I’m not sure if many people have discovered the ‘Share Assets’ option/button within the Profile menu of Google Analytics yet but I’ve just spotted it this morning.
It’s a handy way of viewing and sharing all segments, custom reports and dashboards from one place. Select the configurations you want to share and then share the URL.
How long has that been there? I have no idea but it makes sharing configurations so quick and easy now.
If you click on ‘share assets’ it will load up a list of reports, segments and dashboards associated with that profile. From here you can check any of the reports, dashboards or segments which you would like to share.
Once you’ve selected a specific report, dashboard or segment you can then click on ‘share’ at the top. You will be given a unique URL to share by pasting into an email or any other forms of communication.
You can also sort the list by ‘creation date’ but I’m not sure if the dates are quite right as you can see from the screenshot below:
Thanks for documenting this, Pritesh. I wish I’d read your post before getting excited when I spotted the new option. Or used it before tweeting.
Getting all the ‘share this’ links in one place is a small step in the right direction. But I find the clients still struggle with that approach. I want the new interface to allow me to share my assets with the profile, not individuals, if I want. For me, that way round would work much better.
Well spotted, Pritesh. I’d completely missed that, despite spending the morning checking GA. That could be a handy feature.
The bug you’ve spotted with the dates is a common one on Unix-based systems. Quite often, when a date isn’t explicitly defined, they default to something called the “Unix Epoch” which was when the Unix timestamp first starting ticking at 00:00:00 on January 1 1970.
Thanks for the comment Tim. I have to admit – I have updated this post quite a few times over the course of yesterday as I’ve slowly worked out a) what’s its purpose and b) what value it adds.
I’ve just come to the conclusion that it’s handy for viewing all assets in one place. The ability to share with others has always been there anyway.
You are quite right. I would very much also like to share assets such as a dashboard with another profile than other users. Hopefully it’s not too far away.