Understanding Insights Advantages and Use Cases

As organizations increasingly rely on data to drive decisions, the limitations of legacy dashboards become more apparent. Insights Dashboards offers enhanced customization, smarter data handling, and scalable infrastructure designed for modern reporting and analytic needs. This article explores the key advantages of moving from legacy dashboards to Insights, and highlights practical use cases that demonstrate how teams can leverage these capabilities for more dynamic, personalized, and actionable reporting.



Key Advantages of Insights Dashboards

Insights Dashboards elevate legacy reporting by transforming static visuals into dynamic, customizable, and shareable tools for deeper data exploration and smarter decision-making. With advanced features designed for flexibility, precision, and scalability, Insights Dashboards represents a significant upgrade for teams seeking to unlock the full potential of their data. The key advantages of upgrading to Insights Dashboards includes:

Enhanced Customization & Visualization

  • Customizable line charts and table views allow you to tailor visualizations to meet the needs of your organization.

  • Custom attributes on dashboards enable deeper personalization and relevance.

  • Global and time-sensitive features, such as time zone-adjusted dashboards, ensure data is accurately aligned with each user's local time to support more context-aware analysis and reporting.

Advanced Filtering & Navigation

  • Dashboard-level filters, advanced filtering, and multiple filtering options provide powerful ways to slice and analyze your data.

  • Custom audiences for dashboards enable targeted reporting by tailoring views to specific user groups, ensuring more relevant and actionable insights.

Improved Export & Sharing Capabilities

  • Export dashboards as PDF and printable versions to make sharing insights easier.

  • The ability to export data from widgets remains available in both legacy and Insights Dashboards.

Smarter Data Handling

  • Complete relational data model (vs. partial in Legacy) to enable more complex and meaningful data relationships.

  • Aggregation on numerical attributes enables deeper quantitative analysis by revealing patterns, trends, and relationships that support more informed decision-making.

  • Max data sync time has been increased from 10 to 30 minutes to support larger and more complex datasets.

  • Insights dashboards are built on a robust infrastructure designed to handle significantly larger volumes of data than legacy dashboards, ensuring better performance and scalability.

Enhanced Dashboard Management

  • Manage default dashboards to define a preferred starting view and streamline access to the most relevant data.

  • Link navigation has been improved to enable more interactive, action-oriented dashboards by guiding users to relevant views and external resources.

Insights Dashboards Use-Cases

Now that we've explored the key advantages of Insights Dashboards, let's look at how these features come to life in practical scenarios. The following use cases illustrate how organizations are leveraging Insights to drive smarter decisions, streamline workflows, and unlock deeper value from their data.

Use Case #1: Configure a bar chart with the count of processing activities grouped by legal basis

  1. On the Reports menu, select Dashboards. The Dashboards screen appears.

  2. Click the link in the Name column for the dashboard in which you would like to add the bar chart.

  3. On the Dashboards screen, click the Context Menu icon and select Edit dashboard.

  4. Click the Configure attribute button. The Attribute configuration modal appears.

  5. Select the dashboard tab in which you would like to add the bar chart.

  6. Click Add attributes and configure the fields as shown below.



    Field
    Description
    Object

    Select Inventory or Risk Related Inventory if you have other visualizations related to risks within the same tab.

    Sub Object

    Select Processing Activities.

    Attribute name

    Select Legal Basis for Processing.

  7. Click the Add button.

  8. Optional: Click the icon next to the new attribute configuration to add a sample bar chart to the corresponding dashboard tab. For more information on creating visuals based on custom attributes, see Using Object-Based Attribute Tables for Custom Insights Dashboards.

  9. Click the Apply button to close the modal. The visual will appear on the corresponding dashboard tab. It can be further modified as needed.



Note:

By default, the visual will be added to the dashboard as a bar chart. To use a different visualization type, update it after the chart is added. Once the visual appears in the dashboard tab, review and adjust your filters to ensure the data is displayed as intended.

Use Case #2: Configure a count card to display total count of assessments for specified template, approver, and stage

  1. On the Reports menu, select Dashboards. The Dashboards screen appears.

  2. Click the link in the Name column for the dashboard in which you would like to add the count card.

  3. On the Dashboards screen, click the Context Menu icon and select Edit dashboard.

  4. Click the icon in the Visualizations pane.

  5. Drag and drop the Assessment > Attributes > Assessment GUID into the Fields configuration on the Visualizations pane.

  6. Click the Down arrow icon to rename the visual to Count of Assessment GUID and select Count (Distinct).

  7. Drag and drop the following items into the Filters on this visual configuration on the Filters pane. Once added, the visual will display the number that satisfies all the requirements.



    • The Template Name from the Assessment table. Choose the template you want to filter on, in this example, we are using OnePIA.

    • The Stage from the Assessment table. Choose Under Review.

    • The Approver from the Assessment Approver table and choose the approver you need to filter the tile.

Note:

Insights Dashboards currently do not support reporting on Null approvers. The Assessment Approver table only includes columns for approvers that have been assigned, so unassigned (null) values are not captured in the data model.

Use Case #3: Configure a bar chart of count of assets grouped by IT owners and filtered by hosting location

Before you begin, this use case requires the IT Owner and Hosting location attributes on the same object as Assets.

  1. On the Reports menu, select Dashboards. The Dashboards screen appears.

  2. Click the link in the Name column for the dashboard in which you would like to add the bar chart.

  3. On the Dashboards screen, click the Context Menu icon and select Edit dashboard.

  4. Click the Configure attribute button. The Attribute configuration modal appears.

  5. Select the dashboard tab in which you would like to add the bar chart.

  6. Click Add attributes and configure the fields as shown below. For this step, you will need to configure two separate attributes.



    Field
    Description
    Object

    Select Inventory or Risk Related Inventory if you have other visualizations related to risks within the same tab.

    Sub Object

    Select Assets.

    Attribute name

    • For the first attribute configuration, select IT Owner. This will be added as Attribute Selection - 1, if no other attributes are added to current dashboard or it will take the next attribute selection number.

    • For the second attribute configuration, select Hosting Location. This will be added as Attribute Selection - 2, or it will take the next attribute selection number.

  7. Click the Add button.

  8. Optional: Click the icon next to the IT Owner attribute configuration to add a sample bar chart to the corresponding dashboard tab for count of assets by IT Owner. For more information on creating visuals based on custom attributes, see Using Object-Based Attribute Tables for Custom Insights Dashboards.

  9. Click the Apply button to close the modal. The visual will appear on the corresponding dashboard tab. It can be further modified as needed.



  10. Optional: Drag the Attribute Name - 2 column from the Inventory attributes for graphics and slicers table into the Filters section of the Filters pane and choose Hosting Location. This will further filter the visual on the hosting location.

  11. Optional: Drag the Attribute Name - 2 column from the Inventory attributes for graphics and slicers table into the Filters section of the Filters pane, then choose United States and India. This will further filter the visual on the hosting location.



Note:

By default, the visual will be added to the dashboard as a bar chart. To use a different visualization type, update it after the chart is added. Once the visual appears in the dashboard tab, review and adjust your filters to ensure the data is displayed as intended.

Use Case #4: Configure a donut chart by count of vendors grouped by criticality with open related risks

Before you begin, this use case requires the use of one attribute and one metadata from two different objects:

  • Criticality on Inventory Vendors (attribute)

  • Stage on Risks (risk metadata; not an attribute)

  1. On the Reports menu, select Dashboards. The Dashboards screen appears.

  2. Click the link in the Name column for the dashboard in which you would like to add the donut chart.

  3. On the Dashboards screen, click the Context Menu icon and select Edit dashboard.

  4. Click the Configure attribute button. The Attribute configuration modal appears.

  5. Select the dashboard tab in which you would like to add the donut chart.

  6. Click Add attributes and configure the fields as shown below.

    Field
    Description
    Object

    Select Risk Related Inventory.

    Sub Object

    Select Vendors.

    Attribute name

    Select Criticality. This will be added as Attribute Selection - 1, if no other attributes are added to current dashboard or it will take the next attribute selection number.

  7. Click the Add button.

  8. Optional: Click the icon next to the Criticality attribute configuration to add a sample bar chart to the corresponding dashboard tab for count of vendors by crticality. For more information on creating visuals based on custom attributes, see Using Object-Based Attribute Tables for Custom Insights Dashboards.

  9. Click the Apply button to close the modal. The visual will appear on the corresponding dashboard tab.

  10. Click the icon in the Visualizations pane.

  11. Add filtering on risk stages by dragging the Risk Stage column from the Risks table and select the stages that define the risk as open.

Additional Configurations

If you need to filter further by a risk attribute such as Severity, follow the steps outlined below.

  1. Open the Attribute configuration modal.

  2. Select the dashboard tab in which you would like to add the donut chart.

  3. Click Add attributes and configure the fields as shown below.



    Field
    Description
    Object

    Select Risks.

    Attribute name

    Select Severity. This will be added as Risk Attribute Selection - 1.

  4. Click the Add button.

  5. Optional: Drag the Attribute Name - 1 column from the Risk attributes for graphics and slicers table into the Filters section of the Filters pane and choose Severity.

  6. Optional: Drag the Attribute Name - 1 column from the Risk attributes for graphics and slicers table into the Filters section of the Filters pane and choose the values you need to filter on.

Use Case #5: Create card with count of overdue assessments

Note:

To capture overdue assessments, add the Stage filter for the same visual and filter on all stages except Completed. To create another donut chart for the same grouped by assessment stages, change the visualization to donut chart and add Legend = Stage.

  1. On the Reports menu, select Dashboards. The Dashboards screen appears.

  2. Click the link in the Name column for the dashboard in which you would like to add the count card.

  3. On the Dashboards screen, click the Context Menu icon and select Edit dashboard.

  4. Click the icon in the Visualizations pane.

  5. Drag and drop the Assessment > Attributes > Assessment GUID into the Fields configuration on the Visualizations pane.

  6. Click the Down arrow icon and select Count (Distinct).

  7. Drag and drop the Deadline Date column from the Date & Time folder under the Assessments table into the Filters on this visual configuration on the Filters pane.

  8. Change the Relative date filter to the last month or another required time frame.

Use Case #6: Configure line chart showing count of closed assessments in last 3 months

Note:

For drillable date-based analysis, select the Completed Date Hierarchy instead of the basic Completed Date column. This allows you to drill up and down by year, quarter, month, and day. The Completed Date only contains values for assessments that have been completed. It will be null for any open or in-progress assessments.

  1. On the Reports menu, select Dashboards. The Dashboards screen appears.

  2. Click the link in the Name column for the dashboard in which you would like to add the count card.

  3. On the Dashboards screen, click the Context Menu icon and select Edit dashboard.

  4. Click the icon in the Visualizations pane and apply the following configurations:

    Y-axis

    : Add theAssessment GUIDcolumn from theAssessmentstable in the configuration. Click the Down arrow icon and selectCount (Distinct).

    X-axis

    : Add theCompleted date hierarchycolumn from theAssessmentstable in the configuration.

  5. On the Filters pane, click on Completed date, change the field to Relative Date, and select in the last 3 months. This will filter the x-axis to show only the last 3 months as relative to the current date.

Use Case #7: Configure line chart showing of count of assessments due in next 30 days

  1. On the Reports menu, select Dashboards. The Dashboards screen appears.

  2. Click the link in the Name column for the dashboard in which you would like to add the count card.

  3. On the Dashboards screen, click the Context Menu icon and select Edit dashboard.

  4. Click the icon in the Visualizations pane and apply the following configurations:

    Y-axis

    : Add theAssessment GUIDcolumn from theAssessmentstable in the configuration. Click the Down arrow icon and selectCount (Distinct).

    X-axis

    : Add theDeadline date hierarchycolumn from theAssessmentstable in the configuration.

  5. On the Filters pane, click on Completed date, change the field to Advanced Filtering, and select Is blank. This will filter your data to show only assessments that are open.

  6. Optional: Add another filter on the Deadline Date field, change the field to Relative Date, and select in the next 3 months. This will filter your x-axis to show only next 3 months as relative to current date.