Templates

This feature is currently in Beta.

Have you ever wanted to reuse a past analysis you had created? Or perhaps you are releasing a new version of your mobile app and want to evaluate how it performs based on the same set of reports you used to evaluate your last release? Templates help teams efficiently and confidently recreate their common analyses and share best practices with just a few clicks. 

Templates will enable teams to create standard methodologies for analyzing their A/B tests, release performance and more. When creating a template, you can choose any saved charts you would like to templatize or pull in entire existing dashboards. You can then choose any events, properties, cohorts, dates, or projects appearing in those charts that you would like to templatize. Team members can then use one of the templates to create their own dashboards.

Use this feature to standardize team reporting by turning best practices into templates. Save time when repeating common analyses and make it simpler for new team members to measure impact:

• Create a standard A/B Test methodology so anyone can see and evaluate the results
• Establish a common set of analyses for new releases to measure performance and adoption
• Roll out regional dashboards for leadership and local teams with just a few clicks
• Replicate KPI measurements across accounts, platforms, and core features

 

What You Will Learn in This Article

This article is an in-depth guide of how to use Templates. Amplitude provides users the ability to visit the Template Gallery in Amplitude and select from an existing template or create a new one to get started. We will cover the steps to create a template and how you can use an existing template. We will also highlight use cases and current capabilities of Templates. 

Prerequisites

Before you start reading this article, we recommend that you have a look at the prerequisites list below. The information presented in this list will help you out with useful information and best practices:

• This feature is only available to Growth and Enterprise plans. 
• This feature is relatively new and updates are being added regularly - please see Current Capabilities.
• This feature only applies to Charts and Dashboards for now.
• Permissions function similarly to Dashboard permissions - please see Permissions section.
• Use cases between Templates and the “Bulk Filter” feature on Dashboards are different - please see Use Cases section.

 

Table of Contents

• Template Gallery
• Creating and Editing a Template
  • Editing your Templates
• Using an existing Template
• Use Cases (vs. Dashboard "Bulk" filter)
  • Common Use Cases
  • Templates vs Bulk Filter
• Permissions
• Current Capabilities

 

Template Gallery

A new section called Templates is available on the navigation bar. This opens the Template Gallery where users can create new templates and use existing templates.  All users are able to create Templates but only Members, Managers, and Admins can publish templates to the Gallery for others to find. 

 

Creating and Editing a Template

Begin by clicking on “New Template”. This will open up the set-up page to create the new template. The set-up consists of three steps:

1. Choose Charts
2. Templatize Properties, Events, and more
3. Preview Template

In the first step, start by selecting the charts and/or dashboards you want to include in this template. You can add or remove these charts in the future by editing your template.

Note: Adding charts to the template will not affect the originals and any edits made to the original charts will not impact your template. If you would like to make changes to the charts in your template later on, click into them directly from your template and make changes. 

 

 

In the second step, you will choose the property values, event types, projects, dates, and chart titles you would like to templatize. Choose any elements you would like users to be able to “find and replace” in your selected charts from step one.

Note: The elements shown in this step all appear in the charts you selected. You cannot customize elements that do not already appear in these charts.

For example, if you were creating a template to track how each new version of your app affects key engagement metrics, you might select a user property called “version id”. Selecting this property would allow you to create a new dashboard for each new “version id” you have, while keeping all other properties and events in your charts the same. 

Here are the items you can customize in more detail: 

• Properties and events - Templatizing a property or event makes it replaceable in every chart it is in. Unselected events or properties will be kept the same. You may also write in instructions above these sections to let users know how to use your template.
  • Note: if you would like to customize an event property, select “customize event properties” next to an event then select the relevant properties. You do not need to select the event itself to customize the property. Selecting both will allow you to replace both the event and its property.
• Projects - You may also know a Project as a data source. For example, your company may have an “Android” and an “iOS” project. Templatizing a project will allow all events and properties associated with that project to be swapped to another project. Only use this in the case where you have projects with similar event and property names.
• Chart Titles - Think of this as a “find and replace” function for chart titles. You can type any part of a chart title and make it replaceable. For example, typing in “1” will allow you to find and replace “1” in any chart titles it appears in. This would allow you to change “A/B test 1” to “A/B test 2” in any chart titles. 

 

In the last step, preview your template. You may go back to previous steps to make any needed changes.  When you are ready, save your template. Fill out a name and description that would be easy to recognize for your team members. 

 

Editing your templates

After your template has been created, you can then edit the template to add more charts and change the replaceable values. You can also delete the template. 

 

Using an Existing Template

In the Templates tab, use any existing Templates to make your own version of the selected Dashboard. We allow you to "find & replace" particular values in the dashboard (i.e. change "Android" to "iOS") in order to save time copying each analysis. To share the Template with a colleague, simply share the link.

Once you open a template, the charts that make up the dashboard template will be on the left half of the page. The properties you can change will be under the Select Values column. Choose the values that you want to apply to the charts. If you click “Preview Charts”, you can see how your selections will update the charts in the template.

Note: See Current Capabilities for known limitations on what you cannot customize at this time.

After selecting the values, you are then ready to create your dashboard! By creating a dashboard, you will create a new set of charts with the new values you have selected.

 

Use Cases (vs. Dashboard “Bulk Filter”)

Common Use Cases 

Some use cases for Template include: 

A/B testing: swap out user or event properties or cohorts with each new experiment’s variants

 

Releases: swap out version, campaign, region, etc. to track performance or key metrics for new releases

 

Usage or Engagement dashboards: segment by feature/product, region, device, customer, channels, etc. to analyze metrics like engagement with critical events or specific funnels that are notable to a feature or company

 

B2B or Partner use cases: create different dashboards segmented by the customer account or partner

Amplitude New User Onboarding: companies often build templates for the above use cases to help onboard new Amplitude users at their company to their teams’ common analyses

 

Templates vs Bulk Filter

Templates	Bulk Filter
Repeatable dashboards you want to recreate and even share to others Allows users to create their own “permanent” dashboards Consistently recreate the same analysis or have a project that requires generating several similar dashboards	Temporary views and filters  Complete one-time edits Quick assessment on how a dashboard differs for a specific property or date range Currently does not allow you to save filters

 

Permissions

Permissions function the same way as Dashboard permissions. 

• Admins can edit all templates.
• If a template includes charts from a project you do not have access to, you will not be able to view it. 
• Templates can only have a single “owner” - you cannot currently grant access to editing your template to another user. 
• All users will be able to create Templates but only Members and above can publish them to the Gallery. As a Viewer, you may share a direct link to your template with others.

 

Current Capabilities

Templates is a new feature with further additions in the works. As such here are current known limitations to the feature:

• Event and User properties cannot be customized (e.g. swap MWS A/B test property for Template A/B test property). Only the event and user property values can be customized.
• Only items already on the charts in the dashboard can be customized.
• Event properties must be selected to be customized for every unique event they appear on.
• Only fixed time date ranges can be swapped. For example, you can swap starts on May 2 for April 2, but you can’t swap “Last 30 days” for “Last 60 days”.
• Public links are not available for Templates.
• Dashboard templates will not programmatically create multiple dashboards.
• Updating the original template will not update end users’ dashboards created from the template.