Models and dashboards

A model changes nothing until a dashboard reads it. Binding is per dashboard, and reversible.

Binding one

Three places, all the same choice:

• Before you generate. The model picker on the create page. The dashboard starts with that model's tables already picked.
• In the dashboard. Settings, then Data sources. The tray at the foot of the source list holds the choice, and the source dropdown carries the same picker for when you are already in there adding a table.
• Automatically. The Auto switch on the models tray in Data starts every new dashboard on the default model.

Coverage

The tray reports how many of the dashboard's tables the model covers: 4 of 6 tables are in this model.

A gap is reported, never enforced. The two tables the model says nothing about still work exactly as before. They simply get no joins and no calculations from it, which is usually the answer to why a calculation someone expected is not there.

Add puts the dashboard's own tables into the model in one press, which is the fix in nearly every case.

What binding changes

Generation reads it

A dashboard generated with a model picked is told what that model defines. It asks for Net revenue by name rather than inventing the arithmetic, so it agrees with every other dashboard reading the same model.

The running dashboard reads it

Joins and calculations travel with the dashboard's rows. Edit one in Data and every open dashboard picks it up on its next fetch, with nothing recompiled and nothing copied into dashboard code.

The chat can write to it

Ask the dashboard's own chat to define a calculation and it proposes the change as a card. Nothing is written until you apply it, and once you do, the preview refreshes so you can see the number move. On a dashboard with no model bound, the chat does not offer this at all.

One model, several dashboards

A model belongs to your space, not to a dashboard. When more than one dashboard reads it, the settings pane says so:

Shared with 3 other dashboards. Edits here reach them.

That is the point of a model, and it is also the thing to be careful about. Redefining a calculation from inside one dashboard's settings redefines it everywhere.

Publishing

Publishing freezes a copy of the model into the published dashboard. After that:

So a change you are still working through in Data cannot move the numbers your audience is looking at. See Publishing.

Changing or removing the model

Both are allowed and both will ask first, because both can move numbers. Moving a dashboard to a different model changes which joins and calculations it can reach. Removing the model entirely puts it back to working its own numbers out.