Organize your workflow with Sub-Canvases – tutorial transcript
Welcome to the Using Sub-Canvases tutorial. This is one of number of detailed tutorials in which we explain how each feature of Analytics Canvas works, with additional context to help you understand it better, and to use it to best suit your own needs.
This tutorial aims to give you an overview of sub-canvases and to touch on some high level concepts such as what is a sub-canvas and how to use sub-canvases.
There are many complex ways to do data transformation using Analytics Canvas. A typical strategy is to create a flow on the main canvas, to apply different filters, to be clever about manipulating data on it, etc. Then, go on creating 15 other processes on the same canvas and end up with a very crowded workspace.
Sub-Canvases are designed to eliminate this problem. You can use sub-canvases to create organized workflows and manage your blocks in a better way. They look a lot like Excel worksheets and perform a similar function.
Here we have a canvas that was built for analysis of a website that takes data out of Google Analytics and pulls it into tables in a single Excel file. There is a table for sessions by browser, a table for sessions by medium, a table for goal conversions, etc. It produces an insightful report that shows the performance of a website in a glance. But it can also get very confusing as you start zoom in and out of each group of blocks.
Let’s select each group of blocks that belong together, right-click on it and select ‘Push blocks to new sub-canvas’ and name our sub-canvas.
Now we have a nice breakdown of our dashboard.
As you gain more experience with Analytics Canvas, reject the temptation to put all your blocks on the Main Canvas. Instead, use sub-canvases to organize your data flow.
Contents:
- Sub-canvases
- Push blocks to new sub-canvas
Related Materials:
Transcript – Using Sub-Canvases
Other resources:
Length:
2:01
You can download a free trial of Analytics Canvas to follow along with the video.