Cloning a dashboard

Cloning a prebuilt dashboard copies every report with it. Cloning a custom one asks you first. Filters never come along, whichever you clone.

Cloning a prebuilt dashboard copies every report with it. Cloning a custom one asks you first. Filters never come along, whichever you clone.

Clone one

1. Click the Dashboard icon in the left sidebar.
2. Click the Settings icon to the right of the dashboard's name and select Clone. From inside an open dashboard, More > Clone does the same thing.
3. Enter a name for the clone. Name it for its audience now, because "Copy of weekly review" survives for years and nobody can tell which of the three is live.
4. Cloning a custom dashboard: choose whether to clone its reports as well, and whether to clone the dataset.
5. Click Clone, then reapply the filters and share it with the people it is for.

Editors and admins can clone. Cloning a live dashboard needs Enterprise or above.

What travels with the clone

A prebuilt dashboard brings copies of all its reports, stored in the corresponding default datasets. Your clone is genuinely yours: editing a report on it does not touch the original.

A custom dashboard leaves the choice to you. Clone the reports when you want to change them for this audience. Skip that and both dashboards point at the same reports, so an edit lands on both. Cloning the dataset as well is rarely needed; it only separates the cloned reports into a dataset of their own.

Filters do not travel

Cloning does not copy any filter settings you configured, so reapply them on the clone. That is why a fresh clone can show a suspiciously large number: it is reporting on everything the original was filtering out.

Deleting does not tidy up

Removing a cloned dashboard leaves its cloned reports in the library. If the clone was a mistake, the reports have to go separately.

Check before you clone

Somebody may already have cloned that prebuilt dashboard. Clone the same one three times and you have three sets of near-identical reports in the same dataset, which is how a reports library becomes unusable.

Never edit the standard ones

You cannot: prebuilt dashboards are read-only. Clone, adjust the copy, and the reference version stays intact for comparison and for whoever comes next.

Cloning per team is often the wrong move

Five near-identical dashboards, one per team, all need updating when something changes, and one will be missed. A single dashboard with a team filter is usually better. Clone when the audiences want different things, not when they want the same thing filtered differently.

See also

• Cloning a report
• Dashboard filters that work
• Creating a dashboard