Instructions for developing an explore dashboard in Rill
Introduction
Explore dashboards are resources that configure an interactive, drill-down dashboard for a metrics view. They are Rill's default dashboard type, designed for explorative slice-and-dice analysis of a single metrics view.
Explore dashboards are lightweight resources that sit downstream of a metrics view in the project DAG. Their reconcile logic is fast (validation only), so they can be created and modified freely without performance concerns.
When to use explores vs canvases
- Explore dashboards: Best for explorative analysis, drill-down investigations, and letting users freely slice data by any dimension.
- Canvas dashboards: Best for fixed reports, executive summaries, or combining multiple metrics views into a single view.
Development approach
Explore dashboards require minimal configuration. In most cases, you only need to:
- Reference the metrics view
- Select which dimensions and measures to expose (usually all, indicated by
'*') - Optionally configure defaults and time ranges
Best practice: Keep explore configurations simple. Only add advanced features (security policies, custom themes, restricted dimensions) when there is a clear requirement. The metrics view already defines the business logic; the explore just controls presentation and access.
Inline explores in metrics views
The preferred way to create an explore is inline in the metrics view file: set version: 1 and add an explore: block, which emits an explore resource with the same name as the metrics view (or name: if set):
For legacy reasons, metrics views without version: auto-emit an explore even without an explore: block; metrics views with version: 1 only emit one when the block is present.
Use inline explores to keep the metrics view and its dashboard configuration together. Use separate explore files when you need multiple explores for the same metrics view.
Example with annotations
Note that most explore dashboards work great without any of the optional properties shown here.
Minimal example
For most use cases, a minimal explore is sufficient:
Reference documentation
Here is a full JSON schema for the explore syntax:

