Kibana: [Meta] Promote the new dashboard preferred experience

[AlonaNadler]

Describe the feature:
Kibana made amazing improvements in dashboard authoring and editing in 7.8.
It is easier than ever to edit and create a new dashboard and take considerably fewer steps and time.

Some of the Kibana users used to using visualize and move to dashboard adding all their visualizations. For people who are used to the old flow, they might continue their old way not taking advantage of the new improved flow.

While adopting the dashboard first will be a gradual process. Let's think of ways to promote the change of behavior and transition users to use the dashboard first.

A few ideas I thought about:

• Adding a way to start a dashboard from Visualise - that will help users who used to go to visualize first to start their visualization from a dashboard landing into an empty dashboard. We can also highlight that option more than the create visualization
  
  
  
  • Notification / message in Visualize that redirects users - #79925
  
  
• Onboarding flow - that one is more in the future but as part of the onboarding and landing page we will direct people to dashboard first.
  
  
  
  • Discover product tour, leads to Dashboard tour - #80514
  
  
  • Dashboard product tour - #80516
  
  
• Navigation changes
  
  
  
  • Redesign _Add panel_ flow - #64383
  
  

Please add if you have other ways to transition people from the Visualize habit toward dashboard first

@rayafratkina @ryankeairns @timroes @majagrubic @ThomThomson @VijayDoshi

[ryankeairns]

In older designs, we also briefly explored adding a 'Dashboard' menu item in Visualize which would allow you to add the current visualization to a Dashboard that you select. The Lens screenshot below shows a button in the UI, but imagine that menu opening from a link in the top menu (alongside Save, for example).

This concept (in the future) could be expanded to be available on any embedded object. For example, say you are in Maps and there is a button/link to 'Create a new dashboard with this map'.

[ThomThomson]

Great suggestion, @ryankeairns. A top nav link in visualize / lens / maps which references the dashboards that visualization shows up on could really tie the visualization library and dashboard together. This also has a cool side effect of allowing the user to quickly see how many dashboards their vis is used on.

Another thing we could do to direct users to dashboard first is sort of hijack the existing 'create from from visualize, then add to dashboard' flow.

We could do this by creating an entry point into dashboard from the visualization save modal. When the user has created a new visualization via the visualize app and is ready to save it we could provide them the option to 'Create a dashboard with this visualization'.

If they save with this option selected, they would be redirected to a new dashboard, with the visualization they just created as the only panel. Hopefully from there, they would notice the 'create new' button and would continue using the new flow!

[AlonaNadler]

I want to clarify the user for which we need to promote the new dashboard's first experience. Some users who have been with us for years are very used to going to Visualize and starting a visualizations there. In this case, they still follow the model of going to visualize creating 1-multiple visualizations and only then going to dashboard.
I want to change their habit from going to visualize and starting from visualizations to going to the dashboard.
The ability to add a visualization directly from visualization into a dashboard is good, it will still make them go to visualize first, without changing their habit but still worth considering.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-app (Team:KibanaApp)

[ryankeairns]

I'll provide some ideas on how to tackle this from the Visualize side, but changing the Dashboard menu could also keep users on the new path. One thought, shared in our previous sync, is to consider removing the 'Add' menu link and re-naming 'Create new' to 'Create panel'. This would provide a single path to adding panels whether the intent is to create new or re-use existing content. The degree to which we emphasize new over existing content could be adjusted for.

Figma menu prototype

https://www.figma.com/proto/EwodWYRUIjbNvYoi9G4Hnh/Dashboard?node-id=1061%3A893&viewport=761%2C-3156%2C0.5629212856292725&scaling=min-zoom

Screenshot from ^ Figma link

[VijayDoshi]

@ryankeairns I like this direction. Thinking of the user as an "author" who is "creating" something ultimately with an intention of sharing it is a good paradigm. I also like the scaleability of the interaction.
One comment that may be a higher level discussion regarding the naming. Lens is our name - how does the user think about it? Will people still be drawn to visualize because they don't initially know Lens?

[ryankeairns]

@AlonaNadler below are a couple of mockups derived from your suggestions in the description of this issue.

The first design shows a callout message on the Visualize (Visualize Library) home page which could also be used on Lens, etc. Placement here catches users early in their workflow - prior to interacting with modals for choosing viz type and an index - and thus minimizes lost effort.

The second design, which could be considered an alternative or addition to the home page callout, shows an interactive toast message encouraging users to start in Dashboard. The use of a toast here allows us to deliver the message without pushing down the content of the work area. It also encourages interaction before proceeding.

[jtkarb]

When adding an existing visualization it should be possible to view both the titles as well as the descriptions of the existing visualizations (and also their visualization type), i.e. the overview that you see in visualize.

Currently (v7.9), when trying to add an existing visualization to a dashboard only the titles are visible - not the descriptions.

If you search for a visualization now then the search actually looks into both the title and the description even if you can only view the title of the resulting visualizations from the search. In future the search should cover both title and description as now, but description should be visible as well.

[ThomThomson]

@jtkarb - I've created a feature request issue https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/79754 for descriptions in the add panel flyout. Thanks for the suggestion!

[ThomThomson]

Of the two ideas above, the banner on the visualize listing page appeals to me the most because it catches the user before they've done any work. In that same vein, I think we have a few more opportunities to direct users to the new experience without prompting them when they may have active changes.

When they've loaded a dashboard with 'by reference' panels

The library notification could be used as an entry point
On click, it could open a popover with an explanation of what it means that this panel is in the library and a shortcut to the 'unlink panel' action. https://github.com/elastic/kibana/pull/79581

When they're done editing a 'by reference' panel from dashboard and are ready to save

We could add an unlink and return button to the editor top nav menu that returns to the dashboard, and replaces the 'by reference' panel with a 'by value' panel. Note that this one would not be the emphasized button, because they have likely opted not to unlink already.

When they're done creating a new visualization from the library and are ready to save

In the visualize library, when the user creates a new visualization, we could _replace_ the existing emphasized save button with a save to dashboard button.

This button would open a dialogue with options to add the panel (by value) to a new dashboard, or to an existing dashboard.

[ryankeairns]

++ adding to these thoughts, we should spend some time considering if/when this becomes a global UI pattern. Perhaps now is not the time but, at some point, a handful and growing number of apps would benefit from (or simply need) similar capabilities.