Designing and Developing Interactive Dashboards with AWS QuickSight: A Step-by-Step Guide

Introduction

AWS QuickSight is a cloud-based business intelligence (BI) and data analytics platform offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It allows businesses to easily and quickly analyze data from various sources, create interactive visualizations, and generate insights to inform decision making.

Setting Up AWS QuickSight

• Creating an AWS account To create an AWS account, go to the AWS homepage and click on the “Create an AWS Account” button. You will be directed to a page where you need to enter your email address, create a password and provide your personal information such as name, address, and phone number.

• Logging in to the AWS Management Console Once your AWS account is created, you can log in to the AWS Management Console by entering your email address and password.

• Setting up a QuickSight account To set up a QuickSight account, go to the AWS Management Console and click on the QuickSight icon. This will direct you to the QuickSight homepage where you need to click on the “Sign Up for QuickSight” button.

• Configuring QuickSight settings After signing up for QuickSight, you will be prompted to configure your settings. This includes selecting the edition of QuickSight (Standard or Enterprise), choosing the region where you will store your data, and setting up administrators for your QuickSight account.

• Creating data sources To start using QuickSight, you need to create data sources that contain your data. This can be data from AWS services such as Amazon Redshift, Amazon Athena, or Salesforce, or you can upload your own files. To create a data source, click on the “New data set” button on the QuickSight homepage and follow the instructions to connect to your data source.

• Configuring data sets Once your data source is connected, you can configure your data set to transform and clean your data for analysis. This includes selecting which columns to include, renaming columns, and applying filters and calculated fields.

• Visualizing data in QuickSight After creating your data sets, you can start visualizing your data in QuickSight. You can create different types of charts and graphs, add filters and drill downs, and customize the visualizations to meet your needs.

• Sharing dashboards Once you have created your visualizations, you can share them with others by creating dashboards. You can choose who to share the dashboard with and give them view or edit permissions.

• Managing users and permissions As an administrator, you can manage users and permissions for your QuickSight account. This includes adding and removing users, setting permissions for data sources and dashboards, and creating user groups.

• Monitoring usage and managing costs You can monitor your QuickSight usage and track your costs in the AWS Management Console. This will allow you to optimize your usage and manage your costs effectively.

Data Preparation for Dashboard Design

• Connecting QuickSight to Amazon S3: To connect QuickSight to Amazon S3, you will need to create a data source in QuickSight and select Amazon S3 as the source type. You will then need to provide the S3 bucket name and credentials for accessing the data. Once connected, you can select the CSV, JSON, or other supported file formats in the bucket for analysis.

• Connecting QuickSight to Amazon Redshift: To connect QuickSight to Amazon Redshift, you will need to create a data source in QuickSight and select Amazon Redshift as the source type. You will then need to provide the cluster endpoint, database name, username, and password for the Redshift cluster. Once connected, you can select the tables and views in the Redshift database for analysis.

• Connecting QuickSight to Amazon RDS: To connect QuickSight to Amazon RDS, you will need to create a data source in QuickSight and select Amazon RDS as the source type. You will then need to provide the RDS instance name, database name, username, and password. Once connected, you can select the tables and views in the RDS database for analysis.

• Data Preparation: QuickSight offers various data preparation tools such as data joins, filtering, data cleansing, and transformations to prepare your data for analysis. You can use these tools to clean and shape your data as per your analysis requirements.

• Creating data sets: Data sets in QuickSight are used to store the data that is imported or connected from data sources. You can create multiple data sets from different data sources and use them for analysis.

• Managing permissions: QuickSight allows you to manage permissions for data sources and data sets. You can specify who can access the data sources and data sets in QuickSight. This ensures that only authorized users have access to the data.

• Scheduling data refresh: You can set up a schedule for refreshing data from your data sources in QuickSight. This ensures that your visualizations and dashboards always use up-to-date data.

• Using SQL queries: You can also use SQL queries in QuickSight to retrieve data from your connected data sources. This is useful when you need to filter or aggregate the data in a certain way that is not supported by QuickSight’s data preparation tools.

Creating a Basic Dashboard

• Create a New Dashboard: Log in to QuickSight and click on the “New Dashboard” button in the top left corner. Give your dashboard a name and click “Create.”

• Add Data: On the left panel, click on the “Data sets” tab and select the data set you want to use for your dashboard. Click “Add” to add the data set to your dashboard.

• Add Visualizations: On the right panel, under the “Visualize” tab, select the type of visualization you want to add to your dashboard, such as a bar chart or pie chart. Click on the visualization and drag it onto the dashboard.

• Customize Visualizations: With the visualization selected, you can customize its appearance by changing the data fields, colors, and labels. You can also add filters by clicking on the “Filter” icon at the top of the visualization.

• Add Additional Visualizations: Repeat steps 3 and 4 to add more visualizations to your dashboard, depending on the data set and insights you want to display.

• Rearrange and Resize Visualizations: You can rearrange the visualizations on your dashboard by clicking and dragging them. To resize a visualization, click on the corner and drag it to the desired size.

• Add Text and Titles: To add text or titles to your dashboard, click on the “Text” icon at the top of the dashboard. You can customize the text’s font, size, and color.

• Save and Publish: Once you are satisfied with the dashboard, click on the “Save” button at the top. You can then choose to publish the dashboard to your team or keep it private.

• Share the Dashboard: To share your dashboard with others, click on the “Share” button at the top. You can choose to share via a link or email.

• Refresh Data: QuickSight provides real-time data refresh, so if your data set is updated, your dashboard will automatically update the visualizations. However, you can also manually refresh the data by clicking on the “Refresh” button at the top of the dashboard.