard provide a simple interface with predefined experiences for them to access data.