Reports & Dashboards

Reports & Dashboards lets you turn the information in your Playground into answers: how many plays were published this quarter, who is downloading the most, which tags are trending, and so on. You can explore your data, save the questions you ask, put the answers on dashboards, and open ready-made reports prepared for your team.

note

Reports & Dashboards is available on Playground 2.0.0 and later. You see the Reports & Dashboards entry in your profile menu only if your role is allowed to view reports. Speak to your Playground admin if you cannot see it.

Everything in Reports & Dashboards is read-only and limited to your own Playground. You can look at your data in as many ways as you like without changing anything, and you never see data from other Playground domains.

Opening Reports & Dashboards

Open the profile menu at the top right and choose Reports & Dashboards. The page picks up your Playground's colors, and a menu on the left takes you to the different areas:

Area	What it is for
Explore	Ask a new question of your data and see the answer as a table or a chart.
Saved Queries	The questions you saved earlier, ready to preview, edit or reuse.
Dashboards	Collections of charts that you arrange on one screen.
Reports	Ready-made tables prepared for you and your team.

Explore

Explore is where you build a question. It works from top to bottom and you can see the answer as soon as you run it.

1. Pick what to look at. Choose a table, for example plays, users or activities. This is the main subject of your question.
2. Bring in related information (optional). Add related tables to combine details, such as the owner of a play, in the same answer.
3. Choose what to measure. Count rows, count distinct values, or calculate the sum, average, minimum or maximum of a column. You can add several measures to one question.
4. Group the answer. Choose the columns you want to split the numbers by, such as status, type or month.
5. Filter. Narrow down to what matters. Combine several filters so that all must match, or any can match. For dates you can use quick choices instead of typing a range:
   • Today, Yesterday
   • This week, Last week
   • This month, Last month
   • This quarter, Last quarter
   • This year, Last year
   • Last 7, 30 or 90 days, Last 6 months
   • Last N days or Last N months (you choose the number)
6. Sort and limit. Order the results by any column, ascending or descending, and choose how many rows you want, or all of them.
7. Run the question to see the answer.

Choose how to see the answer

Pick the chart type that best tells the story:

Chart	Good for
Table	Detailed rows you want to read, search and sort.
Bar / Horizontal bar	Comparing values between categories.
Line	Changes over time.
Area	Totals building up over time.
Pie / Doughnut	Showing how a whole splits into parts.
Stat	One headline number, such as "total plays".
Trend	A headline number with its direction over time.
Gauge	A value against a minimum and maximum.

You can fine-tune a chart too: choose the X axis, Y axis and an optional series, stack the bars, show or hide the legend, and show the time on dates. For a gauge or stat you can add a caption and set the minimum and maximum.

Work with a table

When the answer is a table you can refine it without changing the question:

• Search across every column.
• Filter by one or more columns (contains, equals, does not equal, greater than, less than and so on).
• Sort by clicking a column heading. Click again to reverse, and once more to clear.

Save your question

Give your question a name and an optional description and save it. It then appears under Saved Queries so you can come back to it any time and see the latest data.

Saved Queries

Saved Queries keeps everything you asked and saved. From here you can:

• Preview the answer in place, without leaving the list.
• Rename it or update the description.
• Edit it in Explore to change the question or the chart.
• Delete it when you no longer need it.

Each preview runs against your live data, so the numbers are always current.

Dashboards

A dashboard brings several saved answers together on one screen, so you can see the whole picture at a glance.

1. Choose + New Dashboard and give it a name.
2. Choose + Add Chart and pick one of your saved queries. Add as many charts as you like.
3. Arrange the charts: drag a chart by its header to move it and drag the bottom-right corner to resize it.
4. Switch between Edit and Preview to check how it will look when you are not rearranging.
5. Remove a chart you no longer want, or delete the whole dashboard.

Charts on a dashboard always show current data every time you open it.

Reports

Reports are tables that have been prepared in advance, with the search, filters and sorting already set, so that you can open a report and read it straight away. They are listed under Reports in the left menu.

When you open a report, the data is refreshed and shown exactly as it was prepared. You can still search, filter and sort the table to look closer. Your changes are for the moment you are viewing only and do not change the report for anyone else.

What you can and can't do

You can	You can't
Explore your Playground's data with filters, measures and grouping	See data from another Playground domain
See answers as tables or charts, and choose from many chart types	Change or delete any Playground data from here
Save questions, rename them, edit and preview them	View information that your Playground has chosen to keep hidden from reporting
Build dashboards and arrange charts freely
Open ready-made reports and search, filter and sort them	Create the ready-made Reports yourself

Tips

• Start with a table to check that you are looking at the right rows, then switch the chart type to present it.
• Use the date shortcuts like Last 30 days so your saved questions stay current without any editing.
• Give saved queries clear names. The names are what you pick from when you add a chart to a dashboard.
• If a chart looks empty, check your filters, especially date filters, first.