Insights recipe: Showing MoM change with headline reports

By Bryan Castro, GoodData

Zendesk is removing Insights reporting on February 5th, 2021. If you are using Insights, you’ll need to move to Explore, the latest generation of reporting for Zendesk products, before that time.

The purpose of headline reports is to place metrics front and center on your dashboards. Month-over-month change is a key metric that always stands out. This recipe uses custom formatting to make month-over-month change stand out even more.

First, create your custom metrics. These three metrics are pretty straightforward and simple to create. The first captures the number of tickets created this month, the second captures the number of tickets the previous month, and the last shows the variance between months.

Note: These metrics must be created in the Advanced Metric Editor. For more information on creating custom metrics, see Creating and using metrics on GoodData's support site.

The first metric captures the number of tickets created this month. The expression is:

• SELECT # Tickets WHERE Month/Year (Created) = This 
  • # Tickets is found in the pick-list Metrics folder.
  • Month/Year (Created) is found in the pick-list Attributes folder.

The second metric captures the number of tickets created the previous month. The expression is:

• SELECT # Tickets WHERE Month/Year (Created) = Previous

The third metric deducts the tickets created the previous month from the tickets created this month to show change. The expression is:

• SELECT This month - Previous month
  • This month and Previous month are found in the pick-list Metrics folder.

To make this metric stand out more, you can apply conditional formatting. In order to do this, you'll need to go back to the What panel.

In the What panel, double click Variance metric . In the Metric Format section of the Details column, enter in the following formatting:

• [<0][red]▼#,#00;[=0]#,#00;[green][>0]▲#,#00

This formatting enables you to clearly see if there are increases or decreases in the number of tickets. If there were more tickets in the previous month (the number is below zero), there will be a red arrow pointing down. If there are more tickets this month (the number is above zero), there will be a green arrow pointing up.

Here's a screenshot of the table report once all three metrics have been created.

To change this to a headline report, you'll first need to deselect the This month and the Previous month metrics from the What panel. Click on the Headline icon on the top right.

Here's the final headline report: