Understanding Portal Page Entities

Entities are a way to tie Portal Pages with specific types of objects in Metric Insights to be able to interact with them programmatically. Currently, the system supports the following types of Entities:

  • Internal Entity to store data specific to a Portal Page;
  • Dataset to read from Datasets.
    • NOTE: The Dataset Entity will soon be deprecated. It is no longer recommended to be used. The best practice for interactivity with Datasets is to use dataset_data API.
  • Data Source to manipulate Data Source properties, download files, upload files. NOTE: Uploading is available only for Local Filesystem Data Sources.
  • Custom Script to trigger scripts from the Portal Page on a schedule (for example, to retrieve data from a third-party resource or create new Elements en masse).

NOTE: See Filtering Internal Entity Info for information on how to apply filtering and pagination to Portal Page Entities' data with Entities API.

Adding Internal Entity

Aside from specifying Name(1) and Entity Type(2), adding Internal Entity requires to specify its Access Type(3):

  • Public – all Portal Page viewers have access to the Entity data.

For example, all Users will be able to see file Owners on a Portal Page.

  • Private – the Entity data is available for a specific user.

For example, Users will be able to see a set of Filter choices on a Portal Page that will persist individually for each User.

  • Managed (Beta) – provides object storage that can be granted to specific users.

For example, Dashboard 1 is granted to User A, User B, User C. Dashboard 2 is granted to User X, User Y, User Z.

  • Inherited – provides the ability to inherit access from a Dataset, Element or Folder.

Adding Dataset, Data Source, or Custom Script Entity

The Dataset Entity will soon be deprecated. It is no longer recommended to be used. The best practice for interactivity with Datasets is to use dataset_data API.

The algorithm for adding Dataset, Data Source, and Custom Script Entities is essentially the same and requires specifying:

  1. Name
  2. Entity Type: Dataset, Data Source, or Custom Script
  3. The actual Object with which you want to tie the Portal Page