Using Liveboards and Answers

This is an example of a Liveboard you might create or view, as a member of a retailer’s Sales department:

Notice that you can explore any visualization, follow any KPI, or perform a number of other actions using the more options menu in the upper-right corner of a visualization .

You can filter a Liveboard to only see the relevant data.

To filter a Liveboard, follow these steps:

See Liveboard filters for more information.

You can leverage Liveboards to gain insights into your data in several ways. Answer Explorer, ThoughtSpot’s AI-guided exploration of Answers and headline metrics within Liveboards, provides you with valuable suggestions on how to explore and understand your data. The feature suggests ways to answer questions that are relevant to many other users, and it takes into account your own ThoughtSpot history. Use Answer Explorer to filter an Answer or headline, run comparisons, replace items in an Answer, or add additional elements to an Answer.

Liveboards always have the most current data. If you follow a Liveboard or a KPI, you can schedule regular updates on that Liveboard or pinned headline, and track its changes.

You can also drill down on any Answer in a Liveboard. See Drilling down.

When you drill down, you can see more information about the data within your search. You can drill down into a datapoint to get a finer grained view of that datapoint and the data behind it. Move easily from a general view of your information to a more specific representation of the data behind a datapoint at a click. For example, in a revenue by department search, you may notice that your clothing department has the highest revenue. You can drill down on clothing by product name to find out which products contribute to those high sales. There is no limit to how deep you can drill down.

You can drill down from within the Answer Explorer view in a Liveboard. This allows you to use the back button to go back one step at a time, and to see the Answer fill your screen.

Use the Present feature to present a Liveboard as a live slideshow with the latest data. You can answer questions instantly during your presentation by editing an Answer, drilling down, filtering a visualization, or using Answer Explorer.

To present a Liveboard, click the More icon at the upper-right corner of the Liveboard, and select Present.

To edit a Liveboard, you must enter Edit mode to make changes to the Liveboard. This includes adding filters, adding tabs, and changing the layout. You do not need to enter edit mode to change the name of the Liveboard or Liveboard visualizations.

To enter edit mode, select the Edit button at the upper right of the Liveboard. If this button is grayed out, you do not have edit privileges for the Liveboard. To resolve this, contact your administrator or the creator of the Liveboard.

You may want to separate your Liveboard into multiple tabs, grouping certain visualizations together in each tab. For example, you may have a Sales Liveboard that contains top-level KPIs and more detailed charts. You can create a tab for the top-level KPIs for executives to view, and a tab for the more detailed charts that managers need to monitor. To add tabs, select the Edit button at the upper right of the Liveboard, and select + Add tab in the top menu.

To learn more about Liveboard tabs, refer to Liveboard tabs.

As you work with Liveboard visualizations, you may want to undo or redo an action. Use the in-product undo, redo, and reset buttons to reset or go back or forward 1 step each time you make a change in a search, saved Answer, or Liveboard visualization (for example, when you drill down, or sort). These buttons appear to the left of the Explore button in a Liveboard visualization. Note that the reset button is only available for saved Answers and visualizations; it resets the Answer to its last saved state.

You can download a Liveboard as a PDF, or as a scriptable TML file for migration to another environment.

To download a Liveboard, click the More icon at the upper-right corner of the Liveboard, and select Download as PDF. You can download the whole Liveboard, or just certain visualizations.

To export a TML file, select the More icon at the upper-right corner of the Liveboard, and select Export TML. You can export Liveboard and the underlying data source, or Worksheet, or just the Liveboard.

You can share Liveboards and Answers with other ThoughtSpot users and groups, and send them a notification email. See the following video for details.

See Overview of Sharing.

Configure the chart by selecting the gear element: .