This is as much for me as it is all of you because I can’t tell you how many times I publish, then republish, and the probably WebEdit a dashboard before it’s “done”. The reason is that I forget the “little things” that I have to do every time I publish a viz… so combining my own list, with a few others I’ve found I present to you, The Check List
We’ll break this up into several parts: Data, Calculations, Filtering/Parameters, Overall Formatting, Dashboard Specific Tasks, Other Things to Consider.
For Data there are a few things to consider:
Did you use a small extract for development, and if so, did you regenerate the full extract? If your plan is to go live, did you switch the connection type? How are you connecting to the data? Service Account credentials? impersonation?
☐ Connection Type? Live / Extract
☐ If Extract, did you regenerate it for initial use?
☐ For Publishing, how are you refreshing the data? (credentials)
For Calculations the biggest thing I usually forget here is clean up, as well as simplicity.
Did I use an LOD when a table calc would work? Did I rename my calculations? Did I add comments of document what the calculation is doing? Did I set the default properties/formats/aggregations? When I filter the worksheet, does the math still work (order of operations)? Did I delete old/unused calcs?
For Filters, I always try and remember to check if I’ve applied them correctly, wide enough, and so that I can avoid conflicts.
Does the worksheet apply to just this sheet, the dashboard or some combination? If I’m using viz in Tooltips, check the filter is applied there too! Does the filter combination have potential for conflict? If so, can I mitigate it, and if I can I need to communicate that to the users. Am I using a quick filter when an action filter will work better?
For parameters, it’s clean up and configurations! Sets fall in to a similar pattern as well here…
Did I set the parameter to be dynamic if needed? Did I delete only/unused parameters? Did I name my parameters?
Overall formatting is always a challenge! Here are some things I always forget to check!
Is the font type, weight, size consistent across my dashboard? (Workbook formatting helps here!) are my grid lines needed? Axis lines? Tick marks?