Insights is a comprehensive and customizable tool which empowers you to generate detailed reports and visualize data, offering valuable insights to enhance the learning experience.
This guide will walk you through the various features and functionality of our analytical dashboard, enabling you to make data-driven decisions with ease.
What is Insights?
Insights is a place where you can customize your own analytical dashboard, share it with others, and generate insights using natural language input:
Customizable reporting: Generate customizable dashboards that allow you to tailor your analytical view, selecting relevant parameters, date ranges, and data filters to generate personalized reports and gain insights aligned with your specific goals and requirements.
Shareable dashboards: Share your dashboards with other users or groups and determine their user access so you facilitates data-driven discussions among relevant stakeholders.
AI integration: Generate insights with natural language by leveraging AI so you can efficiently gather the information you need in a timely manner.
Why should I use it?
Data-driven decision making: Get a comprehensive overview of the learning environment by analyzing key metrics, allowing you to make informed decisions based on real-time data. From performance, learner engagement, and completion rates, you can identify areas for improvement and implement targeted interventions.
Visualized insights: With visually appealing charts, graphs, and customizable dashboards, you can effortlessly interpret complex data. The visual representations make it easier to identify trends, patterns, and outliers, enabling administrators to gain actionable insights quickly.
Performance monitoring: Closely monitor the performance of learners, courses, and instructors. By tracking learner progress, administrators can identify struggling students, assess course effectiveness, and provide timely support or interventions where needed.
Use case examples for Insights
Performance evaluation: Assess employee or team performance by analyzing metrics such as sales targets, customer satisfaction ratings, and project completion rates. Make data-driven decisions on promotions, training, and resource allocation for optimal performance.
Learning and development: Track progress and effectiveness of training initiatives by monitoring metrics like course completion rates, knowledge assessment scores, and learner engagement. Refine training programs, identify high-potential employees, and align learning objectives with organizational goals.
Before you start
Below is a checklist you should take into consideration before starting to build a dashboard using Insights:
Identify business objectives: Understand what you want to achieve with the dashboard. This could be tracking learner performance, monitoring engagement, or assessing productivity. Your objectives will guide the design and functionality of your dashboard.
Understand your data: Familiarize yourself with the data that Insights has to offer, you can do this when creating a new dashboard (more on this later). This will help you decide which data to include in your dashboard.
Plan your dashboard layout: Decide how each data point will be displayed and in what format (for example: bar chart, line graph, pie chart). Consider how the layout can best present the data to make it easy to understand.
Determine user access: Decide who will have access to the dashboard and what level of access they will have. You might want to give different access levels to different team members depending on their role and the sensitivity of the data.
Breakdown of the Insights overview
Insights page
When you navigate to the Insights page, the dashboard displayed by default depends on whether you have any existing dashboards.
If you have no prior dashboards, you are presented with a new, empty dashboard ready to be renamed and configured
If you have already created or been given access to a dashboard, that existing dashboard will be shown by default
In short, Sana shows your most recently accessible dashboard (or a blank one if none exist yet). You can switch between dashboards using the Default dashboard drop-down menu in the middle of the top of the Insights page, or create a new one by selecting + Create new dashboard from that dropdown.
Get started quickly with dashboard templates
The Template dashboards are ready-made templates designed templates make it easier for you to get started with reporting and analysis. They offer inspiration and practical examples of what effective dashboards can look like in Sana. This helps you save time, discover new ways to visualize data, and quickly create value from Insights.
To access dashboard templates:
Navigate to Manage > Insights.
Select View all dashboards form the Default dashboard drop-down menu.
Scroll down to Template dashboards.
Building a dashboard from scratch
Step 1: Create a new dashboard
Go to Manage > Insights.
Select + Create new dashboard from the Default dashboard drop-down.
Rename your dashboard using three-dot menu on the right.
Click Share button to share the dashboard with other users and groups you are collaborating with (see FAQs for more info about sharing privileges).
Step 2: Add widgets
Once your dashboard is set up add widgets to track specific metrics.
Click Add widget
A divided window fills your view:
On the right under Options is where you select your Metrics or Raw data
On the left is where that information is displayed in real-time
Step 3.1: Customize your widget with metrics
Choose your chart type (icons under Options).
Choose options under Metric and Breakdown
Select a metric e.g., Progress,
Select a breakdown to compare e.g., User.
(Recommended) Add filter and define which selection of users or content you would like to use.
Select filter category e.g., User attributes, Content attributes.
Select category option e.g., User status = Active.
💡Course-related widgets can also be grouped or filtered by Course owner, helping you analyze course performance based on the person responsible for each course.
Once you're happy with the data selections and the visualized data on the left then click Save to dashboard at the bottom right.
Using entity filters in Insights
Entity filters in Insights (for example Users, Courses, Cards, Polls, or Survey questions) use a 'sticky selection' dropdown at both widget and dashboard level. You search and select entities in the dropdown, and your selected items stay pinned to the top so they remain easy to see and adjust even after closing and reopening the filter.
For course-related entities such as cards, polls, or survey questions, filtering is done in two steps: first select the course, then choose the related entities from a submenu. Both the course list and the entity submenus use the same sticky selection behavior, making it easier to work with many entities at once.
💡 This pattern is designed to reduce cognitive load when applying filters to dashboards and widgets, and to make large or complex selections more manageable.
The Insights dashboard filter carries over to widgets.
When opening a widget, if the dashboard has a filter, it will apply to the widget and can be viewed and toggled off in the right sidebar.
Step 3.2: Customize your widget with raw data
While Metrics can be used for looking at quantitative metrics and to look at aggregated numbers, e.g., for a whole group, Raw data is for digging into the lowest level of data, especially on qualitative and text-based data such as Reflections and Course feedback.
By using Raw data, you can break down the data into a completely non-aggregated view:
Click the Add widget button.
Choose Raw data.
Choose Data type, e.g., Reflections.
When selecting a data type, it will automatically populate the table with pre-determined relevant column dimensions. However, you can edit these to display the relevant information you need.
Use the predetermined Columns, or adjust depending on what data you are looking for.
Add Filter and define which selection of users or content you would like to analyze using the same sticky selection dropdowns for entities, so that your chosen users, courses, and other items stay visible at the top of the list.
💡 Change the name of a widget by clicking on the title.
Go to the next step and find out how AI can do the hard work for you!
Step 4: Sana's Insights Assistant makes data analysis a breeze
Sana AI is built directly into Insights in a way that makes analyzing your data time-saving, effortless, and fun. Use natural language to retrieve the data you want with a simple prompt.
Use phrases like:
What is the progress / start rate / completion rate?
What is the course / path / program start rate?
What's the course completion rate across groups?
What program has the most assigned users?
💡 Add your favorites to your dashboard so you can review the report again later.
Step 5: Lets play!
Now you've added a few widgets you may want to think about the overall look of your dashboard and checking out some of the other useful tools available. Thanks to our intuitive user interface you can:
Resize...
and watch how other other widgets magically adjust their position.
Move...
and place your widgets in the most optimal place for viewing.
Expand...
to get broader view of the data or make changes to the widget.
💡 Have a play around and see what other features you can discover. Try duplicating a widget by clicking on the 3-dot menu.
Conclusion
You did it! You've created your own dashboard, now you can think about creating more dashboards and consider reviewing and refining your existing one.
After you've been using the dashboard for a while, review it to see if it's meeting your needs. You might need to add new KPIs, adjust the layout, or change the data filters. Regular reviews will help ensure your dashboard remains a useful tool for your business.
FAQ
What are the different dashboard sharing options?
Viewer - Can view, but cannot edit
Editor - Can view and edit
Owner - Can view, edit, and share with other users
Do users receive notification when I invite them to a new dashboard?
Yes, the user will receive notification when invited to view, edit or own a dashboard. If not, doublecheck if notifications are enabled when sharing dashboards in Home > Settings > Notifications.
Is it possible to copy a dashboard?
You can rename, duplicate, download and delete a dashboard by clicking on the three-dot menu in the right corner. See below:
How does Insights work for a Group Admin (GA)?
GAs have access to the data of the users they manage, either through their attribute as manager or by being the admin of a specific group. This data includes user assignments, progress, and any other relevant information specific to those users.
GAs do not have access to any program-related data unless they are also an admin of that specific program. This means that program assignments, progress, and other program related metrics will not be visible to them unless they hold administrative rights for the program in question.