Automating PDF Generation for Dashboard Reports: Seeking Solutions

Andrew S. · 2024-10-09 02:52:41.515981+00

Happy Monday everyone. Curious if anyone out there has come up with a good/efficient process for generating a PDF of a specific dashboard in an automated fashion. We have separate boards for each merchant partner. I can/do create public boards (pw protected) for each of them but would love to come up with an efficient way of generating a PDF on a weekly/monthly basis. Flowcode does this (they use Looker to generate their analytics reports). And I'd like to do the same with our MxP dashboards. While I can have someone go in to the public boards each week/month and use a browser "generate PDF" plugin, I'm trying to come up with a more automated solution. _Note: the current "subscribe to board" only generates the first 8 insights vs all of the insights on the dashboard, thus why we can't rely on that option._

Automating PDF Generation for Dashboard Reports: Seeking Solutions | Mixpanel Community

10 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Juan I.
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Andrew hi! I have a similar requirement here for one of my clients. They are implementing MP, however, they have been using PowerBI for dashboard generation. So their customers access these dashboards, online, similar to the process you are describing with the public MP dashboards. So I have the same issue as you are rising. However, my thought and questions I would ask myself, Why do you want / love to generate reports of the online public report? What is the value added of a PDF for your customers? Do they value that format? is something they have expressed explicitly as solving a concrete problem from their side or is it something else?
Andrew S.
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Hi Juan. Totally agree and went through those same questions with my team. The response I got was, (i) some people are just not comfortable going online, like if on a phone, and would prefer to see the overview in a PDF, and (ii) the PDF would give them the ability to look at "prior vs current" in ways that are not possible with many of the MxP insights. My response to #1 (and possibly #2) was the email digest may be good enough (can only see 8 insights but if we arrange the 8 most important at the top, they can see those 8 ). Problem then, though, is that the email is clickable to go to the board which they can't access bc it's not the public board but the live (for user only) board.
Juan I.
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hmmmm I would push back a little bit 🙂 I know its your team, and I have no idea nor background of your situation or business model 🙂 I see, in that response from your team additional issues. How do you keep track of the dozens of PDF? Also, There is no control about who can access that information, if its public at least you can turn off the feature and make it private. Another point I have, which are those "ways" MP cant show? Are there any specifics that might be you can find an alternative? And my last question : Are these opinions or comments from your team only? is there any real direct input from the customer and their own pains? Have you directly asked about what problems they want to solve with these reports? Thinking out loud with you! hope it helps some way. From my Experience going to the basis of customer validation generes new insights and different perspectives, which could provide other paths to the best solution for your users.
Andrew S.
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Yeah, it's feedback from the customers to the customer success team. A number of these customers are "on the floor" so they are often trying to get the info from their phones. Which is not optimal for MxP.
Juan I.
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and do you believe a PDF would solve the on the floor context and problems?
Juan I.
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so its more an issue of how the visualize it? the medium to do that?
Juan I.
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what about mixpanel app? have you tried ?
Juan I.
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I know there is some kind of adaptation to smaller screens
Juan I.
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and yes, you have to have internet connection
Andrew S.
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IDK if the PDF will really solve the issue but hence my exploration of the possibilities. The issue with any "app" is (i) I dont want to give them access to my MxP, only a public board and (ii) if I'm going to go that route, I'm going to go the route of building an embedded analytics component into our existing apps, which is just a time/resource thing. It's probably the best long term solution though.

Juan I.
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·
Andrew hi! I have a similar requirement here for one of my clients. They are implementing MP, however, they have been using PowerBI for dashboard generation. So their customers access these dashboards, online, similar to the process you are describing with the public MP dashboards. So I have the same issue as you are rising. However, my thought and questions I would ask myself, Why do you want / love to generate reports of the online public report? What is the value added of a PDF for your customers? Do they value that format? is something they have expressed explicitly as solving a concrete problem from their side or is it something else?
Andrew S.
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·
Hi Juan. Totally agree and went through those same questions with my team. The response I got was, (i) some people are just not comfortable going online, like if on a phone, and would prefer to see the overview in a PDF, and (ii) the PDF would give them the ability to look at "prior vs current" in ways that are not possible with many of the MxP insights. My response to #1 (and possibly #2) was the email digest may be good enough (can only see 8 insights but if we arrange the 8 most important at the top, they can see those 8 ). Problem then, though, is that the email is clickable to go to the board which they can't access bc it's not the public board but the live (for user only) board.
Juan I.
·
·
hmmmm I would push back a little bit 🙂 I know its your team, and I have no idea nor background of your situation or business model 🙂 I see, in that response from your team additional issues. How do you keep track of the dozens of PDF? Also, There is no control about who can access that information, if its public at least you can turn off the feature and make it private. Another point I have, which are those "ways" MP cant show? Are there any specifics that might be you can find an alternative? And my last question : Are these opinions or comments from your team only? is there any real direct input from the customer and their own pains? Have you directly asked about what problems they want to solve with these reports? Thinking out loud with you! hope it helps some way. From my Experience going to the basis of customer validation generes new insights and different perspectives, which could provide other paths to the best solution for your users.
Andrew S.
·
·
Yeah, it's feedback from the customers to the customer success team. A number of these customers are "on the floor" so they are often trying to get the info from their phones. Which is not optimal for MxP.
Juan I.
·
·
and do you believe a PDF would solve the on the floor context and problems?
Juan I.
·
·
so its more an issue of how the visualize it? the medium to do that?
Juan I.
·
·
what about mixpanel app? have you tried ?
Juan I.
·
·
I know there is some kind of adaptation to smaller screens
Juan I.
·
·
and yes, you have to have internet connection
Andrew S.
·
·
IDK if the PDF will really solve the issue but hence my exploration of the possibilities. The issue with any "app" is (i) I dont want to give them access to my MxP, only a public board and (ii) if I'm going to go that route, I'm going to go the route of building an embedded analytics component into our existing apps, which is just a time/resource thing. It's probably the best long term solution though.