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Lightdash

ANALYTICS
Velocity5.0

Lightdash keeps sanding down the edges of self-serve BI, chart by chart.

business-intelligencedbtdata-visualizationanalyst-uxgovernanceself-serve
◆Current state
Lightdash is a dbt-native BI tool, and its recent releases are a steady stream of charting and modeling refinements rather than big swings. The last six ship date-zoom inside custom SQL, new Sankey layouts, multi-level color palettes, display row and column limits, preview-project cleanup, and audit-logged admin impersonation. The common thread is reducing friction for analysts who already live in the tool.
◆Where it's heading
The arc is incremental polish across the analyst workflow — more control over how charts render, how parameters flow into SQL, and how governance works for admins. Nothing here redraws the product, but together they close gaps that push Lightdash from capable toward complete against established BI suites. The cadence of small, shippable improvements looks set to continue.
◆Prediction
The next moves likely keep extending parameters and table calculations deeper into custom SQL, and broaden admin and governance controls beyond impersonation.

◆Recent moves

  1. 3d ago

    🔍 Date zoom, now in SQL

    Letting the dashboard date-zoom selection resolve inside custom SQL via a reserved parameter closes a gap between granularity controls and hand-written SQL — a small but real win for power users, and live in every project with no setup.

    View source ↗
  2. 16d ago

    🔀 Reshape your Sankey chart with new layouts

    Three node-layout options for Sankey charts — multi-step, merged, and direct — make one chart type fit funnels and clean source-to-target views, consistent with the steady charting polish.

    View source ↗
  3. 1mo ago

    🎭 User Impersonation

    Audit-logged, time-boxed admin impersonation (a hard 15-minute limit, running under the impersonated user's permissions and warehouse credentials) strengthens the enterprise and troubleshooting story without changing the core analytics surface.

    View source ↗
  4. 1mo ago

    🧹 Preview projects now clean themselves up

    Auto-expiring preview projects with visible expiry badges and a configurable lifetime remove a recurring source of clutter for teams running CLI previews — quality-of-life rather than new capability.

    View source ↗
  5. 1mo ago

    🎨 Paint your charts your way: color palettes at every level

    A precedence chain for color palettes (chart, dashboard, space, project, organization) gives teams branded theming where it matters while keeping defaults elsewhere — typical of the per-surface control Lightdash keeps adding.

    View source ↗
  6. 1mo ago

    ✂️ Trim your charts with row and column limits

    Display-only row and column limits let analysts trim a chart to the rows they care about — hide a trailing partial period, show a top-10 — without touching the underlying query.

    View source ↗