7 Tips and Tricks That Make Creating Custom Analytics Projects Faster and Easier

Last update: 2023-03-27
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Expand your Analysis Workspace skillset!
Analysis Workspace is a powerful tool within Adobe Analytics that can help you create more impactful analytics projects. It has a vast feature set that allows you to do any kind of freeform analysis, but a simple user experience that makes this power and scale accessible.

Build: Drilling down to the right data points

Tip 1: Drop any dimension, date range, segment, or metric into any part of your project

Simply drag and drop a segment or any other component to the segment drop zone at the top of any panel, and you can quickly segment that panel down to certain data points. For example, you can segment your panel to show only hits where orders exist by dropping the metric “orders” into the segment drop zone. You can even segment by data that does not exist within a component (to see hits with no orders, for example) by dropping the dimension item “unspecified” or “none” in the zone.

 Transcript

Hi, this is Jen Lasser with Adobe Analytics Product Management. In this video, I’m going to talk you through some improvements that we made to our Segment Drop Zone at the top of our panels. Segment drop zones are areas where you can add-in things like segments, dimension items or date ranges to quickly segment down a panel to certain data points. So, the first change we’ve made is we’ve updated the drop zone itself to be a bit more descriptive. We’ve put emphasis on the word Segment because that is typically the component that is dropped in this area, but you can also drop other component types as well. In the past, there’s been a limitation where you haven’t been able to drop a full dimension like Page or an event like Orders in this area, but with the release on October 26, we’re now allowing you to drop anything into this segment drop zone, including full dimensions and events. So, for example, if you wanted to segment the panel here by only hits that were in orders that had happened, you can drop orders into this segment drop zone and we’ll convert that to a Orders exists segment. So you can just quickly sneak in this segment here, Hits where orders exist. Notice that everything in the panel is now segmented down to just those hits that tie to orders.

Additionally, you can drop a full dimension now as well, by simply dragging over a tracking code, as an example, and dropping it here. This is a great way to segment for all hits that came from a campaign for example, something that came to your website or app with a tracking code. Similar to Events, we’re going to convert this to a hit where this eVar dimension or prop exists and segment down the panel accordingly.

So, another improvement we’ve made is around the handling of things like Unspecified and None. So, today you can dive into a dimension and drop over specific dimension items, like this particular tracking code. That’s functionality that already exists. But when you try to drop Unspecified today, it doesn’t create the correct segment for you. And this is something that we’ve improved. So, if you drop Unspecified or None into the segment drop zone, it will now create a hit segment where that tracking code or that dimension does not exist. And this should get the segment to be evaluated more properly than it has in the past. So, I hope you guys enjoy these new improvements to the Segment Drop Zone.

TIP

Try This: There is a world of efficiency waiting for you in the right-click menu. From this menu, you can access many tools and capabilities right in your Analysis Workspace workflow. When in doubt, right click to see if the tool or capability you need is close at hand

Tip 2: Create simple metrics without leaving your workflow

With Quick Calculated Metrics, you can create new metrics right in Analysis Workspace instead of navigating away to the Calculated Metric Builder. Just select the metric columns you want to calculate, and then, from the right-click menu, select “Create Metric From Selection.” Now, you can add, subtract, divide, multiply, and more, without leaving your project and breaking your train of thought.

 Transcript

Hi everyone, this is Justin from Adobe Analytics Product Management. I just want to show you a cool new feature called Quick Calculated Metrics where you can build calculated metrics on the fly for your reporting and dashboard. So you don’t have to go into the traditional Components, Calculated Metrics here For example, here we have a Freeform table, some metrics here in different columns I want to know page events, divided by visits I want to know the number of page events per visit. I will select the two metrics, right click, and click Create metric from selection. It gives me a number of operators I can choose from over here Divide, Subtract, Add, Multiply, Percent Change, or I can still open it in the Calculated Metric Builder. I’ll click Divide, and it’ll give me the page events divided by visits. The logic is, the left first as the numerator and then the right one as the denominator or from an add subtract as this is the left and then the right, as the object orders. So that’s how it works, it doesn’t have to be metrics next to each other, it can be just the metrics that you want. I’m highlighting page views divided by visits and it’ll give me page views per visit. If I just choose one metric, it’ll give me different selections to choose from in this case, Mean, Median, Max, Min and Sum. So I can find the average number of visits for last month or two then I can do another calculated metric. To save, just click right and go into Edit Component, which I can retitle and save as a new calculated metric. Lastly, this also works on already existing calculated metrics that you’ve built, In this case I have an Average Time Spent on Site and then a Page Views per visit, and I can right click and do a Divide to get an Average Time Spent per Sites to a Page Views per Visits division if that makes sense to you guys. Hope you have fun with it and thanks for watching . -

TIP

Helpful Hint: Up to two metric columns can be selected when using Quick Calculated Metrics. Use the Calculated Metric Builder to create metrics that include more than two metrics.

Visualize: Bringing the data within projects to life

Tip 3: Copy and insert visualizations and panels anywhere

Easily copy visualizations and panels from one place, and add them to another, even into a different project. That means you can easily move data around as your project grows, and share your findings with new users so they don’t have to start an analysis from scratch. Simply right-click on the panel or visualization you want to copy, select “Copy Visualization,” and right-click on a blank panel to insert it.

 Transcript

Hi this is Jen Lasser - with Adobe Analytics product management. In this video I’m going to talk to you - about a new feature we’ve released that allows you to copy and insert visualizations or panels within - a project or two other projects. So this feature is a little bit - different than the Duplicate option that we offer today Duplicate is available - from the right click menu of the panel header or viz header and allows you to completely - duplicate a panel or viz and save yourself a lot of time. But sometimes when you want to move things - around a project duplicating and deleting everything else that you don’t need is - a little bit of a cumbersome process. So let’s say that you want to take - these Marketing Channel tables visualizations and move - them to a new panel. You know you’ve started to build - out your project and you realize the story would flow a little bit - better if you had your overall KPIs in the first panel and Marketing Channels - in the second panel. Since you’ve already - built it on a one panel this new feature is - going to come in handy. So the feature is available from the right - click menu and it is Copy Visualization. So if you right click on this Channel - Trend option here and click Copy Viz you can go ahead and - paste it in a new panel. So I’ll just add in a new - Blank Panel really quickly. And let me just set my Date - Range here to last three months and then I can just right click - on the header the panel and Insert Copied Visualization. So now you’ll see I have an exact copy - of this visualization as the one above. Also since this visualization - is sourcing from a table the table has also copied over as well. Now you see I have both things - that I had above So this Copy and Insert - is a very quick way to move things from - one panel to another. Now I can just simply delete - these from this panel and call this new panel - Marketing Channels Not only can you move - Viz’s within a project you can also move them across projects. You can also do this for panels So if I right click on a panel - header I can choose Copy Panel and then open up a new project, Marketing Performance Blank Project - right click and Insert Copied Panel. So now I completely have a new project with the same data that I copied - over from an existing project. And I’ve got a great head start so - definitely take advantage of this one. One great way that I think this - could be helpful to you all is to also leverage our templates . So we have a lot of great - pre-built predefined tables and visualizations throughout these - templates that you could copy from, for example Content Consumption is a pages - report with some common visualizations like Flow and top pages table - with a lot of the key KPIs that we recommend measuring - for your content. So if you wanted to not have - to rebuild this whole table in a project you’ve already created you - could simply copy the visualization open up your KPI Dashboard - let’s say – KPI Dashboard and then paste that table within the - panel that you have already built out. So we’ll go Insert Copied - Viz and right away here, I have a table that was built - out from that template so hopefully you guys are excited about this feature we’re really - excited to bring it to the product and hope it saves - you a lot of time as you’re building out and organizing - the projects that you’re working with. -

TIP

Highly-Requested Capability: Our customers asked us to make it easy to copy and insert visualizations and panels. Now, they spend less time recreating insights, and more time discovering new ones.

Tip 4: Switch between time granularity visualizations in just one click

Easily change the time view when working with trended visualizations. In previous Analysis Workspace iterations, changing time meant unhiding a source table, dragging in a new dimension, and then re-hiding the table. Now, it’s as easy as selecting the time granularity you want to demonstrate right from the “Visualizations Settings” (top right gear) dropdown menu.

 Transcript

Hi this is Jen Lasser with Adobe Analytics Product Management. In this video I’m going to demonstrate a new Granularity feature that we’ve added to our trended visualizations. So trended visualizations are always sourced from a free form table that has a time dimension as its rows. So I’m gonna go ahead and drag over Orders here and we’ll automatically default to a time dimension for you, down the rows. Here, we’ve chosen day.

Next, I’m going to add my visualization on top of it, so I’ll choose a line graph here. I could also choose a bar and area chart as well and I’m going to go ahead and just shrink this down, so you can see both the table and the visualization at the same time. So, the feature that we’ve added is in the Visualization Settings gear here and it’s the Granularity option. You can now change both the line graph and its source table to a different Granularity on the fly. So let’s say we want to change this daily trend to a weekly trend and go ahead and select that. We can go all the way up to year and all the way down to the minute. So rather than having to unhide a source table, let’s say you had this hidden and you were just looking at the chart, rather than having to unhide that table drag in a new dimension and rehide it, you can now simply make this Granularity change straight from the dropdown in the Visualization Settings. So I hope you guys enjoy this and it saves you a lot of time. -

Share: Making it easy for others to use and understand findings

Tip 5: Create a custom Virtual Report Suite for specific business units

Adobe Analytics collects vast amounts of data. Component curation in Virtual Report Suites allows admins to craft a data set for every business unit in an organization. That means analysts working in Analysis Workspace don’t have to wade through data to find what matters most to them. Simply check the box titled “Enable Customization of Virtual Report Suite Components” in the Virtual Report Suites builder under “Components,” and then select the components that match what a specific team measures.

 Transcript

Hey, everybody, it’s Doug. In this video, I want to double click down a little bit on the virtual report suites and talk about component curation. So when you are creating a virtual report suite, and you can see we’re in here in this wizard for a virtual report suite creation. And we’ve gone to the third step over here, which is components. And this is the name of the virtual reports, you’d appear mobile, we can select which components we want to include for this virtual report suite. So if we don’t want to include everything, because the people who will be viewing and using this virtual report suite don’t need all of the components, and so we want to limit it down, or maybe we just don’t want them to use it. In any case, we can select which ones we want them to have access to. So in that case, we can go ahead and click this enable customization of virtual reports or components. So we want to customize that click that, and we can start moving these components in the excluded section over to the included section. You can do it all in one fell swoop if you want with add all but you know, you don’t need to do that. You can also just add things one at a time. If you want to add this one right here, you can just add that one over there. Now it’s over there and you can do it one at a time if you want Let me go ahead and remove that one. And you can also then find them because there’s a ton of them in here. You can see how small this thing is. There’s a lot of them in here. And so if I don’t want to go through them one at a time, maybe I have tagged them appropriately. And if I had this is a great reason for tagging, you know, putting the labels the tags on your dimensions. Because if I go over here to this filter, I can filter it by tags, there’s some like built in ones. And then here’s all the other ones that I have created. So for example, if I had a video, virtual report suite, and I had tagged all of the components with this video tag, then when I click on that, it will show all of them now I’ve only done one of them in this demo data. But if you are doing it for your real stuff, you probably want to, these tags on your different components as you use them. So I will just get rid of that one for a minute. Now we also have if you click on that again, a couple of built in ones as well. So you can see here, mobile group. So these are ones that might be used by mobile report suites. So you can see all these here. So I can actually take all of those if I want to. And now the add all button is add all of them that I’m looking at. So I can add all 48 of those over there. And then again, I can get rid of that and I can add other ones if I want. I could search for anything that has the word add on it like that, you know, if I was doing something with these ads and, and media based reports, etc, then I could, I can actually use the search as well. But let’s call that good for a minute over here with these included components. Now the next thing I can do is also rename them if I want to change the name of the dimension to something that the users might find more comfortable or more understandable. So for example, if I just don’t jump down here, and you can see, I’ve actually already done this for visits and changed it to sessions. And I think I already did this for another one. Yes, I’m I changed page views to app screen views, since maybe that’s a little more appropriate for a mobile app. And if I wanted to, for example, I could even change unique visitors. If I want to change when I can go to this edit button, and then I can just change that to say users, for example, and just hit Enter. And now it has changed it to users. You can see here that the original one was unique visitors. And I’ve already saved that one. So let me just jump back to my report suite. You can see again, I changed visits to sessions. So if I jump back here, and I have changed it to my mobile virtual report suite, right, so I’ve gone into the selector and selected that mobile virtual report suite, there’s the identifier that it is indeed a virtual report suite. And now over in the metrics, you can see that I have sessions and have app screen views. And I didn’t save the other one. But if I were to save it, then come back over here, then I would have had users instead of, you know, unique visitors as well. So you can change the names of all these components, you can limit the components that are available in the virtual report suite. And hopefully that will help everybody understand what they’re looking at even better. Good luck.

TIP

Helpful Hint: You can also change the name of components within a Virtual Report Suite to match the nomenclature of specific business units. Simply click on the pencil icon next to the component and type in a new name.

Create links that take audiences anywhere within Analysis Workspace. Just right-click on the panel you want to link to, select “Get Panel Link,” and copy. Then highlight the text you want to link from, select the link icon in the text editor of a text box or description, and paste. To link to an entire project, simply click on the “Share” tab, select “Get Project Link", and follow the same steps as above.

 Transcript

Hi, this is Jen Lasser with Adobe Analytics Product Management. In this video, I’m going to build on our Rich Text Editor video by introducing another new feature called Intralinking.

Intralinking lets you grab a URL for a specific viz or pannel within a project. Coupled with hyperlinking from the Rich Text Editor, you can now effectively lead your readers and business users of these projects through the project by including direct links to specific things that you want to call their attention to. So for example, if you have a really long project, you can create a Table of Contents like I’ve demonstrated here. So I’ve pulled over a text box and I’ve included lots of different text, different sizes and colors based on the Rich Text Editor. But what I’ve also done is created a Table of Contents. So for each of the key panels within my project, I’m able to link down to that specific panel, to guide user through the long project. So if I click Visitor Profile, for example, it’s going to take me down to the Visitor Profile panel.

So in order to do this, all you need to do is go to the specific panel. So let’s say we want to add a link to the Success metrics panel. We’ll scroll down the project to where that panel is. You right click on the header, Get Panel Link and copy it.

So moving back up to the original text box, we’ll now just highlight Success metrics and leverage the hyperlinking feature from the Rich Text Editor. Paste in that copied link. And now we have a direct link down to the sixth Success metric panel.

So not only can you link to specific panels within a project, you can also linked to specific visualizations within a panel as well. So let’s say we have a Key Finding here of our top product which drove 22% of our orders last week and we want to show our readers exactly where we got that data point. So we’ll go down to our Success metric panel again and within that panel, we have a table that relates to products. You can right click again on the Visualization header and Get Visualization Link and copy. We’ll go back to the top.

And we can highlight any part of this that we’d like.

I’ll just do the product name and paste in the link.

So now this is a hyperlinked item, I can click on that and it will take me down to the panel as well as the exact viz within the panel as well. So, if you have everything collapsed within a project, we will jump you down and expand the panel, expand the viz, and get the reader to the exact right spot that you’ve linked to.

So links and using the Rich Text Editor in general, are not only limited to the text box feature, but they can also be used within descriptions of panels and vizes as well. So if you right click on a panel you can Edit the Description, this is something that’s available today. The Rich text Editor will be there as well. I think a really cool use of this would be if you have a really long project, and you want people to very easily be able to navigate back to the top. What you could do is include text that says Back to Top and then just go get the link to the top panel, by right clicking and Get Panel Link and then you just embed that in the text back at the bottom of the project. So Back to Top here, we’ll hyperlink.

It will lead users right back to the top. So as they click this they’ll be taken directly to the top of the project.

So I think there’s a lot of really cool use cases for both Rich Text Editor and the Intralinking feature. We’ve demonstrated a few here with the Table of Contents, some direct linking to exact visualizations, as well as easier navigation by including Back to Top links within panels that are further down the page.

But the fun does not stop there. So you can actually link to other projects as well. So intralinking is about linking within a project. You can use the existing functionality of Share, Get Project Link, to drive users to other projects as well. So this is something we already offer, the ability to get a link to a different project or the projects that you’re in. So theoretically you could include a Related project section and link to other projects that people might be interested in. So if they’re reading about your KPI dashboard and all the metrics related to that but they’re interested in a more deep dive of say, your marketing performance, you could include a link here to the marketing project. So clicking here, it will take me over to the marketing projects, where they can get more information on specifically the marketing channel performance. Similarly in this project, you can add a link back to the original project. So, there’s a lot of uses for this hyperlinking feature, both within a project and across projects. And we hope you guys enjoy using these and use them as a great way to navigate your readers through both the projects that you’re building as well as across the different projects you’re building as well. -

TIP

Helpful Hint: There are several ways linking can improve your readers’ experience. You can point them to illustrations that match findings and recommendations in projects. Or allow them to jump from a table of contents directly to the sections they’re interested in. You can also link to other users’ projects that relate to your analysis

Tip 7: Save projects as reusable custom templates

You can now easily turn any project into a custom template. Simply select “Save As Template” from the “Project” dropdown menu, add tags that make the template easy to find, and click “Save Project As Template.” Now, the template will be available to all Analysis Workspace users under the “Custom Templates” tab. This allows analysts to start their projects with meaningful data points, instead of starting from square one.

 Transcript

Hi everyone.This is Justin from Adobe Analytics. In the last video we showed you the cool new module that pops up when you click Create New Project And in this video we want to show you how you can create and manage your own Custom Templates.

Just a quick note. Only admins are able to create, manage and delete Custom Templates, so contact your admin if you’re interested in Custom Templates. So we built this feature in mind to help with training and quick access to Dashboards as well as leveraging existing projects that can be created into templates for further use in other departments or other channels et cetera. So let’s do for example a Blank Project And we want to create that into a Custom Template You don’t have to start off with a Blank Project . You can also start with existing projects that are in the main landing page. So in this case I’m going to build a Geo visualization real quick. So over here you’ll see that I like this visualization. I think other departments can use it for anything they want. What I’ll do is I’ll click the Project button on the top left, click Save As Template or Alt+T for shortcut, and rename this to whatever I want it to be.

And then, I also want to add tags for quick access and quick finding later on in the future. So once I’m ready to create this into a custom template I’ll just click Save Project As Custom Template. What will happen now is if I go back to the Workspace main page and click Create New Project you’ll see in the Custom Templates tab that my Geo Custom Template is there already Now if I want to make any changes or say I missed something I click on that Custom Template and then click the Edit Template button on the left hand side This would be bring me back to my project and I can make any edits I want. I want to drag in a new visualization and see that as well I could. In this case let’s just say I want to build a new table. I’m happy with this. What I can do is either click Command + S or Save and it’ll ask me if I want to rewrite over the existing custom template which I can, or save as a brand new custom template. In this case I just want to make an edit to that Custom Template we just created earlier. So I click Save so then I go back to Analysis Workspace. I’ll go click the Create New Project and go to that module again I see that there’s still my Custom Template for Geo right here. What I’ll do is I’ll open it again and you’ll see that my template was saved with a new table as well as the map that was there originally. And lastly if I wanted to delete that Geo template and I didn’t want to use it anymore what I could do is I can go to Manage Projects here and it’ll take me to an area of work and manage in bulk or I can just manage each individual project You’ll see that there’s a little icon on the right hand side that lets you know whether it’s a template or not but you can also find your templates here in the other filters on the bottom left.

Here I’ll see that all my templates are located here and I don’t want to basically have this Geo Custom Template anymore so what I’ll do is I’ll delete it . And if I go back to my Mobile area you’ll see that in the Custom Templates it’s removed in that tab that’s pretty much it. You don’t have to always go to this link here for managing your projects. You can also go to Components and Projects to also get that managed projects area We hope that you enjoyed this and that you can use this for many more other use cases in the future whether it’s training or getting people up to speed or whether it’s sharing your Dashboard to other mobile apps that you’ve been building or other departments that you’re sharing your Dashboards to. We hope this custom template area will be of a great value for you and your company in the future. Thanks.

TIP

Highly-Requested Capability: Several customers asked us to make saving projects as custom templates possible. Now, this capability has become one of their favorites.

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About the Author
Jen Lasser Jen Lasser is a manager on the Adobe Analytics product management team.
In this role, she meets with customers to understand their business needs,
using what she learns to inform the Adobe Analytics product roadmap
and to prioritize new product features. Prior to her current position,
Jen was a principal consultant on the Adobe Consulting team, working as a
subject matter expert in data visualization, Analysis Workspace, and Report Builder.

With the benefit of her real-world insight, we’ve curated the following tips and tricks to
help make building, visualizing, and sharing your Analysis Workspace projects easier

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