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.
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 insure they are functioning correctly before you upgrade your production Sisense to a new version.
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.
My short list of Plugins that every Sisense installation should have is:
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.
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.
Officially supported plugin
Adds the Analyze Widget JAQL choice to the Widget menu. Enables you to analyze the which tables are taking part in the widget's query. Great tool to determine the type of connection between two tables and make sure there are no many to many connections.
Adds the SmartLabel widget.
This widget allows you to present dimensional information in a widget. Among other uses, it can be used to display dashboard filter information on the dashboard.
It includes a formatting panel and supports scriptable formatting for more options.
If you want to do more than is supported in the Smart Label, consider using Sisense BloX. It takes a little more work, but is much more flexible.
It is tested and working fine with v8.2.
Adds a widget menu icon to indicate a script on the widget.
Can be configured to open the script page on click.
Adds a panel to the widget configuration pane to support styling of widget headers.
Very helpful to dress up your dashboards.
It is tested and working fine with v8.2.
There are many other plugins that you might consider critical. I really use the Jump to Dashboard, Tabber, Accordion and Switchable Dimension a good bit. I didn't list most of them here because they add functionality to address specific presentation needs. I was trying to keep this list small and mention only the plugins that are useful on almost all Sisense systems.
Sisense often recommends the plugins listed below 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 that allows you to set column/bar order in various ways including the break by if you have one. If you ever wanted to sort months in the correct order (instead of alphabetically) on a column chart, you need this great one by Elliott Herz at Sisense.
Distribute Widgets Equally: Mentioned in my list above.
Liquid Gauge: An animated way to display progress.
Pivot Image Indicator: Adds traffic lights/arrows to indicate above/below a threshold. Provides quick indication of performance with no need to read the numbers
Smart Label: Mentioned in my list above.
JAQLine: Mentioned in my list above.
Tabber: Creates a new widget that allows you to switch between views easily and quickly without changing the dashboard.
Switchable Dimensions: Allows you to change the dimension the widget is slicing against. Very cool. One caveat is that drill hierarchies assigned across the different dimensions are not remembered.
Measure Changer: Similar to the Switchable Dimensions, but allows you to change the measure presented in the widget. Very cool.
Sisense BloX: Allows you to create custom widgets using HTML and JSON. Fairly easy for analyst level folks who are not developers to create custom visualizations. Also supports widget actions. Extra cool. Definitely worth looking in to.
It would be great to hear from you on plugins not mentioned that you have found to be particularly helpful.