Sisense Plugins Overview

Sisense Plugins (now called Add-ons on the Admin page in Sisense) extend or modify Sisense functionality. They cover a wide gamut of options from new widget types to widget and dashboard formatting to adding functionality to existing widgets and more. I imagine that very few Sisense implementations don't use at least a few plugins. I have worked on an implementation that utilized over 25 plugins.

Sisense officially supports a number of plugins. This means that Sisense keeps them updated as new product versions are released. These can be found on the Sisense Marketplace. If you are not familiar with them, it is well worth your time to check them out. Sisense documentation will tell you how to install and manage Plugins.

Add-ons (Plugins) List Example

Note that starting with version 8.1, the Plugins menu item on the Admin tab is renamed to Add-ons.

In addition, there are over 100 plugins on the Community Plugin page. The officially supported plugins are listed here as of this writing but will be removed in favor of the Marketplace page in the future.

Many of the Community developed plugins were developed by Sisense staff, often to meet a customer need. Others were developed by customers and posted for Community use. I have found many of these plugins to be extremely helpful and others not so much. Of the 100+ listed here, I have personal experience with about 40. Note that these plugins are not officially supported by Sisense, but if you have issues, you can often get help or updates through the particular plugin page.

You should always test your plugins (whether Marketplace or Community) on your upgraded Test or Sandbox system to ensure they are functioning correctly before you upgrade your production Sisense to a new version.

Recommended Plugins

The plugins listed below are those that provide helpful utility functionality and that I recommend for every Sisense installation. I provided working links to them at the time of this writing. Note that the location of the plugins folder on your Windows Sisense server changed with v7.2. The folder locations are:

  • <=V7.1: C:\Program Files\Sisense\PrismWeb\plugins
  • >=v7.2: C:\Program Files\Sisense\app\plugins

On Sisense Linux, Add-ons (Plugins) are accessed through the Admin page > System Management menu item > File Management tab > plugins folder.

Essential Plugins

  1. Add Edit Script choice to the Widget menu

    • Adds Edit Script menu choice to the Widget menu.
    • Keeps you from having to edit the widget to open the script page. I use this one a lot.
    • addEditScriptToWidgetDashboardMenu has disappeared from the Sisense site. It is tested and working fine with v8.2. Comment on this post and I'll email it to you.

  2. Distribute Widgets Equally in a Dashboard Row

    • Adds Distribute Widgets Equally choice to the Widget dashboard menu.
    • Very helpful if you are not using dashboard columns as sometimes it is difficult to get widgets to line up vertically.
    • It is tested and working fine with v7.4.
    • Note: This functionality has been added to the core product in v8.1.1. So if you are on v.8.1.1 or later this plugin is not needed.

  3. Visualize Queries

    • Officially supported plugin.
    • Adds the Analyze Widget JAQL choice to the Widget menu. Enables you to analyze the tables involved in the widget's query. Great tool to determine the type of connection between two tables and ensure no many-to-many connections.

  4. Smart Label

    • Adds the SmartLabel widget.
    • This widget allows you to present dimensional information in a widget. It includes a formatting panel and supports scriptable formatting for more options.
    • It is tested and working fine with v8.2.

  5. Widget Script Indicator

    • Adds a widget menu icon to indicate a script on the widget.
    • Can be configured to open the script page on click.

  6. Widget Title Style

    • Adds a panel to the widget configuration pane to support styling of widget headers.
    • It is tested and working fine with v8.2.

Additional Plugins to Consider

There are many other plugins that you might consider critical. Sisense often recommends the following plugins during the On Boarding process:

  • Jump to Dashboard: Link related dashboards together.
  • Accordion: Link an Indicator widget to another dashboard.
  • Custom Bar/Column Chart: Adds a design panel to bar and column chart widgets.
  • Liquid Gauge: An animated way to display progress.
  • Pivot Image Indicator: Adds traffic lights/arrows to indicate above/below a threshold.
  • Sisense BloX: Allows you to create custom widgets using HTML and JSON.

It would be great to hear from you on plugins not mentioned that you have found to be particularly helpful.