---
description: Follow along to this article to get started creating your first dashboard!
---

# Creating my first dashboard

### Set up your datasets

The first step to building your dashboard is to create **dashboard-specific datasets.** Although this is not required, this allows you to configure viewing permissions, configure variables, and optimize your queries that are specific to each dashboard.

![Create datasets in the editor on the bottom of your page](https://2280154036-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F-MQY7AWezpSx_iDLogun%2Fuploads%2FyPnynIpAAAbZ84S9h95P%2Fcreate_a_dashboard.gif?alt=media\&token=09aad7ad-4e2b-4f66-aa26-e56d8173b788)

Even if you don't require any additional changes to your data, we suggest you create a new dataset and select entire tables as shown below:

```sql
SELECT *
FROM Table_1;
```

### Create your first data panel

After you've configured your dashboard-specific dataset(s), you're now ready to create a data panel in Explo!

Simple drag and drop a **Chart Component** onto the canvas, and select the dataset you'd like to use.

![Drag on a Data Panel to create visualizations](https://2280154036-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F-MQY7AWezpSx_iDLogun%2Fuploads%2FG3PRDRNgFpY7bqnY0Kfy%2Fcreate_panel.gif?alt=media\&token=a935e39a-8964-4d9f-9696-3ee5f62a84f1)

Double click on the panel you created to access the editor. There are 2 separate sections in the editor.

**Data -** select which visualization to use and configure the aggregations, filters, and different parameters

**Format** - format your visualizations that adjust labels, colors, text, and more

{% hint style="info" %}
We encourage users to build visualizations from **dashboard-specific datasets** for each dashboard and not source datasets. This allows you to configure variables for drop-downs, user access controls, and other custom variables to interact with your dashboard.
{% endhint %}

### Add additional components and configure variables

**Adding components**

Add additional components to your dashboard by dragging and dropping them onto your canvas.

**Configure variables in your datasets**

Some components such as [date selectors](https://www.notion.so/Components-d5d1325bf7fc475cac55a25448fa4c7c) and [dropdowns](https://www.notion.so/Components-d5d1325bf7fc475cac55a25448fa4c7c) require you to add variables into your SQL queries. For more information on how to configure variables, click [here](https://www.notion.so/Variables-8856276bb39445ffa2a52bd4fb1cbf0a).

### Share and embed

Once your dashboard is complete, you're ready to embed or share the dashboard! Please ensure that your user groups are set before this step to ensure your customer are only seeing their own data.

For more details on how to embed a dashboard, click [here](https://www.notion.so/Embedded-Component-Documentation-91082e283e2846bc8ea9759571ca0f78).

If you want your users to be able to share links or download the dashboards as a pdf, simply drag a **Share** component onto your dashboard.

![Share your dashboard using the Share Component](https://2280154036-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F-MQY7AWezpSx_iDLogun%2Fuploads%2F8TcuJkXKcY1UAh2xQWHX%2Fshare.gif?alt=media\&token=8dba0942-5041-43a1-9e18-1b85681c4df8)

