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💬 Show field descriptions to dashboard viewers

new feature

Dashboard viewers will be able to hover over a column header in a table or pivot table and see a viewer-facing description of the field. This includes viewers on shareable and embed links.

🔍 Why this matters​

Today, field descriptions are only visible in Explore's field selector. Business users rarely open it, and users on shareable or embed links can't open it at all, so the context analysts write never reaches the people reading the dashboard.

Showing semantic-layer descriptions as-is isn't always safe either. The same description is often written for several audiences at once (AI, other analysts, business users), and can contain technical details or internal notes that aren't meant for clients.

💡 What's new: viewer-facing descriptions​

To solve this, we're introducing the viewer-facing description: a description on each field in a table or pivot table, written for the people reading your dashboards and kept separate from the semantic-layer description:

  • Semantic-layer description: written in your models, visible only to users with dataset access, same as today.
  • Viewer-facing description: what dashboard viewers see in the tooltip. Always visible to anyone who can view the dashboard.

💼 What analysts can do​

You decide where each viewer-facing description gets its content from:

  • Inherit from the semantic layer: if your semantic-layer descriptions are already written for business users and are safe to show to external viewers, turn on "Inherit field descriptions" in Project Settings. Every viewer-facing description then inherits its content from the field's semantic-layer description, so you don't have to write them again for viewers. You can also make exceptions for specific fields:
    • Force inherit: if only a few descriptions are ready for viewers, keep the project setting off and turn on inheritance for just those fields.
    • Don't inherit: if a few descriptions contain internal notes or technical details, keep the project setting on and turn off inheritance for just those fields.
  • Write a custom description: when a field shouldn't inherit, write business-friendly text for it on the visualization instead. The semantic-layer description stays untouched.

✏️ Good to know​

  • Default setting: for existing projects, "Inherit field descriptions" is off, so your dashboards look the same until you turn it on or add custom descriptions. New projects start with it on.
  • Configuration: the project setting is available in Project Settings. Field-level overrides and custom descriptions are configured in AML.
  • Empty descriptions: if a field has no inherited or custom content, no tooltip is shown.