Sharing & Collaboration

Sharing and Collaboration

Summary: This article explains how to share Dashboards and collaborate with your team in Daasity. You’ll learn how user access works, ways to share reports or data with both internal team members and external stakeholders, and best practices for collaborative analytics. We’ll cover features available in the Daasity app (embedded Looker for Growth users) as well as additional capabilities for Enterprise customers using Looker directly. By the end, you should know how to confidently distribute insights and work together on analysis in Daasity.

User Access and Permissions

Before sharing dashboards, it’s important to understand how access is managed in Daasity. User roles and permissions determine what each person can see or do:

• Inviting Users: Daasity is typically licensed per company, so all your internal team members can be given logins to the platform. An administrator (likely the person who set up Daasity for your brand) can invite new users via the Settings or Users management section. Once invited, a user can log in to the Daasity app and will have access to your company’s data (there isn’t a concept of data silos by user – all internal users see the same dashboards, subject to their role permissions).

• Roles: Daasity supports ]\at least two basic roles – viewers and editors (and possibly admins). A Viewer can see dashboards and run explores but cannot save changes that affect others. An Editor (or Analyst) can create and edit dashboards, looks, and other content. An Admin might be able to manage users, connections, and other settings. If you are a standard (Growth) customer using the embedded app, roles might be simplified to just viewer or editor within that app. Enterprise (Looker) customers can leverage Looker’s content permission model and development roles – for instance, some users might have development privileges to edit LookML, while others only have view access to certain folders. Check with your Daasity account admin on what roles are available in your instance.

• Collections/Folders Permissions: Within the Daasity app’s Collections, you can often control who can view or edit a Collection. For example, you might have a private Collection for your own work, a Marketing Collection that all marketing team members can view, and an Analytics Collection where a few power users can edit but everyone can view. Setting the appropriate sharing at the Collection or dashboard level ensures that sensitive information is only visible to intended audiences. In Growth accounts, these permissions are usually managed through the app’s UI (e.g., sharing a Collection with specific users or teams). In Looker (Enterprise), you have a folder structure where you can manage access groups and content access much more granularly.

In short, make sure the colleagues you want to collaborate with have Daasity accounts and the right level of access. If someone lacks access, you can either invite them to Daasity (preferred for internal team collaboration) or use scheduled emails/exports for one-off sharing with external parties.

Sharing Dashboards within Daasity

Once users have access, sharing a dashboard is straightforward. If you’ve built a great new dashboard or you want to circulate an existing report to others, here are ways to share within the platform:

• Share via Collections: The simplest way to share internally is to place the dashboard in a Collection that others can access. For example, if you create a dashboard in your personal space but now want the broader team to see it, you can move it to a team Collection. In the Daasity app, you might use a “Move to Collection” option or share setting on the dashboard. Once it’s in a shared Collection, anyone with access to that Collection will see the dashboard appear in their menu. This is great for ongoing collaboration because everyone will always see the latest version live in Daasity.

• Direct Dashboard Link: Daasity (with Looker) allows users to share direct links to dashboards. If a colleague has a Daasity login and permission to view a dashboard, you can simply copy the URL from your browser when viewing the dashboard and send it to them (via Slack, email, etc.). When they click it and log in, it will bring them straight to that dashboard. This is handy for ad-hoc “Hey, check out this report” scenarios. Note that if the recipient isn’t logged in or doesn’t have access, the link won’t work for them – so this method is internal only.

• Public or Embed Links: (If applicable) In pure Looker, it’s possible to generate public embed links or static images for a dashboard, but in the context of Daasity’s embedded app, public sharing is typically disabled for data security reasons . If you need to share a dashboard outside your organization (e.g., with an investor or partner) and they don’t have a Daasity account, consider scheduling a PDF export to them (covered in the Scheduled Reports article) or exporting data. Enterprise customers with Looker might enable a public link for a specific Look or use Looker’s embed functionality in a secure way, but this usually requires admin configuration and should be done cautiously due to data sensitivity.

• Sharing Explores or Looks: If you’re in the middle of an ad-hoc analysis (Explore) and want to share your findings without creating a full dashboard, you can save a Look and share that. A Look is basically a saved query/chart. You can send someone the link to the Look in the same way as a dashboard. They’ll be able to see the latest data for that specific query. Alternatively, you can use the Share button in Explore to send the results (e.g., email the data or generate a one-time link if allowed). The Daasity app may have a simplified share option for the current explore state, or you could copy and paste a result into a chat if it’s a quick number.

Tip: When sharing within Daasity, always verify permissions. If your teammate says “I can’t see that dashboard,” double-check that you placed it in a shared Collection or that their user role has access. On Enterprise/Looker, ensure they are in the correct Looker group to view that folder. It’s best to establish a naming and folder convention – for example, have all official company dashboards in a “Company Dashboards” folder that all users can at least view. That way, you don’t accidentally keep important insights siloed.

Collaboration on Dashboard Editing

Analytics is often a team sport. Daasity supports collaboration by allowing multiple users to contribute to dashboard creation and iteration (within the bounds of permissions):

• Multiple Editors: If a dashboard is in a shared space and your role allows editing, you and your colleagues can take turns refining the dashboard. For instance, an analyst might create an initial set of visualizations, then a marketer with edit rights might add a note or an additional filter to make the dashboard more useful. There’s no “live co-editing” (i.e., two people editing at the exact same time will override each other’s changes), so it’s wise to coordinate significant edits. One approach is to use a staging copy: duplicate the dashboard, make your changes, then communicate and replace the original when everyone agrees.

• Commenting/Annotations: Daasity dashboards allow you to add text tiles, which can serve as annotations or commentary on the data. While there isn’t a comment thread feature per se, you can create a Text box on a dashboard to leave context for viewers – e.g., explaining a dip in revenue (“Note: Site outage on 7/15 impacted sales”) or calling out an insight. This way, when you share the dashboard, everyone can see the notes in-line. If collaborating on analysis, team members can update these notes or use them to highlight areas that need attention.

• Version Control (Enterprise): For those using Looker directly, if you are collaborating on LookML code for metrics or dashboard definitions, Looker’s Git-based version control comes into play. You might have a development mode where multiple developers create branches for changes. This is more technical and usually limited to data teams or Daasity’s managed services, but it is worth noting for Enterprise collaboration. Non-technical users can stick to the UI for dashboard edits, while technical users might collaborate behind the scenes on the data model that feeds those dashboards (ensuring any custom metrics or dimensions are consistent).

• Communicating Changes: It’s a good practice to let your team know when you’ve made a significant update to a dashboard they use. For example, if you add a new chart or change a filter default, you might tag teammates in Slack or mention it in a team meeting. This ensures everyone stays on the same page about what they’re looking at. In the Daasity app, there isn’t an in-app notification for dashboard changes, so external communication is key. Some teams will even document key dashboards – listing owners, last updated date, and purpose – so collaboration is clearer. Consider keeping a “Dashboard Catalog” (perhaps a Confluence page or Google Doc) if your organization has many dashboards and contributors.

Sharing Data Outside Your Team

Sometimes you need to share Daasity insights with people who aren’t logging into the platform regularly. This could include executives who prefer email summaries, external partners, or agencies. For these cases, you might use the following features (with caution around data security):

• Scheduled Emails: The most common way to disseminate reports externally is via scheduled email deliveries (see the Scheduled Reports article for details). You can set up an automated email of a dashboard or report on a cadence (daily, weekly, monthly) to recipients who may not even be Daasity users. For example, you can schedule a “Weekly KPI Report” dashboard to go every Monday to your CEO, investor, and agency lead. They will receive a PDF attachment or inline image of the dashboard without needing to log in. This is a powerful way to keep stakeholders informed and is often easier than manually exporting and sending files each time.

• Exports and Downloads: If you need to do a one-time share, you can export data from Daasity. Dashboards can be downloaded as PDF or sometimes CSV (for underlying data). Individual charts can often be downloaded as images or CSV of the data points. For instance, you might export a chart as an image to include in a presentation. Or you might download the data behind a chart to share a spreadsheet with a partner. To do this in the Daasity app, look for an “Export” or download option in the dashboard or tile menu. In Looker, you can usually use the gear menu on a tile or the Dashboard Menu > Download as PDF for the whole dashboard. Always double-check that the exported data is what you intend to share and doesn’t contain any sensitive info beyond the audience’s needs.

• Embedding Dashboards: Daasity doesn’t currently offer an out-of-the-box public embedding option for dashboards (i.e., you can’t just embed a live dashboard on a public webpage for anonymous users). If you have a need for a live dashboard display (say on a TV monitor in your office or a secured internal webpage), talk to the Daasity team – enterprise Looker customers could potentially use Looker’s embed SDK with proper security, but that’s an advanced use case.

In all cases, ensure that sharing externally complies with your data governance policies. Daasity’s data often includes sales numbers and customer data that you’ll want to keep within trusted parties. The platform gives you tools to share easily, but you control who ultimately sees the information.

Best Practices for Collaboration

• Use Consistent Metrics Definitions: Avoid confusion by relying on the single source of truth metrics in Daasity. If someone creates a “custom” calculation on the fly (e.g., a custom metric in a Looker explore), make sure to document it or, better yet, have the metric added to the official model (with help from Daasity) so everyone uses the same formula. This way, when collaborating, you don’t argue over whose number is correct – they all come from the same definitions .

• Leverage Team Dashboards: Encourage teams (marketing, merchandising, ops) to maintain a few core dashboards that multiple people contribute to, rather than each person having siloed reports. This fosters a culture where insights are shared, not hoarded. Daasity’s Collections can mirror your team structure for this purpose.

• Training and Onboarding: Onboard new team members by walking them through the key dashboards and how to use Daasity. Show them how to favorite or bookmark important dashboards, how to drill into details, and how to explore data on their own. A collaborative analytics environment works best when everyone is empowered to use the tools.

• Periodic Reviews: Set up periodic reviews of your dashboards library. Clean up any outdated or unused dashboards (nothing is more confusing than 5 versions of “Monthly Report” floating around). Ensure owners are assigned for important dashboards so someone is responsible for updating filters or logic if business rules change.

By following these practices and utilizing Daasity’s sharing features, your organization can develop a strong data-driven collaboration. Everyone will have the access they need, in the format that suits them, to make informed decisions together.