Share or export your work
1. Overview
You can share and export a dashboard, report, or other view. Share as a link to copy and paste its URL into a message, or export it to file formats such as CSV, Excel, an image, PDF, or PowerPoint.
Find the Share option in the toolbar when viewing or editing. You can also right-click (or long-tap) an empty part of the view to find it in the context menu.
Related video: Sharing and Exporting
2. Share options
2.1. Link (URL)
The Link option gives you a URL for viewing your current dashboard, report, or other view. You can bookmark it in your browser, or send it to someone else. Changes you've made while viewing such as filtering and sorting will also be included in this link (also known as a 'short link').
In the Share dialog, the Link field holds the URL. Click Copy to clipboard to quickly copy it and then paste it elsewhere.
If the person you're sharing with doesn't already have access to this item and you created it or have the Full Control privilege for it, you can use the Give Others Access section to select them. For example, files you create in My Project are only accessible to you by default.
In the View Options section, an option is selected initially so that the view is opened by itself full-screen, without Dundas BI's menu, toolbar, or taskbar (they may still be available from the right-click context menu). You can click to open this section and choose a different option.
If you are granting access to other users, click the submit button at the bottom of the dialog to apply your changes. Otherwise, you can just close the dialog.
2.2. Image
The Image option uses the PNG format and lets you export the entire view, such as a dashboard or scorecard, or you can select a specific visualization.
The Export dialog will open with the Format set to Image.
The initial settings export the entire view to an image. For dashboards, you can export a specific visualization by setting Selection to Single Item and then choosing the visualization from the next dropdown list.
The view will be exported as you currently see it, taking into account content that can be shown and hidden, for example. Reports in Dundas BI version 11 or higher will be exported as a ZIP file containing an image for each page.
2.3. Excel
You can export the all the view's data or data from selected visualizations (including those in embedded views) to the Microsoft Excel format (XLSX) by choosing the Excel share option.
The initial settings export data from all visualizations, with each one in its own sheet or tab. In reports, scorecards, and small multiples, there may be multiple visualizations such as data labels sharing data from a single metric set, which will be combined together in one sheet.
For some view types, the Export dialog has a Selection option you can change: the All Visible option takes into account visualizations that can be shown and hidden while viewing, or choose Selected Items and click to select one or more individual visualizations to export their data, using the Ctrl, ⌘, or Shift keys on your keyboard to select multiple.
Under Settings, if you do not want to sort date and time columns in the exported Excel file and want to ensure the display format remains the same, clear the Sortable Dates checkbox.
Select Include Parameter Values if you want filter/parameter settings included in the resulting Excel file.
Optionally, select the Include Images checkbox if you want an image of each visualization to be added to the resulting Excel file.
By default, the resulting Excel file will include customizations that were applied on a table visualization such as font colors, background colors, column order, custom header text, etc., as well as include only the data displayed by data points in charts. To exclude this formatting, you can select the Exclude Styles option.
2.4. CSV
Similar to exporting to Excel, you can choose to export the data displayed by a visualization to a CSV (comma separated values) file for some types of views. In this case, only a single visualization within a view can be exported (like for Excel, other visualizations in scorecards or small multiples may be included and combined if they were sharing a metric set).
To export to CSV, first choose Excel or another option from the Share menu.
When the Export dialog appears, change the Format to CSV if available, and then select a single visualization to export.
2.5. PDF
The PDF option can be useful for sharing, saving for offline reading, or for printing. Dundas BI reports are also specially designed to be exported to PDF and can include page headers and footers.
In the Export dialog, you can change page options such as the Paper Size and page Orientation:
The view will be exported as you currently see it, taking into account content that can be shown and hidden, for example. Dashboards designed in Responsive mode will be exported in Scale mode to better fit the selected page size.
2.6. PowerPoint
The PowerPoint option exports the current view as one or more image slides in a PowerPoint file (PPTX). You can present this file, or copy or combine its slides with others.
Click the submit button at the bottom to begin the export. Once the export is done, click Download the created export to download the PowerPoint file.
Most types of views will export a single slide, while a report will be exported with a separate slide for each of its pages in Dundas BI version 11 or higher.
3. Downloading exported files
Click the submit button at the bottom of the Export dialog to begin creating the file when sharing or exporting to a file format. Once the export is done, click Download the created export to download the file.
You can click the Close button before the export completes, for example when waiting for a long report to export. From your profile, you can then manage the export process or download the file once it finishes, as well as download other recent exports from the last 7 days or the length of time set by your administrator (using the Export Result File Lifetime configuration setting).
4. Options when editing
When editing a view such as a dashboard, there are options available to determine what's exported when it's viewed by others.
4.1. Prevent data export
If you do not want viewers to be able to export certain data to Excel or CSV formats, there are options on each metric set and each of its elements. (These do not affect exporting to image, PDF or PowerPoint.)
To prevent the data export for the whole metric set, click the Edit icon in the Data Analysis Panel.
In the dialog that appears, select the Prevent Data Export checkbox.
Similarly, you can prevent data export for each analysis element (measure or hierarchy). Open the Data Analysis Panel and click to edit the element.
In the Configure Metric Set Element dialog, check the Exclude From Data Export checkbox.
4.2. Export timeout
If you expect or find that a particular dashboard, report, or other view will take significantly longer to export to a file than is currently allowed, you can adjust its Export Timeout property.
When editing the view, open the Properties window with nothing selected (click an empty area if you have selected an element), and find this property in the Main tab. Set this in the hh:mm:ss format (where hh is hours, mm is minutes, and ss is seconds), or set to 00:00:00 to use the Export Render Timeout setting in administration.
4.3. The Before Export event
It's possible to add actions such as a Change Layer action or script that will run only when a user exports to PDF, image or PowerPoint, without affecting general viewing. (Data export to Excel or CSV is not affected.)
To add one of these actions, open the Properties window with nothing selected on the canvas, and find the Before Export actions.
For example, you might want to exclude certain content such as buttons when exporting. You can add a Change Layer action from the menu - see this article for similar steps.
Or, the following script would change a dashboard's background color only when exporting:
this.background = new dundas.controls.SolidColorBrush(dundas.controls.Color.fromString("AliceBlue"));
If you write script that performs asynchronous operations such as a data retrieval call during this event, you should make the export process wait for it to finish before it produces its image:
e.isAsync = true;
//...
asynchronousMethod.done(function (result) {
//...
// resolve the deferred
e.deferred.resolve();
});
5. Notes
Some additional general notes not included above:
- Legends are separate from visualizations in Dundas BI, but can be included in exported images for individual visualizations if they are placed within the boundaries of the visualization (including its padding).
- Exporting of images, PDFs, and PowerPoint is performed on the server where Dundas BI was installed, so only fonts that have been installed on that server or included in Dundas BI's CSS or HTML can be used to render. If you specify a Font Family not available on the server or use the default font in Dundas BI v11 or earlier running on Linux, a different font may be used than the one in your own browser. (The Source Sans Pro font is included in Dundas BI by default.)
- If you choose the Append Date To Filename option when exporting, the configuration setting File Name Date Time Format is available for administrators to customize the date's format.
- You can modify the Company and Creator that appear in exported Excel and PowerPoint files with the Company Meta Data Text and Creator Meta Data Text settings in the configuration settings in the Export category.