Best practices: working with analytics

Amazon QuickSight is a highly customizable and powerful business intelligence tool. This document describes a typical use case and how to start working with analytics.

Prerequisites

Set up Amazon QuickSight

Optional: Back up the default analysis

Amazon QuickSight is shipped with a default analysis that is used for the default dashboard. We recommend duplicating the default analysis so you can learn how to create your own dashboards and keep the default analysis as a backup. To do it, follow the steps:

1. In the Back Office, go to Analytics.
2. On the Analytics page, click Analyses.
3. Based on your business model, click on one of the following analyses:

• B2B Analysis
• B2C Analysis
• B2B MP Analysis
• B2C MP Analysis

4. On the page of the analysis, click File>Save as Analysis.
5. In the Save a copy window, enter an Analysis name.
6. Click SAVE. This duplicates the analysis and opens it. Now you can safely create your own dashboards based on this analysis.

Optional: Back up the default datasets

Amazon Quicksight comes with your project’s data in default datasets. We recommend duplicating the default datasets and creating analyses based on the copies. To do it, follow the steps:

1. On the Analytics page, go to Datasets.
2. Next to a dataset, click the more options button and select Duplicate. This opens the Duplicate dataset window.
3. For Duplicate dataset name, enter a name for the duplicate.
4. Click Duplicate. This creates the dataset duplicate.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 for all the other datasets. After duplicating the datasets, you can use the duplicates and keep the original ones as a backup.

Refresh data

In this example, you’ll create an analysis using product availability data. Because availability is constantly changing, it’s important for the data to be up to date.

To refresh product related datasets, do the following:

1. On the Analytics page, go to Datasets.
2. In the Datasets section, click on the Product Concrete Availability dataset. This opens the dataset’s details.
3. Click the Refresh tab.
4. Click REFRESH NOW.
5. In the Refresh type window, select Full refresh.
6. In the Confirm refresh window, click REFRESH This refreshes the page. A new refresh entry is displayed in the History pane. You can check the status of the refresh in the Status column.

You’ve manually refreshed data and now it’s ready to be used in an analysis. For most datasets, you might want to set up an automatic data refresh so that data is always up to date. For instructions, see Refresh analytics datasets.

Create an analysis

An analysis is basically a visualization of data in your datasets. To create one, follow the steps:

1. On the Analytics page, go to Analyses.
2. In the Analyses section, click New analysis.
3. In the Your Datasets section, click on the Order Totals (Custom SQL) dataset. This opens the dataset’s details.
4. Click USE IN ANALYSIS. This creates an analysis called Order Totals (Custom SQL) with one visual.

Edit the visual

In this example, you’re going to create a product availability visual:

1. To select the visual, click on it.
2. In the Data pane, click on Availability. This highlights the field and adds its data to the visual.
3. In Visuals select the pie chart. This shows the data as a pie chart.

Add one more visual

1. Click Data > Add Dataset.
2. In the Choose dataset to add window, click on Category + Localized Product Abstract.
3. Click Select This shows a success message and the Datasets in this analysis window. Click Close to close the window.
4. In the Visuals pane, click +ADD. This adds an empty visual to the sheet.
5. Click on the visual you’ve added.
6. In the Data pane, for Dataset, select Category + Localized Product Abstract.
7. Add the name[spy_category_attribute] as a dimension to the Y AXIS section.
8. Add the sku field as a measure to the VALUE field.

9. Name of the visual is inherited from the fields you’ve added. To make it presentable, double-click the name.
10. In the Edit title window, enter a name for the visual. For example, Products per category.
11. To apply the change, click Save.

This closes the window and the new name of the visual is displayed.

Now you know how to add data and format it in different ways. For more information on how to create analyses, see Author Workshop.

Add filters

1. In the toolbar, click the filter button.

2. In the Filters pane, click + ADD and select store. This adds the filter to the pane.

3. To edit the filter, click on it.

4. To apply the filter to all the visual in the sheet, for Applied to, select Single sheet.

5. To add filter controls, click the three dots next to the filter and select Add control>Top of this sheet. This adds the filter controls to the top of the sheet.

Share the analysis

If you want another author to collaborate with you on the analysis, you can share it.

To share an analysis, follow the steps:

1. On the page of the analysis, click File > Share.
2. In the Share analysis, enter and select the email address of the author to share the analysis with. This displays the user in the table.
3. Repeat the previous step until you’ve added all the authors you want to share the analysis with.
4. Click Share This closes the window. The added users can now edit the analysis.

Publish analysis as a dashboard and share

Most of your analytics users will be readers with view permissions for dashboards. When you’re ready to share the analysis with a wider audience, you need to publish it as a dashboard so that the readers can access it.

To publish and share a dashboard, follow the steps:

1. To publish a dashboard, on the page of an analysis click PUBLISH.
2. For Publish new dashboard as, enter a name for the dashboard.
3. To confirm, click Publish dashboard. This publisher the dashboard and opens its page.

4. To share the dashboard, in the top-right corner, click the share icon and select Share dashboard. This opens the Share dashboard page.
5. In the Invite users and groups to dashboard pane, start entering the email address of a user. This shows users with matching email addresses as you’re typing.
6. Next to the needed user, click ADD and select the permissions to assign to them. This shows the user in the Manage permissions pane with the permissions you’ve assigned.

Learn more

In this guide, you’ve followed a typical user journey of creating, collaborating, and presenting data in a meaningful way. Now you can play around with these tools or learn more using the following materials:

• Amazon QuickSight - Getting Started
• Author Workshop