A tour of Metabase

This is the “what comes in the box when you install Metabase” article. Metabase has a lot of tools in its toolkit (and we can’t cover everything here), but even seasoned Metabasers will benefit from a tour of its feature set - especially since we add major new features at a regular clip.

<em>Fig. 1</em>. The Metabase home page, before any dashboards are pinned to the <strong>Our analytics</strong> collection. — *Fig. 1*. The Metabase home page, before any dashboards are pinned to the **Our analytics** collection.

At a high level, we’ll walk through the features that let you:

Query and visualize your data
Share your results
Find things and stay organized
Configure Metabase

How to query and visualize your data

Metabase supports a lot of different databases, and ships with a Sample Dataset for you to play around with. And once you’ve connected your data sources, Metabase gives you a lot of tools to explore it.

Ask questions

There are three ways to ask questions: simple, custom, and native queries.

Simple and custom questions

The first two ways, simple and custom questions, use a graphical user interface (GUI).

Simple questions: Affectionately known as “chill mode”, here you can use the query builder to filter and summarize data. For a quick walkthrough, check out Getting started with Metabase.
Custom questions: Compose more sophisticated questions using the notebook editor. With custom expressions, you can accomplish pretty much anything you’d be able to do with SQL: join tables, create custom columns, filter and group results, compare time series, and more. Plus, people who don’t know SQL can duplicate your question and use it as a starting point for another question.

<em>Fig. 2</em>. The simple but powerful notebook editor. — *Fig. 2*. The simple but powerful notebook editor.

Simple and custom questions will automatically get an action menu applied to their visualizations, allowing people to click on a table or chart to drill through the data.

<em>Fig. 3</em>. Using the <strong>Action menu</strong> to zoom in on a chart, then view the rows that make up an aggregate value. — *Fig. 3*. Using the **Action menu** to zoom in on a chart, then view the rows that make up an aggregate value.

Both simple and customs questions can start with a table in a database or with the results of a saved question, and you can convert them to native SQL at any time.

Native queries

Use the native query editor to compose questions in the database’s native query languages (typically SQL, but also other query languages for data sources like MongoDB and Google Analytics). For questions written in SQL, you can use variables in your code to create SQL templates, including field filter variables that can create smart dropdown filters.

<em>Fig. 4</em>. A handy data reference tab shows information about your tables in the sidebar. — *Fig. 4*. A handy data reference tab shows information about your tables in the sidebar.

Like GUI questions, you can use the results of saved questions as starting points for new questions, just as you would a table or view. For example, to reference question 123 like so:

WITH gizmo_orders AS #{123}

Visualize results

When you ask a simple or custom question, Metabase will guess at the most appropriate visualization type for the results, but you can select from sixteen different visualization options.

<em>Fig. 5</em>. Select from 16 different chart types to visualize your results. — *Fig. 5*. Select from 16 different chart types to visualize your results.

Additionally, each visualization type has their own set of options to customize. You can even add custom maps to your Metabase instance.

Once you’ve asked questions, it’s time to present your analysis.

Create interactive dashboards

You can organize questions into a dashboard, and contextualize them with Markdown text cards.

<em>Fig. 6</em>. Example dashboard with two filters: date and state. — *Fig. 6*. Example dashboard with two filters: date and state.

You can add filters to dashboards and connect them to fields on questions to narrow the results.

<em>Fig. 7</em>. Connect a filter to multiple cards on a dashboard by specifying the field to filter. — *Fig. 7*. Connect a filter to multiple cards on a dashboard by specifying the field to filter.

You can link filters, create custom destinations (to send people to another dashboard or external URL), or even have a chart update a filter on click.

To keep people posted on key metrics, you can set up dashboard subscriptions via email or Slack.

Embed questions and dashboards

You can embed charts and dashboards using iframes. With Enterprise Edition, you can even embed the full Metabase app, which allows you to do things like deliver multi-tenant, self-service analytics.

How to find things and stay organized

Things in this case being databases and their analysis: the questions, dashboards, and collections you and your teams create.

Home page

What you see when you log in. This page “evolves” as you add databases and create collections. Any dashboards pinned to the Our analytics collection (the root collection) will appear on the home page, which you can customize.

Search

You know, to find things: data, metrics, segments, dashboards, and questions. You’ll probably use the search bar the most often, but the catch here is that you need to know what to search for.

Organize with collections

Collections organize questions and dashboards. They work like folders on a file system, and you can set permissions on collections, giving some groups edit, view, or no access. Groups with edit access to a collection can pin the most important items to the collection - your “official” dashboards.

<em>Fig. 9</em>. Collections group questions and dashboards. You can set permissions on collections via groups. — *Fig. 9*. Collections group questions and dashboards. You can set permissions on collections via groups.

Browse data

The data browser lists all of your databases, and gives you space to add context. You can browse tables and their fields, see sample data, as well as a list of questions that query that data.

X-rays

To give you a head start on asking questions, Metabase can X-ray a table for you.

<em>Fig. 11</em>. Part of an X-ray of the Sample Dataset's Orders table. — *Fig. 11*. Part of an X-ray of the Sample Dataset's Orders table.

These X-rays will generate a bunch of questions that slice the table’s records in different ways. You can save the X-ray as a dashboard, take out any questions that don’t interest you, add new questions, or just use the X-ray to get a feel for the table.

Activity feed and recently viewed

The activity feed lets you see what other people have been creating (provided you’re in a group with access to the relevant collection), as well as your recently viewed questions and dashboards.

<em>Fig. 12</em>. Click on the <strong>Gears</strong> icon and select <strong>Activity</strong> to view recent activity and your recently viewed questions and dashboards. — *Fig. 12*. Click on the **Gears** icon and select **Activity** to view recent activity and your recently viewed questions and dashboards.

How to configure Metabase

Permissions, localization, data modeling: with great power comes great responsibility.

Settings

You can set up email and Slack integrations, customize locale settings like language and currencies, and configure authentication with Google Sign-In or LDAP, or for Enterprise: JWT or SAML.

Data modeling

Metabase will try to guess how to display the various fields in your tables, but if you want more control, you can customize how Metabase handles each field, setting field visibility, type, formatting, and more.

<em>Fig. 14</em>. Customize how Metabase displays tables and their fields. — *Fig. 14*. Customize how Metabase displays tables and their fields.

Admins can also create segments and metrics for commonly used business definitions, like Active Users, Churned Users, or New Products, so that your analysis will have a shared vocabulary across teams.

<em>Fig. 15</em>. Example <strong>Segment</strong> that captures how the company defines a New Product. — *Fig. 15*. Example **Segment** that captures how the company defines a New Product.

You can do the same kind of standardization for SQL questions by codifying SQL code in snippets, which in the Enterprise Edition you can organize with folders and permissions.

Auditing

If you need to see what everyone’s looking at, check out Metabase Enterprise’s auditing feature.

Group permissions for data and collections

Create groups in Metabase, add people to those groups, and give the groups different levels of access to databases and collections.

<em>Fig. 16</em>. Add permissions to databases and collections using groups. — *Fig. 16*. Add permissions to databases and collections using groups.

If you need granular control over who can see what, check out Enterprise Edition’s data sandboxing feature to learn how you can restrict table access by row and by column.

Submit a PR, or fork the source code

Metabase is open source (and Enterprise is source available), so if Metabase lacks a feature you need, you can always build it yourself. Check out our releases to see the features we’ve added recently, and the roadmap for what we’re working on next.