Get Started with Community Dashboards
This article helps Admins and Community Managers access, configure, and use Community Dashboards in Gainsight Customer Communities (CC).
Overview
IMPORTANT: This article covers the new Community Dashboards experience. Legacy dashboards are still available during the transition period.
Community Dashboards is the analytics experience for Gainsight Customer Communities (CC). Community Dashboards replaces the legacy analytics dashboards with a faster, more consistent view of your community data, covering engagement, product feedback, and member activity.
Access to Community Dashboards is restricted to users with administrative privileges. By default, Community Managers and Administrators have access. If your organization also uses Gainsight CS, Community Dashboards are part of the Gainsight platform, enabling them makes your community analytics available across both products.
Prerequisites
Before accessing Community Dashboards, confirm the following:
- Your community is SSO-onboarded
- Your user account has a Community Manager or Administrator role. Access may also be granted to other roles with administrative privileges.
- [CC + CS users only] Your Gainsight CS account has a Viewer_Analytics license. If your license is at a lower tier (for example, Internal Collaborator), ask your CS admin to upgrade you. Upgrading to Viewer_Analytics does not change your pricing.
Limitations
Be aware of the following constraints before using Community Dashboards:
- Historical data from before January 1, 2021 is available for dimension-based metrics. For metrics based on event data, only data from January 1, 2021 onward is available, reports that rely on event data and extend beyond this date may show slight differences from legacy dashboards.
- Access requires SSO authentication. The legacy login screen is not supported for Community Dashboards.
Resolve an Access Restricted Error
If the dashboard displays an Access Restricted error after you sign in, work through the following checks in order.
- Confirm your community is SSO onboarded and that you signed in using the SSO login screen, not the legacy login screen.
- Sign out fully, clear your browser cookies or try a different browser, then sign back in using SSO. A stale session is the most common cause of this error.
- Confirm your account has a Community Manager or Administrator role, or that administrative privileges have been granted to your role.
Understand Your Community Data
Most data in Community Dashboards is complete and figures should match your expectations. Historical activity data goes back to January 1, 2021 for event-based metrics. Reports that rely on event data and extend beyond that date may show slight differences from legacy dashboards.
Known Metric Differences From Legacy Dashboards
The following table describes metrics that are calculated differently in Community Dashboards compared to the legacy analytics experience. These differences are expected behavior, not data errors.
| Metric Area | What Changed | Dashboards Affected |
|---|---|---|
| Views and page views | Counted using a simpler, more direct method. View-related numbers may differ from legacy figures. | Engagement, all Engagement KPIs |
| Activity attribution | Activity is attributed to a user's current company. If a user moved between companies, their past activity reflects their company today. | Engagement |
| Votes, likes, and idea changes | Merged or converted ideas and their associated votes and likes are handled differently from the legacy version. | Product Feedback |
| Active company counts | Calculation corrected. These figures are now more accurate than the legacy version. | Engagement |
IMPORTANT: If a metric looks wrong, not just different from legacy figures, Gainsight recommends to raise a support ticket. Include the dashboard name, the specific metric, the date range you are viewing, and a screenshot.
Dashboard Sessions
The Community Dashboards session follows your community session. If your community session expires, sign back in using SSO to restore access to the dashboards.
How CC and CS Work Together
Community Dashboards are part of the Gainsight platform. When you enable them, your community analytics become available across both CC and CS, and community data is shared between the two products. Enabling Community Dashboards does the following:
- Connects your Community and Gainsight CS instances.
- Makes community analytics dashboards available across both products.
- Shares community data between Community and Gainsight CS.
- Requires community dashboard visibility to be set to public in both CS.
- Does not affect other dashboards in your CS environment.
The dashboard session follows whichever product you are currently using.
Note: Visibility of Community Dashboards is controlled in Gainsight CS. If a CS admin hides the out-of-the-box community dashboards in CS, Community Managers lose access to Community Dashboards in CC. Ensure your CS admin keeps these dashboards visible in CS.
Enable Community Dashboards for CC + CS Customers
Because data flows between CC and CS when the integration is active, Gainsight requires your consent before enabling Community Dashboards for your organization. Once you confirm, Gainsight enables the dashboards and connects the two products.
License Requirements for CC + CS Customers
Viewing Community Dashboards as part of the Gainsight platform requires a Viewer_Analytics license in Gainsight CS.
IMPORTANT: If your CS license is below Viewer_Analytics, for example, Internal Collaborator, ask your CS admin to upgrade your license. Upgrading to Viewer_Analytics does not affect your pricing.
User Provisioning for CC Admins
As part of the Gainsight platform SSO onboarding process, users with Community Manager or Administrator roles in CC are automatically synced to Gainsight CS. Gainsight creates these users in CS and assigns them a Viewer_Analytics license so they can view Community Dashboards without additional manual provisioning.
Provisioned Dashboards in CS
A standard set of community dashboards may be added to your CS environment as part of the integration. Review the provisioned dashboards and configure their permissions to match your organization's data access policy before sharing them with a broader audience.
Note: To restrict access to a dashboard that has already been shared, use its permission settings in CS or contact Gainsight Support.