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Next Level

Data Visualization

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Overview

  • What is Metabase?
  • Tables
  • Visualizations
  • Dashboards and Subscriptions
  • Collections
  • Why Metabase?
  • Cons
        • Questions?

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What is Metabase?

  • Open-source intelligence tool
  • Live data collection
  • Question your data
    • Optional SQL!
    • Visualization tool
  • Staff friendly dashboards and collections
  • Skip Koha reports!

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Tables

Red Oval = Editable

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Tables

Red Oval = Editable

Additionally, there are info pages for Databases and individual fields in tables!

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Visualizations: Build a Question

  • Questions:
    • Simple (from Table)
    • Custom
    • Native Query
  • Existing or new questions
  • Easy joins and multi-series visualizations

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Visualizations: Simple Question

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Visualizations: Simple Questions

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Visualizations: Custom Questions

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Visualizations: Custom Questions

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Visualizations: Custom Questions

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Visualizations: Native Query

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Visualizations: Native Query

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Visualizations: Multi-Series

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Visualizations: Multi-Series on Dashboards

BEFORE

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Visualizations: X-Ray

  • Automatic generation of summaries 
  • Automatic generation of visualizations

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Visualizations: X-Ray

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Visualizations: X-Ray

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Dashboards

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Dashboards: Subscriptions

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Public Dashboards

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Collections

  • Organize and group:
    • Dashboards
    • Questions

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Why Metabase?

  • Fast results
  • No SQL barrier
  • All-in-one
  • Subscriptions for automatic updates

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  • Slower results
  • Learning scale (SQL to Excel visualizations)
  • One part of the whole
  • No automatic notifications

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Excel

Metabase

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Why Metabase: Workflow

  • Write SQL in Koha Reports
  • Run Report
  • Download CSV
  • Clean data (if needed)
  • Create tables/graphs in Excel
  • If report didn't capture everything, go back to step 1!

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  • Select database (not just Koha) and table(s)
  • Join, filter, and group data
  • Press visualize and graph
  • Customize
  • If report didn't capture everything, data automatically updates!

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After Metabase

Before Metabase

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Cons

  • Some features are behind a paywall
    • Whitelabeling (custom logos/colors), advanced embedding, granular data access audit logs, and more are $500/month minimum
  • Hosting for your organization may be at the mercy of IT
  • Only older version of Google Analytics supported for now
  • Only one database per report
    • Can show different databases on same dashboards
  • Hiccups happen and may have to wait for an update for them to be fixed

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Questions?

  • If you'd like to contact me later with questions, please feel free!

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Justin Laake, McKinney Public Library

JLaake@mckinneytexas.org