Create a matrix report

A matrix report presents data in a tabular format and includes row and column totals. This can be useful when dealing with certain sets of data, such as hours reported during specific time periods and the cost and revenue data associated with those hours. The digital marketing team needs a report that shows hours worked last quarter. Before you dive into setting up the report, take a look at the finished report so you can see how a matrix report is created. Down the left side, the information is grouped by rows. Matrix reports support one or two groupings here. For the hour report, you just need one grouping, the name of the person who works the hours. The columns in a matrix report also support multiple groupings. In this report, the data about the hours is grouped twice. First, by the entry date by month, then the entry date by week. With the hours reporting, the entry date is the date the hours were actually worked. This matrix report has three rows of data being tracked for each user. Actual cost of the hours worked, the hours reported, and revenue earned from those hours. On the right are totals for each row. Scroll to the bottom of the report to see the column totals for each week. Now let’s create this report. This will be an hour report. Name this DM Team Hours Last Quarter and add a description to provide more details about the report. Start with the Filters tab. You want to see all hours reported as having been worked during the last quarter. The date the hours were worked is recorded as the entry date. You also want to see the hours reported by users whose home team was the digital marketing team. The user who entered the hours is the owner of the hour entry. So we’ll go down to the owner field source and select the Home Team ID field and make sure the home team is the digital marketing team. Next, go to the Groupings tab. Select Switch to Matrix Grouping, which tells the report builder you want to do a matrix report. For Row Grouping, choose Owner Name. This is the user who worked the hours or on whose behalf the hour entry was made. For Column Groupings, choose the hour entry date by month with a secondary column grouping of hour entry date by week. That’s all you have to do for the grouping. The row and column totals are done automatically by default. You need to do specific rows you want in Owner Name grouping. Do that in the Columns tab. If you select the Hours column, you see that it is summarized by Sum. This means the hours will be totaled and will appear in a row in the matrix. If you turn off Summarize by choosing Select, then the Hours row will not appear in the matrix. The same goes for any columns. Hours, actual cost, and revenue are summarized by Sum by default. So they will show up in the report unless you turn them off or remove them from the view. And that’s it. Now you’ve created a matrix report. Click Save and Close and take a look at the report. As you can see, the report has two tabs, Details and Matrix. And you can see the hours logged for each owner name. Let’s do one more thing. Even though you chose to create a matrix report, you still have a chart option. The chart uses the same grouping information and can provide another way to look at the data. So let’s select a bar chart. Group the bars by entry date. And stack the summed hours by owner name. Before closing, let’s go back to the report settings and choose a default tab for when the report loads. Since we have created both a matrix and a chart report, they both appear here. The Details tab comes from the Columns view. We’ll choose the Matrix tab for our default. Now Save and Close. You can click on the Chart tab to see your data in a different way. Which way works best for this data? It’s easy to try different options to help you decide.