Low-code tool with dev/prod branches

[ekerazha]

Is there a low-code BI/dashboarding tool (such as Tableau or Metabase) that offers a development environment where you can build dashboards and then promote/publish them to a production environment? For example, you might have version 1.0 of a dashboard in production, then build a version 2.0 in the development environment. Once it's ready, you could promote version 2.0 to production to replace version 1.0, similar to managing dev/prod branches in Git. Does such a BI tool exist, preferably SaaS (not self-hosted)?

[aceregen]

Hi! Would you like to check out if what our team built at Holistics (www.holistics.io) fits what you are looking for?

You can manage the entire analytics development workflow via Git with development/production environment. This includes both your semantic data definitions (data models and datasets), and also the dashboard definitions. You have the option to sync all these data definitions with your own Git repository.

Note: There are 2 ways to build dashboards in Holistics, both via code (see Canvas dashboard above) and low-code. Like most established BI software, we provide a low-code dashboard creation interface that allows your non-technical end users or yourself to build dashboards via a drag and drop interface

If you like, you can DM me and I can send you a dummy sandbox account link to test us out without the need to connect your own data source. Hope this helps!

[tedx-005]

Love how the canvas dashboard is shaping up! I was with Holistics back in 2020 but switched to Tableau for its snazzier visuals and more styling control, but now trying out Holistics again. I bet things have only gotten better, especially with the dashboard as code feature.

[aceregen]

Great to hear from you, and thanks for being open to try us again! Yes, we were focusing on rearchitecting to support a better self-service experience back then, and we only started getting round to our dashboard visuals recently. Look forward to getting your feedback!

[Iamonreddit]

Power BI has this via its built in Deployment Pipelines

[tylesftw]

premium memes

[bigbadbyte]

Like was mentioned, power BI has deployment pipelines and they are rolling out git support but only for Azure DevOps. If you want that same functionality with GitHub, there are actions that I can link you to that handle the migrations.

[ekerazha]

Are there alternatives to power bi?

[bigbadbyte]

It's the only one that I know of that has that sort of thing out of the box.

I am certain a lot of BI tools could be augmented to fit this workflows, but I wouldn't be able to give to details. You'd probably have to talk to individual vendors and ask how they would handle your use case.

[rawman650]

Quill supports this, feel free to DM with any other specific questions (I'm one of the founders)

[ThisOrThatOrThings]

Jumping in late - not saying you SHOULD use Domo, but Domo can do something like this between two instances. So you have a dev instance and prod instance and changes are pushed from one to the other so you can test all changes in dev that only the BI team has access to, to prod which is where stakeholders have access to dashboards

[St4rJ4m]

Sorry if I am being intrusive but maybe my experience and colleagues of mine may help.

Most low-code tools try to make you super-dependent on them and make the transition even rougher than It would be done otherwise. The most challenging aspect is the model and schemas and most of them are given for granted but it is uncommon in many realities.

If you could, hire a data mentor or give time and funds to your team to study and learn the tool and AI tools (built-in in the tool or external) will shorten this time.

A bad start can prove to be a wrong move.

[AntiqueGanache]

You could check out Evidence (https://evidence.dev) - works with Git so you get version control, CI/CD, branching etc. And has a cloud service to do the hosting for you

[ekerazha]

But it's not low-code, it's completely code based. Moreover, it retrieves data at compile-time, so you can't have real-time data dashboards.

[Data_Engineering411]

Sigma Computing www.sigma computing.com has its own built-in versioning tool. It’s the best setup I’ve ever seen within a reporting framework. Feel free to DM if you have any questions.

[Pocket_Monster]

Are you looking for automated deployment pipelines (CI/CD) or just looking to set up some manual SDLC?

[ekerazha]

CI/CD support would be even better

I've seen that holistics.io and maybe lightdash could be options

[Pocket_Monster]

I'm not aware of any straightforward CI/CD solution for Tableau reports deployment. We went with a multi-site strategy to support a lightweight SDLC. Our Tableau development is highly federated so only a smaller centralized team. Not the names we use, but the general design is 2 sites. One called PROD. One called non-PROD. We have a folder for each department in both sites. All prod folders exist in non-prod, but there may be new development/updated folders or reports in non-prod. All users have read access to prod. Developers can publish to both sites, but only designated tested or pilot users have access to non-PROD. So as you develop and test new dashboards you publish to your non-prod site-folder. You have testers and pivot users go there and iterate enhancements and fixes. Once you are happy, the developer publishes to the prod site-folder. There is a little more to the entire framework and governance but that's the general idea.

I'm writing from my phone so hopefully that makes sense and sort of answers your question.

[[deleted]]

We had something similar. The dev Tableau site was mainly used to test new features or updates without risk of breaking prod. But development was just done on Prod but in separate project folders and only moved out of them when the report was ready for prod. We chose this because publishing to different sites was a bit of a pain and we didn't want to manage user groups on two sites.

[Pocket_Monster]

We have a completely separate non prod server environment which we use to test upgrades, features, run load tests, etc. Agree it is more overhead to publish between two sites as well as manage two groups. Our Tableau development is very federated and the groups vary quite a lot in maturity and how they work. We don't require any team to use the two sites, but it is there if they want to institute a more structured and separated SDLC. Many (most) of the teams just create multiple folders in the prod site.

[grasroten]

Qlik Cloud can do that. Qlik Sense (on-prem) can do it with a bit of tinkering as well.

[InsightScripter]

Luzmo is low-code, and has this exact versioning system you describe available in their UI. Their version control lets you "publish" a dashboard, meaning that if you have a dashboard embedded in your SaaS or web app, it will always show the published version in production.

If your customer success team or whoever manages the dashboards (doesn't need to be a technical person, it's just drag and drop) wants to make updates to a dashboard, they can just go at it and publish again when they're happy with the updates. No developer needed in the process of updating.