Skill Exchange Event Aug 2023 - Grow Track - Experience Makers Spotlight

Transcript

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. My name is Katie Gaborczyk, and I’m so excited to be here with you today for the Adobe Experience Makers Skill Exchange. Today, I’m going to be talking about leveling up and educating the casual workspace user. Before we dive in, I’d like to share a little bit about me. I live in Columbus, Ohio with my wonderful husband and our two pets, Gidget the dog and Minnie the cat. I love to play volleyball in my free time. That’s actually how I met my husband. And I love watching Hallmark movies, especially at Christmas time. I’ve been in the healthcare marketing world for about five years, and I’m currently an omni-channel analyst at Becton Dickinson. At the end of our session today, my goal is that you will understand why education is so important and key for a smooth experience for all Analysis Workspace users, and we’ll go over some of my tips and tricks for any level of Analysis Workspace user. First, it starts with education. Education is the basic building block for everything. We had to be educated when we first learned Analysis Workspace, and so do our casual Analysis Workspace users. There are many ways to educate on how to use Analysis Workspace for all levels of users. We understand that our office environments have changed in the past few years, and while in-person training is still an excellent option, it may just not be feasible for you. Virtual trainings are an awesome option, and you can record those trainings for references later on. We recognize everyone has a different learning style and may not like the virtual or recorded format. That’s okay. I recommend utilizing the Adobe Experience League, as well as your knowledge of your organization’s report suite, to create documents with screenshots for users to view. Now, before you say to me, Katie, I just don’t have time to do all of that. I get it. But I want you to think about all of the time you spend having conversations with Analysis Workspace users of all different levels, and how many repeat conversations you may have with them. This can help. One thing to keep in mind, I am not saying that you are not going to be having those conversations, and be a subject matter expert, and share your expertise, however, this is to help move the needle a little closer to more efficiency for you and your organization. With that, we are going to look at two types of casual Analysis Workspace users today. Some examples of casual users include both marketers and those at the C-suite level. We’ll mainly focus on the marketers first, as in my experience, those are the ones who tend to use those reports most often. This is in no way indicative of all types of casual users. These are just two we know can benefit from some of what we’ll talk about today. Let’s dive into some tips and tricks. The first tip that I want to talk to you about today is adjusting to what your user needs. We are going to use the example of a marketer as the casual user. Working with marketers is essential to ensuring the data we have tells its story. While you may be able to analyze the data one way, a marketer needs clear and concise views so they can use it to make their business decisions. Creating a clear, easy to use workspace can help your marketer make those decisions more efficiently. When you create your workspace, be sure to walk your marketer through what you’ve created to see if they have any questions or would like to see things in a different view. Keep in mind that everyone works with different levels of knowledge and some marketers may want more in-depth data than others. Work with them to ensure it works for your situation in your organization. Easy to read and understand descriptions are key. You want anyone to be able to look at your visualizations, your tables, et cetera, and understand at least on a surface level, what they’re seeing. For example, let’s look at our sources at the top right of the screen. What we see are paid sources, in this case, Google, Facebook, and Bing. Attached to engagements. Now our goal is to see how many overall paid marketing sources have engagements. This is a great way to see this as an analyst, but maybe as a marketer, they just want to see everything together. Remember each Adobe analytics instance is set up to work with your business. So you’ll have different options than what you see on the screen. So you’ll have different options. That’s one of the great things about Adobe analytics is the customizable options. At the top, right again, you see that the engagements are broken out by that paid marketing source. Well, that may be easy for us to interpret. The marketer may want to see a high level view of the engagements from all of the paid sources together. They may not want to see each breakout. In this case, segments are used to see how many people are using the In this case, segments are your friend. You can see at the bottom right of the screen, we’ve created a segment that includes all of the paid marketing sources, Google, Facebook, and Bing. In this instance, this is simple. It’s clear and it’s easy to interpret for your marketer. Now let’s take this to the next level. You’ve created a high level segment of all the paid marketing sources you have, but maybe your marketer wants to see a little bit more high level of a view. Maybe they like what they see on the other side and the screen before, but maybe they want to see just the overall number with a description like you see here on the right. In this case, creating a visualization summary number is my favorite way to showcase that. The marketer can then take this number. They can screenshot it for a presentation. They can view it easily when they’re reviewing the data each month, each week, et cetera. And it’s just a really nice view on the screen. Now, keep in mind, there are so many ways to visualize data in Analysis Workspace. This is just one option. And again, make sure you work with your users to ensure they’re seeing what they need to see. We’ve talked about how important education is for any type of user. And we’ve looked at a couple of ways to slice the data. Now I want to talk about what happens after you’ve created the workspace for those users. You need to share it with them. And this is so easily done that your casual user can use your workspace you’ve created efficiently and easily. That’s the goal. Now to share any workspace, you have two options within Analysis Workspace to do this. You can go to the right-hand side of your workspace and click the share button, which is seen on the right-hand side of our screen today. Or you can go to the left-hand side at the top and click share and click share with workspace users. And then you get your share screen on the left hand of our screen today. Either option works. There’s also a keyboard shortcut. It’s truly your preference. Once you’ve gotten to the share screen, there are many options to sharing with analytics users. The first one is to invite other analytics users to edit the original. That means any changes they make, you’ll see. The second option is to invite other analytics users to edit the copy. That means they can make a copy of the workspace that you’ve created and make any changes that they want. And you won’t see those changes. The two that we’re going to focus on today for the casual user are read only and share by link. First let’s look at read only. Read only access includes no editing options and the user is unable to make changes to the components. This creates a no mess situation. I like to think of this as those magic eraser markers that everyone had as kids. And this user can’t make mistakes when they’re reviewing the data, just like those markers allowed us to not make mistakes. The users can, however, change the dropdown. So if they want to look at a different date, they have that option. Or if there are other predefined segments that you’ve created to drop down, they can also use those. So it’s still interactive. This is an awesome option for the casual user. I love using this for users that don’t need to make any big changes in the report, but it is helpful if they can view it in real time to make their business decisions. I recommend using this for users like marketers who want to see those real time campaign progress reports or even C-suite users that may want to be a little more knowledgeable. The second option I wanted to share today is a great way to share a workspace with anyone. And this includes within your organization, someone who does not have an Adobe Analytics account or someone outside of your organization. This is a really good option if you’re working with an agency or if you have someone in your organization that it just doesn’t make sense for them to have an Adobe Analytics account, but they may need to review data every so often. For example, someone like a C-suite member, this could work really well for. One thing to note is that your organization may not have this enabled. If you think this is something that your organization would benefit from, please look in the experience league article for more information, or you can talk to your admin if that’s not you. The fourth tip and a really exciting thing that I want to talk about today is the data dictionary. The data dictionary is a newer feature in Analysis workspace and something that is so helpful when you’re working with users who may not be as in the weeds like you are with the data. The data dictionary allows anyone within Analysis workspace to not only keep track of your components, but also to understand them better. Admins are the only ones who can create descriptions for the components. But if you aren’t an admin in your organization, I recommend working with whomever is, and that way you can ensure consistency across the board. You may be thinking, well, that’s great, Katie, but why do I care? I already have a system in place in my organization for our Adobe Analytics Analysis Workspace definitions. That’s awesome. I’m so glad that you have that already. But I want you to think about something. Have you ever been on a meeting where data is being reviewed, and a casual Analysis Workspace user asks, what does X mean? And you explain what X means. And then one, three, six months down the line, that same casual user asks, hey, what does X mean? This can be frustrating for both sides. The casual user may just not remember what you told them one, three, six months ago, and they don’t see it all the time like you do. So they may just think, tell me what it means. But you may be frustrated because you do see it all the time, and you think they should know. We’ve all been there. So one thing to keep in mind is the data dictionary helps create a singular reference point for anyone who uses Analysis Workspace in your organization. Let’s think about another example. You get promoted. Yay. So what next? You probably have to hire someone to fill your role. This person may be well versed in Adobe Analytics, but as we mentioned, it’s customizable to each organization. They may not know how your organization works. So the data dictionary is a great way to help them, can help newer users as well as seasoned users find accurate information about your components quickly. Let’s dive a little bit deeper into the data dictionary. When you’re in Analysis Workspace, you’ll go to the left hand rail and click on the little book icon, aka the data dictionary. When you click on the data dictionary icon, you have multiple options. If you know what you’re looking for, you can use the search bar just like you would when you’re normally adding components to a report. Or let’s say you just want to explore, see what’s there. The quick filters that you see on the right here will show up with all the types of components, the dimensions, metrics, segments, and date ranges. One great thing to keep in mind here is that these also have descriptions there for you. So especially for the casual user, this is color coded and it has descriptions. It’s a great way to see things at a high level. I’m going to use an example about looking for a dimension. And we’re just exploring, remember, so we can really click on anything we want, but we know we want to look for a dimension. In order to do this, you’ll just click on the dimensions that you see at the top on the right. And then all of the dimensions within your report suite will show up on the left hand side. Since we’re just exploring right now, we’re going to go ahead and click on month and see what it gives us. Now you see it changed the screen. So we have a different view here. And because this is an Adobe provided component, a description has already been pre-populated for us. Thank you, Adobe. And what this does again is helps create consistency across any analysis workspace user within your organization. In this case, we see the description and know exactly what it is and what it can help us do. Why is that helpful? Remember when we talked about any level of user being able to use this, that’s why it’s helpful. The data dictionary creates a simple way for users to learn and understand what they’re looking at. What I also love about this is that it gives you other components that are frequently used with the component you’re doing. A user can view this and see, Oh, month is used a lot with visits. I know that I want to see the breakdown of monthly visits. So when I come to my analyst and ask for a report, I sound more educated and I am more educated, and it creates less confusion and less back and forth between us. This is great for both sides. Now that we’ve looked at an example of an Adobe provided dictionary result, you may think awesome, but what about my custom components? Well, remember the engagements component that I created for my organization way back when we can see that I have added an engagement description for that component. So let’s break that down. On the left hand side, you can see that I just searched for engagements. That’s what showed up. So that’s why you’ll see the different color coding there. It’s all together. I didn’t go to the quick filters and that’s why that’s showing that way. You can see that the description I’ve notated what this metric is, what’s included with it, what it’s for as well as our monthly goal. Now, keep in mind, your user can also see the Adobe definition. So, you know how we create the segments. They can see that as well, which is just another kind of addition to the description. So keeping in mind that you create this description, really use it for, and think about who the user that’s going to see it will be. You can be as descriptive as possible and put what makes sense in for your organization. Again, focusing on, you want to create consistency across your organization. If you’re a large organization, it really helps to cross reference with way others are notating their descriptions and make sure you find one singular reference point. And one other thing that I wanted to point out is that there’s also an option of seeing what components are similar to the component you are looking at. Now, this option right here doesn’t have any similar components, which is a good thing because it’s a custom metric. But if it did, there’s a couple of reasons why that’s a good thing to see. One, you can see if there are duplicates in your report suite, it does happen, especially with situations like turnover or too many people creating segments, or as I like to say, too many cooks in the kitchen. And overall, as we discussed, using and curating your data dictionary is an easy way to create consistency across your organization, as well as having that central hub for your organization’s information. I also want to talk about scheduling reports. We’ve talked about sharing your workspaces, and that is a great option, but may not be the best option for every casual user. Scheduling your report is a great option for those who may not need to see the data in real time. There are a couple of format options, but my favorite is sending a PDF to that casual user. CSV is a great option for the analyst as it gives you all of the raw data, but remember that casual user may be a little overwhelmed by all of that raw data. So focusing on sending a PDF and scheduling a PDF is a great way to make sure your user gets the information they need in the format they need. To schedule a send of your workspace, there are a couple of different options. Typically, someone who’s going to want this send is probably going to want it once a month. So with that in mind, we’re going to see what that looks like for scheduling it once a month. I like to click on send monthly by day of the month, and what that does is you can pick the same day every month to make sure your report gets sent out when you need it to be sent. This is my favorite. If it doesn’t work for you and your organization, that’s the beauty of it. You can customize it. For this example, I’m picking to send my report on monthly by day of the month, and I’m picking the fifth of the month at 8 a.m. One thing to keep in mind as well is your report will be sent out in your report suites time zone. So if you’re sending a report at 8 a.m., but you’re in the eastern time zone and your recipient is in the Pacific time zone, they may not enjoy an email at 5 a.m. So you may want to shift that a little bit. Another important aspect of this is ensuring that you change the start and the end date to match up with what you’re clicking and checking on your frequency. Why is this important? If you only want to send a report for six months, but you don’t do an end date or you put the end date for a year later not thinking about it, the user may be getting the reports in months 7, 8, 9, and just say, hey, I thought I was only supposed to get this for six months. So it just provides a cleaner experience for those users who are receiving those reports by email. So we’ve talked about the marketer as the casual user. Now I want to focus a little bit about the C-suite members. A great way to focus in on that is using an executive summary dashboard. Adobe Experience League has a great article on this, but I just want to touch base quickly that using the key metric summary is a great way to start those reports. And don’t forget to train your executives to use those. Another great option for those C-suite executives is using the mobile app. Now, keep in mind, you must have an Adobe Analytics login, but users can change the date range. They can also see if multiple data points are there. They can swipe through and see what makes sense to them. So let’s sum it up. I know we talked through several things today, but I just wanted to remind you that when you’re working with a casual analysis workspace user, whether it be a marketer or an executive, education is key. At the end of the day, the beauty of Adobe Analytics is that you can make it work for you and your organization because it’s so customizable. That can be confusing for someone who isn’t in it day in and day out like you are, but educating those users may take more time in the short run, but in the long run, it will pay off. This is also an awesome way to present yourself as a subject matter expert you are. Whether you’re working with marketers or executives, you can create views that will work for any level of user. I hope you learned a few things today, and I hope you’ll take the time to assess what we talked about and if it works for your organization. I’d also love to hear your tips and tricks. Thank you so much. Katie, thank you for joining us live. Hey, David, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. Awesome. Yeah. And I think you had a story you were going to tell to kick us off. So I do have a story very quickly. I was supposed to have my ethernet cord plugged in today, but unfortunately my dog decided it was a treat. So hopefully a little wifi will bear with me today, but, um, we, we do love our pups, but sometimes they’re ornery. Well, uh, I love, uh, I loved your session. I love how you tied back to some of the things that, uh, Ben talked about earlier. Um, and some of the new features, it seems like everyone’s really excited about data dictionary. Um, I’m also really excited to see how people are going to combine the view only sharing, whether it’s to existing workspace users or people that don’t have a login. Um, but combining that with the new dynamic dropdowns that were also introduced this summer, uh, I just felt like the timing of those two new features was really useful in two things that can really compliment one another. Um, and we’ll be good for new users like you’re talking about. So, um, let’s see if we have any questions from the audience. So first up, uh, from Robert, we have created a lot of Adobe tutorial documents, uh, documents using screenshots and use cases from our business. These are in a central confluence site and, uh, we send out weekly tip emails, thoughts on how to get people to actually read the info. Well, first off kudos for actually having done that so far. Um, second off, it’s really difficult sometimes, right? We understand that everyone has something going on. Um, my biggest tip would be bug them about it. If you, if it’s something they need to be doing, just shoot them a message, say, Hey, this is a site that we have for you. Um, or a great tip is if they come to you with a question, refer them to your confluence site. Um, and obviously you can still help them out with the question, but then you just reiterate and reinforce that that site’s there for them. Yeah. It’s hard to get people to, to actually do things, but, um, if it can, if it helps them out in the long run, you know, a lot of people figure that out at some point. We understand the frustration though. Um, all right. Next question from Yuki. Uh, how do you create a data dictionary? Um, in my company, many people have access to Adobe and thus create their own segments. They may not be useful for other users. How do you handle this? And also would your company frequently clean up unwanted, uh, variables? Uh, great question. Um, so first off with creating the data dictionary definitions, only Adobe analytics admins can do that. So if that’s something that you feel that you need to be doing or should fall under your purview, and you’re not an admin, talk to whoever you need to, to get that taken care of, or work with them to add the definitions. As far as others creating their own segments, I’ve definitely been there. Um, one nice thing, uh, at least currently, I believe is that if someone creates a segment, they have to share it with the whole organization in order for others to see it. So that’s one way to kind of alleviate that side of things. Um, and as far as if your company will clean it up, I am definitely, because I’m an analyst, I want to make sure everything’s as clean as possible. But recognize that not everyone has that time. I don’t always have that time. And so it’s just something when, especially when you’re training to keep in mind and share with people, check first, see if that segment exists. Um, and then also just have those conversations of make sure that you are cleaning up your variables, cleaning up your segments, things like that. Um, again, it’s just having those conversations with folks and making sure that they know, like, this is the way to make it more efficient for your company. Yeah. Communication is key. Um, all right. This is, I’m really interested to hear your answer about this and I’m sure you could take it a couple of different ways, but, um, what have you found is the most effective way to train as well users in your organization? Um, yeah, so it definitely depends, right? I have worked with marketers and obviously they need that data to show their business case and, and everything to move forward. Um, I am currently fully remote, so it is hard sometimes when you’re going through really dense information to not be in person, but in person would be the best option, especially if you’re working through that dense information and maybe with a first time user, um, if that’s not an option for you, jump on a Teams call, jump on a zoom call with them and, um, just work it out. I also think just recording information as well, if you’re able to, and then to Robert’s point earlier, having those screenshots and having that central location of data that you can refer them to down the line is so, so helpful. All right. Thanks. Uh, next question is from Dan, uh, can data dictionary elements and their useful descriptions. And then I guess all the other data that goes along with the data dictionary, can that be exported to the data dictionary or exported, uh, so that it can be shared with other users who need to understand what is reported on, but don’t use the Adobe UI? Yeah. Um, I don’t believe that that’s a current, um, capability, but definitely something to, um, throw up to the Adobe higher ups to add that in down the line, because I think to your point, Dan, it would be very helpful, especially for people who aren’t in Adobe analytics day in and day out, but still need to know like what the value is. Yeah, uh, using data dictionary, then like, how, how do we export this? This would be amazing if we could just export it, um, with all that additional information that’s automatically generated, um, as well as the, you know, the definitions that get put in there, um, that would make it really useful. Otherwise you do have to kind of go back and forth between like your SDR and like wherever you’re documenting your variables, um, and make sure that everything’s in line. Um, so yeah, again, call out to the product team. We’re looking for these features. Yeah. And the nice thing about data dictionary too, is that you, once you update it, that’s your central source of truth. So, whereas if you take screenshots, they may be old or outdated, which is still great. Um, but you just may have to remember to update them. So, yeah, absolutely. And who, I mean, if you have multiple versions of an SDR, like, you don’t know which one to use them, but yeah, if you have that central place that this is the source of truth, um, and it’s available to everyone, it’s, it’s a great solution. Um, cool. The next question we have, how do I identify what type of user I’m working with? So whether they’re an expert or, you know, what are the other options? Sometimes it’s as easy as this is the CEO of my company. We know that they’re not going to be at the analytics level and that’s okay. Sometimes it gets a little more murky. Um, for example, if you’re working with a marketer, there could be different levels. There could be content marketers, digital strategy, marketers, different levels of that. The best way to identify it is one, if your business has a set level of this is who needs what and when, but two, if that’s not available to you at that time or at all, um, just having a conversation, asking that marketer whomever, what do you need from the data? And a lot of times that conversation will get you what you need because they may just say, I just want to see how many visits we have each month. Well, they’re going to be a casual user, which is great. Yeah. All right. Next question. Can I send a scheduled report to someone in my organization that doesn’t have an Adobe analytics login? Yes, you absolutely can. And that’s actually one of my favorite features. Um, and my prior role, I used to work with a lot of different business units and their marketers and other, um, people would need reports, but they wouldn’t necessarily need Adobe analytics access. So scheduling a report, either a CSV or a PDF, I suggest PDF for a casual user is a great way for you to share out that information on a scheduled timeline or just once if that’s applicable and still get them what they need. They have it in a nice layout and then they can still come to you with questions, but you don’t need to add a head count to the Adobe analytics. All right. This may be the last question. Um, and this is one I particularly like, cause I have a little passion for visualizations, but what is your favorite visualization? Do you have one that you kind of go to all the time or that you like for specific use cases? Yeah. So this is going to be really simple, but I love the summary number and summary change. They’re just really easy to use, uh, visualizations that you can take a screenshot of. You can download into that PDF to share with a user and it really draws the eye to what you want to have seen. So really simple ones, but I loved it to use those and I use those quite frequently. Right. And I think we did get one more question come in. It looks like, um, question is, can you easily copy data dictionary, I guess, injuries from one report suite to another? Um, so that is a good question. It depends on your definition of easy. And I think Ben spoke to it earlier. And of course the experience league has a lot of great info. Um, but to my knowledge, it is report suite specific. So you would just have to essentially copy it from your segment, your metric, et cetera, and then go into your other reports suite and then add that there. So if I’m wrong, please call me out and let me know. But, um, that’s what I’m aware of as of today. Yeah. That’s, that’s all I know. So yeah, it is new. We’re all learning. So, yeah. All right. Well, we have reached the end of our Q and a, uh, with Katie. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.