Data visualisation is a popular way of communicating information and data with the help of visual elements such as charts, tables, graphs, and maps. Data visualisation helps with putting large amounts of complex data into context, drawing conclusions, and making decisions, thus is an integral part for many businesses across different industries.
There are many data visualization systems and BI tools in the market and Clinked offers a way of integrating these external systems and tools into your portal, so that you and your clients make the most of it.
This article explains:
- How to bring data from external sources to your portal
- How to utilise different data visualisation tools in Clinked
How to bring data from external sources to your portal
Using the Notes tool, data from external sources can be brought into your client's environment. Notes provide an easy way to share information without having to continually upload files or produce reports that quickly become outdated by allowing to create dashboard views for group members to easily consume and interact with.
These views can be created by setting up notes and incorporating them on group homepages to provide quick access for group members.
The external data can be embedded in a note in Clinked via iFrames. You can learn more about how iFrames work and how to utilise them in your portal on What is an iFrame? article.
An iFrame is tool used to create & apply a private tokenized link that can be embedded into other systems. It gives access to external software systems so they can be embedded inside another system. They are utilized in Clinked for this functionality to insert a piece of content - including data visualisation, news feeds and videos - from different sources into your groups to bring relevant data into your member's hands through the safety of Clinked's secure platform (i.e. no additional login required to access the content from other software systems).
Embedding an iFrame is the method used to insert data visualizations into a note. You would select this embedding option for articles, Google Sheets etc. However, for inserting a video select ‘embed media’ or a Jotform ‘embed Jotform’.
Notes with iFrames can be added to a group's dashboard as a widget to tailor a view for your clients. Customize a group homepage by using the ‘edit widgets’ feature to display data visualizations relevant or important to your clients needs, which they will see when first logging into Clinked. You can learn more about customizable widgets on our help article Configurable Widgets in Groups.
How to utilise different data visualisation tools in Clinked
There are numerous types of data visualizations that can be integrated into a Clinked group to easily share data from various systems or BI Tools in one place for clients. With the options being limitless, our team focused on several rising stars per our client base including:
Google Sheets in Clinked
Google Sheets has been a key data tool for many businesses. It is also an efficient way to present data to your clients - and allows for iFrames so you can integrate data views into your Clinked groups. This integration allows you to setup notes for others (even those without a Google account) to work directly in the Google Sheet from Clinked and update the changed made in real time in both Google and Clinked. If view only is your preferred preference, that functionality is available as publish in Google Sheet so real time updates made by the Sheet owner can be viewed by the end viewer as read only. Once you've setup your Google Sheet share preference and note in Clinked, you can also display the Google Sheet in the group homepage thanks to our widget functionality and move it to where you would like.
You can learn more about this in Using Google Sheets in Clinked article.
Looker Studio in Clinked
Looker Studio is Google's answer to Microsoft Power BI. It's free, powerful and comes with a significant amount of template dashboards for quick setup. In Clinked, Looker Studio dashboards are useful, particularly in terms of business intelligence. They can show what is going on across many different platforms and data sets creating an easy to integrate solution for those familiar with Google Suite.
Similarly to a Google Sheet, Looker Studio dashboards can be embedded as an iframe (as pictured below). The note will link up to the Looker Studio where the search console is hosted. You will be able to adjust and interact with the components of the dashboard directly within Clinked this way without needing to give your clients access to the underlying data sets or databases.
Reminder: when embedding from Looker Studio, the report should first be allowed to do so. Simply click File > Embed report > Embed URL and copy the link to include in your iFrame.
Databox in Clinked
Databox is a BI tool that offers direct integrations into many systems including Hubspot, Quickbooks, Google Analytics and more. Chose their templates or create your own dashboard views to provide the right dashboard view for your clients. Then share it with them in Clinked.
Databox dashboards can be integrated into Clinked using an iframe. This useful BI tool enables you to bring a lot more content and data analysis to your clients and is presented visually. Clients should find it useful to access a large amount of data from multiple sources in one place. The dashboards can again have interact components and drop downs allowing clients access to data sets and real time analysis for direct insights within a Clinked group.
Tableau in Clinked
Tableau has become a leading tool in BI. It's become the darling in the financial service and technology industries to merge large sets of data across various sources in beautiful charts and dashboards.
This tool also provides iframe functionality allowing account owners to share dashboards in an external system, such as Clinked, to create dashboards and charts for easy access to clients. As an iFrame, it is useful if you want to share a single Tableau dashboard with a client within Clinked rather than them having access to your entire Tableau account.
Tableau iFrames require a special condition when embedding. The following parameters below needs to be included in the URL:
?:showVizHome=no&:embed=true
Please refer to this article on Tableau for more information.
Jotform in Clinked
Clinked has been integrating with Jotform and other form builder software to allow our Clinked clients to interact better with group members. For instance, if you wanted to create an application, RSVP or registration form this can be created in Jotform then inserted into Clinked as a note for integration to a group homepage for group members to complete as part of workflow. Using forms in this way means that keeping track of long email chains of event invites and responses is no longer necessary. Responses entered by clients through a form in the homepage can be automatically placed into a Google Sheet and updated manually when necessary.
Hope this gives you some ideas of how you can use data visualisations in Clinked to deliver more to your clients! These are just several examples of iframe integrations, but there are many more sites which will work in a similar way.