Migrate dashboards between projects

A common use of content as code is copying a dashboard from one place to another — from a project on one Lightdash instance to a project on another instance, or between two projects on the same instance. The steps below walk through the full round-trip. To move a dashboard between two projects on the same instance where one is configured as the other’s upstream, promoting content does the same job from the UI, without the CLI. Example scenario: you want to copy a dashboard from a project on your dedicated instance (acme.lightdash.cloud) to a project on app.lightdash.cloud.

Before you start

Install the Lightdash CLI.
Check that the target project has the same dbt models and explores that the dashboard’s charts reference. If they don’t match, the upload fails validation.

Step 1: Download from the source project

Log in to the source instance, select the source project, then download the dashboard. Charts, virtual views, and data apps referenced by the dashboard are pulled automatically.

# Log in to the source instance
lightdash login https://acme.lightdash.cloud

# Select the source project interactively
lightdash config set-project

# Download the dashboard
lightdash download -d my-dashboard-slug

Or specify the project UUID directly instead of selecting interactively:

lightdash download -d my-dashboard-slug --project 11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111

If the dashboard uses pivoted charts, add --strip-pivot-series so the chart YAML doesn’t hardcode pivot values from the source project:

lightdash download -d my-dashboard-slug --strip-pivot-series

See Make downloaded charts portable across projects for details.

Step 2: Upload to the target project

If the target project is on a different instance, log in to it first, then select the project and upload:

# Log in to the target instance
lightdash login https://app.lightdash.cloud

# Select the target project interactively
lightdash config set-project

# Upload the dashboard with all dependencies
lightdash upload --force -d my-dashboard-slug --include-charts --include-virtual-views --validate

Or specify the project UUID directly:

lightdash upload --force -d my-dashboard-slug --include-charts --include-virtual-views --validate --project 22222222-2222-2222-2222-222222222222

If the target project is on the same instance, skip the login step — select the target project and upload:

# Select the target project
lightdash config set-project

# Upload the dashboard with all dependencies
lightdash upload --force -d my-dashboard-slug --include-charts --include-virtual-views --validate

--force is required to create content that doesn’t already exist in the target project, and --validate checks for errors after the upload finishes. For which dependencies travel automatically and which need a flag, see What download and upload include.

Move content into personal spaces

To move content into a user’s personal space in the target project, set the spaceSlug in the downloaded YAML files to that space’s path before you upload. The path is usually default-user-spaces/<first-name>-<last-name>, for example default-user-spaces/jane-smith. To confirm it, download a chart from that personal space and check its spaceSlug. The personal space must already exist, so turn on default user spaces in the target project and invite the user first. If no personal space has that path, the upload creates an ordinary space there instead.

​Before you start

​Step 1: Download from the source project

​Step 2: Upload to the target project

​Move content into personal spaces

Before you start

Step 1: Download from the source project

Step 2: Upload to the target project

Move content into personal spaces