Onboarding Content Best Practices

Categories are used to group content by topic, or by the roles and responsibilities of the users accessing them. An Element cannot be created without being assigned to a Category; however, Elements can be assigned to the default Uncategorized Category. That said, it is strongly recommended that content be assigned to a relevant Category to prevent unauthorized access to data.

Once an Element has been created, it can be moved between Categories as needed.

While both Folders and Categories are used to organize content on the Catalog page, they still have some differences:

• Categories are used to organize and group content (e.g., Reports, Metrics, Datasets) across the platform in a structured hierarchy. Elements and Datasets in Metric Insights are created within a Category, making the Category a required field for these objects.
• Folders provide personalized organization of content on the Homepage for individual Users or Groups. They are unique to each User.

For a more detailed comparison, refer to the Understanding Folders vs. Categories article. Refer to the Understanding Folders article for a more in-depth description of Folders' various functionalities.

There are two types of Elements in Metric Insights that can be automatically synchronized with external BI tools: External Reports and External Content.

• External Content is an Element used to display data located on a web page.
• External Reports not only automatically gather and display data stored in an external source, but also allow filters to be applied to that data, enabling flexible customization of its display.

The Content and Reports Auto Synchronization functionality automates the creation of External Reports from the BI tool's objects and simplifies the process of updating existing External Reports and Content. For more details, refer to the External Report Auto Synchronization Overview and Configure External Content Auto Synchronization articles.

If there are numerous Reports or other Content pieces in your organization's BI tool that need to be added to Metric Insights, they can be uploaded all at once. You can select all available Objects, or check only those that are essential for your organization. This significantly reduces the time required for manual External Report or External Content creation.

Please note that bulk-adding does not support all Report Profiles; it supports only those BI tools that already have a Plugin Data Source defined in the instance.

For more details, refer to the Bulk-Add External Reports and Bulk-Add External Content articles.

A User Map is a Dataset that defines what access each User in a list has. Depending on the Element to which it's applied, it either restricts Users from seeing certain Filter Values or applies a default Value to a specific User.

There are two types of security based on the User Map, and you'll need to decide which is best suited to your needs:

• Dimension-Level Security: By applying a User Map to a Dimension, you can control which specific Dimension Values each User or Group is allowed to see. Once configured, the User Map automatically enforces these restrictions across all related Elements—Metrics, Reports, and External Reports—so each User only sees their permitted Dimension Values. For more information, refer to this article.
• Row-Level Security: Implemented via User Maps, this approach restricts data at the row level in the underlying Dataset, granting Users/Groups access only to the rows that match their assigned values. For setup details, refer to this article.