Easier access to Saved Views and Dashboard descriptions
Up until now, Description text for both Saved Views and Dashboards haven't been first class citizens when users navigate to either of them and want to know what a view they haven't created themselves is all about.
We just made it incrementally better, read on.
Where we come from
Displaying Description text for Saved Views and Dashboards used to require a little bit of user gymnastics, especially for Dashboards where the only ways to visualize this description would be
- look at the description summary in the Library screen (which may be truncated if too long)
- have edit privileges on the dashboard and proceed to Action > Edit > Dashboard properties
For Saved Views, descriptions were only displayed in a rather space constrained Edit field in the query panel - again, not entirely ideal.
We've noticed that some users are Content Creators (to use a common term these days), and they create the best dashboards for everyone in the company to use - and some other users are Consumers, meaning they rarely build out Saved Views and Dashboards, but consume them heavily for their operational tasks.
More often than not, the subtlety of the view crafted by the Content Creator can escape the Consumer User (instructions on how to use, limitations of the view, how to interpret the data...) - this is what we want to improve with this micro-feature.
Where we're going
Upon loading either a Dashboard or a saved view, you will now notice a speech bubble icon next to it:
Beyond this, we bound this action to a new shortcut, [shift]+[d]so that shortcut-savvy users can access it without needing any extra click - the modal can also be discarded with the [esc] key.
Remember, all the shortcuts that are active on any screen can be displayed by using another shortcut: [shift]+[?]
What the future holds
We are already considering rich, markdown-style panels for our future Dashboard revamp (roadmap milestone still tbd) - what do you think?
