Share a Custom dashboard with other users and keep it synchronised across users

[mattab]

The goal of this issue is to let any Piwik user share the currently viewed Custom Dashboard with a colleague or friend who also has access to this Piwik server.

Edit: see below comment for updated notes

Proposed solution

We can add a new option in the Widgets & Dashboard selector that will let users get a URL that they can copy paste. When another user clicks on this URL it will load the Piwik and ask user to login if not logged in yet. Once logged in, the user will directly be invited to create a new Custom Dashboard (pre-selected with same widgets and layout as his colleague). The colleague now has access to a copy of your Custom Dashboard!

Notes

• the Shared URL should include the same idSite, date, period, and segment parameters.
• this way the shared URL let user re-create exactly the same view as his colleague could see when sharing the dashboard.
• When displaying the URL we could write something like "Note: the user loading this URL will be asked to Login to this Piwik instance."

[tsteur]

Isn't this like #5164?

[mattab]

Yes, it's duplicate.

Note: see discussion in #5164 (comment)

More notes about sharing dashboards

Over the last few months, a few more users have requested the ability to Share a dashboard with someone, and keeping the dashboard synchronised with the original dashboard that is being improved.
This would be useful almost always, for example when one Marketing team member creates the Marketing team dashboard, and wants to share it with others. Currently they need to copy it, but as soon as someone makes an improvement they need to share it back with other. It is not synchronised. So the idea is to build this synchronised dashboard by allowing people to share the dashboard with others and keep it synchronised.

Thoughts:

• When sharing a dashboard with someone else in this way, to keep it simple we can make it read only.
  • (Eventually maybe we could let other people edit the dashboard, so one could collaboratively work on the same dashboard. Not needed in MVP. Matomo is not currently designed to work well when multiple users edit a dashboard layout at once)
• We'll need to find ideal words to describe the two concepts of "Copying a dashboard", and "Give read-only access to my dashboard template for this site".
• When a dashboard has been actively given access to by another user, we should somehow make it clear in the UI that the dashboard is currently shared with others (and may affect other users).
• Similarly when viewing a "Read only dashboard" managed by another user, it should be clear that it is such a dashboard and layout/reports are done by User XYZ and cannot be changed.
• When viewing a read-only dashboard shared by another user, in some cases I want to re-use the dashboard for one of the website(s). So as a person who shared a dashboard, I want to be able to copy it to my account (by re-using the feature "Copy this dashboard to user")

Notes

• this feature should be usable by any user, not just "super users"
• Rather than a user needing to know the usernames of other people to copy dashboard to, maybe a better waywould be to generate a URL that can be copied/pasted to other Matomo users (eg. on Slack or by email). When this URL is clicked, the logged-in user in Matomo would then be presented with the dashboard and need to confirm they want to synchronise this dashboard in their account.

[mattab]

Shouldn't this have higher priority? Seems like a crucial feature somehow.

[tsteur]

It's a crucial feature, but there are like hundreds of other crucial features as well that can impact like heaps of users compared to this that rather useful for a lot lot less users

[bierzorutas]

+1

[MatomoForumNotifications]

This issue has been mentioned on Matomo forums. There might be relevant details there:

https://forum.matomo.org/t/share-custom-dashboards-with-others/45943/2

[atom-box]

One Support Plans customer says the lack of this feature may be a deal-breaker (prevent them from adopting Matomo).

We see it an essential obstacle for adopting analytics across multiple teams if we force our colleagues on this approach.

As a temporary solution, I have been manually copying and re-copying my 5 dashboards to 10+ stakeholders after every significant change. And then I have been personally asking each of them to remove the earlier copy and look at the new one. The process is not only time consuming but prone to mistakes.

[goochj03]

Another request today to see shared dashboards be in sync.

It seems very cumbersome that I would then have to reshare a dashboard with everyone again every time I make a change or update it. The dream scenario would be that I was able to administrate a dashboard that everyone would be able to access/read in real time

[atom-box]

Another request today to see shared dashboards in sync.

A member of my team created a custom dashboard and sent me a copy of the dashboard. Is there a way for us to collaborate on the dashboard that was created (e.g., if I add a widget to the dashboard my colleague created, can they see that widget, and vice versa?)?

[Normandygirl]

"The share dashboard creates a copy, but if I make a change to the original dashboard, it wont reflect to the user until I share it as another copy? Is there anything we could do here?
Also, I can only create a default dashboard. But if I want to create multiple such dashboards which everyone can see, is there a way?". From a Matomo contact....
I agree this would be cool to have.

[Chardonneaur]

Currently the following api request will create a new dashboard:
https://something.matomo.cloud/index.php?module=API&method=Dashboard.copyDashboardToUser&idDashboard=1&copyToUser=daniel&format=xml&token_auth=mytok&force_api_session=1
it would makes sense to add an api method which would refresh the dashboard.

[Chardonneaur]

I got a client asking for this feature today.

[goochj03]

A cloud customer has asked about this feature today. The fact the dashboards are not in sync once shared has been causing some confusion for their users. Having this ability would provide easier dashboard management among users. Also being able to share to multiple users at once would be handy.