Start here (setup)

We're going to walk through setting up Zenlytic from scratch. You should have received a login to your workspace to begin the setup process.

Defining your data model.

Documentation on defining your data model can be found here. You'll first need to create a GitHub repo, then in that repo define the models, views, and dashboards you want.

Once you create your repo, you can install the most recent version of the metrics layer with the database option of your choice.

pip install metrics-layer[snowflake]

This will install the metrics-layer package with the connector for Snowflake. It will also give you access to the ml command line interface, which you'll use throughout the setup process.

Then you'll run the init command to create your project structure. This will create folders and the zenlytic_project.yml file.

ml init

Then you'll need to define your local connection credentials. You'll do this in exactly the same way as you would for dbt. Make sure that profile in your zenlytic_project.yml file is set to the same name as the dbt profile you just created.

Now you can use the seeding capability to make setup of the data model much easier. To seed all view files for a database schema run

ml seed --schema <YOUR_SCHEMA_NAME>

To seed a specific table run

ml seed --schema <YOUR_SCHEMA_NAME> --table <YOUR_TABLE_NAME>

To ensure your data model is correct you can run validation in the root of your repo and it will give you any warnings or errors associated with your project.

ml validate

There are a some example repos to help you as well! Here's one for the dbt integration and one for standard yaml.

Connecting to your GitHub Repo

You'll go to your workspace and open settings (click on the top left of the homepage).

Then you'll fill in GitHub credentials for the repo you're using to store your data model. To authenticate, enter a personal access token you can create via GitHub UI (how to create one). Then click save when you're done.

Connecting to your data warehouse

Once you've filled in GitHub credentials, you can click "+ Add Connection" under "Database Connections" in the settings menu. You'll first need to select your warehouse type from the drop down, and name your connection.

The naming of the connection is how Zenlytic links database credentials with your data model. The name of the connection here must be the same as the connection property in the model or the same as the dbt profile if integrating with dbt without a model file.

For example, to connect with this example repo we'd use the connection name demo because that's the value of connection in the model file.

Finally, finish filling out your data warehouse's connection information and click save

Troubleshooting

Not seeing metrics in the Zenlytic interface?

• If you have the hidden property set to true, you won't see those metrics or dimensions anywhere in the UI. Make sure you remove the hidden property or set it to false if you want those metrics to show up in the UI.

# This metric won't show up in the UI because hidden is set to true- name: number_of_orders  field_type: measure  type: count_distinct  sql: ${order_id}  description: "The unique number of orders placed"  value_format_name: decimal_0  hidden: yes

Where do I go from here?

If you want to learn more about how to use the user interface and the different capabilities is has, check out the documentation on the user interface!

If you want to learn about data modeling and how to define your metrics check out the documentation on the data model

If you'd like to learn about how to get everything set up for defining those metric definitions look at the documentation on your metric development environment

As always, feel free to reach out to your Zenlytic contact if you have questions that aren't answered in the documentation!