Book Image

Metabase Up and Running

By : Tim Abraham
Book Image

Metabase Up and Running

By: Tim Abraham

Overview of this book

Metabase is an open source business intelligence tool that helps you use data to answer questions about your business. This book will give you a detailed introduction to using Metabase in your organization to get the most value from your data. You’ll start by installing and setting up Metabase on your local computer. You’ll then progress to handling the administration aspect of Metabase by learning how to configure and deploy Metabase, manage accounts, and execute administrative tasks such as adding users and creating permissions and metadata. Complete with examples and detailed instructions, this book shows you how to create different visualizations, charts, and dashboards to gain insights from your data. As you advance, you’ll learn how to share the results with peers in your organization and cover production-related aspects such as embedding Metabase and auditing performance. Throughout the book, you’ll explore the entire data analytics process—from connecting your data sources, visualizing data, and creating dashboards through to daily reporting. By the end of this book, you’ll be ready to implement Metabase as an integral tool in your organization.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Section 1: Installing and Deploying Metabase
4
Section 2: Setting Up Your Instance and Asking Questions of Your Data
12
Section 3: Advanced Functionality and Paid Features

Integrating Metabase with Slack

If your organization uses Slack, you can easily create a Slack bot for Metabase. This lets you ask Metabase questions directly in Slack, as in Figure 3.9:

Figure 3.9 – Asking questions to MetaBot, Metabase's Slack bot

Figure 3.9 – Asking questions to MetaBot, Metabase's Slack bot

Let's learn how to set this up:

  1. Open the admin panel.
  2. Under the Settings menu, click Slack.
  3. Click the blue Create a Slack Bot User for MetaBot button.
  4. This will take you to your Slack instance in a new browser tab, as in Figure 3.10, where you'll give a name to your bot. I recommend using the name metabot.
  5. Once you've given your bot a name, click Add bot integration:
    Figure 3.10 – Adding the metabot Slack bot

    Figure 3.10 – Adding the metabot Slack bot

  6. After clicking Add bot integration, you will be taken to a new page with an API token. Copy this token and return to Metabase.
  7. Once back in Metabase, paste the API token in the Slack API Token field.
  8. Slide the metabot toggle to Enabled...