Einstein Analytics is a self-service application that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze data for reports. It’s a secure, trusted, scalable, and mobile Salesforce solution that brings powerful analytics to users through an intuitive point-and-click interface. Where other solutions require data scientists, schemas, or queries, Einstein Analytics is easy to learn for anyone! With it, you can use large datasets to create visually stimulating representations for both real-time snapshots and future projections. Use dashboards to monitor company performance and fuel key strategic decisions. Save your creations for yourself or share them with others with ease. All you need is your target data, and Einstein Analytics allows you to manipulate it to find answers to your business questions. Let’s learn how.

Accessing Einstein Analytics

In order to use Einstein Analytics, you must have the Einstein Predictions, Einstein Analytics Growth, or Einstein Analytics Plus license. You can learn more about the differences between these licenses and their relative costs here. 

Once you have a license, you can access Einstein Analytics Studio by clicking on the app launcher and selecting Analytics Studio. Here, you can design dashboards and apps.

The first time you enter the Analytics Studio, a welcome screen pops up that shows you how to get started. Use this resource if you’d like to learn the basics.

On the other hand, if you are a user looking to access analytics that have already been designed, you can click the app launcher and select Analytics instead.

Some Key Definitions

From the Einstein Analytics home screen, you can browse through All Items, Favorites, Shared With Me, and Created By Me. For all of these filters, you will find Apps, Dashboards, Stories, Lenses, and Datasets. Let’s learn what these different components mean:

• Apps – Similar to folders, apps are collections of dashboards, lenses, and datasets. Normally, you would organize these items into apps for sharing purposes.
• Dashboards – Dashboards are collections of charts, metrics, and tables related to the data in one or more lenses. They are interactive and can be used to gain insight into business data.
• Stories – Stories dive deeper into metrics by providing context and other insights. They can identify trends, explain the reasons for these trends, compare factors, predict future states, and even offer improvement suggestions. They are the result of Einstein Discovery’s statistical analysis function.
• Lenses – A lens is a view into a particular dataset used to answer a specific business query.
• Datasets – A dataset is a collection of related source data that can be used for further analysis.

Designing Einstein Analytics Applications

Within the Analytics Studio, you can create an app in seconds. All you need to do is:

1. Click Create and then select App.
   
   
2. Click Create Blank App.
   
   
3. Name your app and click Create.
   
   

After creating an app, you can also create a lens:

1. Click on the Einstein Analytics Studio tab to return to the home page.
2. Select All Items. 
3. Click Datasets and choose a dataset for your lens.
   
   
4. On the resulting New Lens tab, you can build your lens by adding components to the chart.
   
5. When you are finished, click on the save icon and associate the lens to the app you previously created.
   
   

Once you’ve created the lens, you can begin to design a dashboard for your app:

1. Within the lens, click on the scissors icon, write a Display Label, and click Clip to Designer.
   
   
2. Einstein will now open the dashboard designer with your lens’ query in the query panel.
   
   
3. Drag the query onto the dashboard designer and a table will appear.
   
   
4. You can also add widgets to your dashboard by dragging them from the left panel onto the designer. You can customize widgets by clicking on them and filling in the required information
   
   
5. Click on the save icon and associate your new dashboard to your app.
   
   

In order to share your app with users, you can navigate to the app, click Share, and enter the user’s name.

For more in-depth detail about building apps, check out this trail on Trailhead.

Using Applications

Once an application is built, it’s easy to dive right into using it. First, click on the app launcher and select Analytics. From there, you can locate the app you want to open and simply click it to begin.

While inside of an application, you can interact with the data in a variety of ways:

• View different dashboards from the navigation list.
  
  
• Apply different filters to the data by clicking on components.
  
  
• Drill into the data by clicking on the drop-down menu next to a chart and selecting Explore. Select the field you want to drill down into and then click on the drill down icon and select the related field you want to view.
  
  
  
• Set notifications to alert you when certain data points are reached or follow dashboards.
  
  

While there are many different actions you can take with each dashboard, everything can be explored through simple point-and-click methods. When in doubt, click something to learn more! You can click on text, graphics, and even maps to dive deeper. Almost every dashboard component is clickable and expandable, so it’s incredibly intuitive and easy to learn. For more information about using Einstein Analytics, check out this trail on Trailhead.

Let Us Know If You Need Guidance

While Einstein Analytics is easy for anyone to use, it can be even easier if you partner with a Salesforce professional. At Ntegro, we can help you get started with Einstein Analytics for your company. We can train your admins to create apps that are both meaningful and useful for your business. Just contact us online for a free consultation to get started!

Do you currently use Einstein Analytics? What are some future articles you’d like to see about AI? Let us know in the comments!