I attempted to use AWS Quicksight to create a few quick data visualizations approximately two years ago. At that time, I ran into a few issues during my review and moved back over to using Tableau. I have to say that AWS has made Quicksight better since my prior review. The pre/post aggregate and pre/post filter options are nice when adding custom calculations to your data set. The themes are a great start to adding color to your visuals and even offers some customizable options. However, the service still needs more work for me to use each day. I would like to see AWS add several features, more functionality, and the following scenarios they list on the top of page 565 in the Amazon Quicksight User Guide.
I listed the details to each Scenario below for better readability. These are the specific scenarios I was hoping to experiment with, but cannot according to their documentation:
Quicksight Documentation “Scenario 3”
- You currently can’t embed dashboards on a website where users are anonymous.
- If a single user accesses the same dashboard from multiple locations, their usage is automatically throttled.
- This means that the first user sees the dashboard, and then the request times out for subsequent users.
- This results in an inconsistent user experience until each connection times out. Embedding dashboards on an anonymous website is not currently supported.
Quicksight Documentation “Scenario 4”
- You can’t currently embed dashboards with no connectivity as a static report.
- Using embedded dashboards for display only is not supported.
- However, if you have this requirement, you could potentially use a screenshot of your visual in your display.
- But users can’t interact with it, and you have to refresh it using a different mechanism.
“I’m happy AWS is aware of the above scenarios where customers would like to use embedded Quicksight dashboards in Websites/Applications.”
I have 3 additional and potential concerns:
- I ran into some trouble when I attempted to sort the order of legend elements. Regardless of how the data were sorted or the order in which I added elements to the visual, the legend would not allow me to order the elements as I wanted.
- Several of the data labels were also a struggle. I didn’t see an option that allowed me to activate labels for specific elements added to visuals. In the end, I opted to select the “Max” option for data labels. This made 1 max data label appear for every element on the corresponding axis.
- Several calculations appeared to work correctly until I dove into a detailed view. When I have more time, I’ll review the calculations to confirm I didn’t make a mistake which is entirely possible.
I recommend giving AWS Quicksight a chance to see if you have similar thoughts or ideas on this service. For full details and pricing please visit the link below.
https://aws.amazon.com/quicksight/
Thank you for your time!
Ryan Cosner