Use this article if you use Insights, and are about to upgrade to Zendesk Explore. For a high-level overview to help you plan to move, see Moving to Explore from Insights.
If you are new to Explore, you can start learning basics by working through Getting started with Zendesk Explore. This article can help you to find some of the capabilities you might have used in Insights, and to start using Explore productively as soon as possible.
1. Viewing pre-built dashboards
If you've used Insights for a while, you'll be familiar with it's pre-built dashboards that contain reports for many common business scenarios. As you move to Explore, you'll find that most of these are also available in Explore. Read the article Getting started with pre-built dashboards for a full list of the Explore pre-built reports. Use the following table to discover where to find your Insights pre-built reports in Explore.
| Insights report | Explore report | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Overview dashboard tab | Zendesk Support dashboard - Tickets and Backlog tabs | See Overview of the Zendesk Support dashboard. |
| Tickets dashboard tab | Zendesk Support dashboard - Tickets tab | See Overview of the Zendesk Support dashboard. |
| Satisfaction dashboard tab | Zendesk Support dashboard - Satisfaction tab | See Overview of the Zendesk Support dashboard. |
| Prediction dashboard tab | Currently unavailable | |
| Efficiency dashboard tab | Zendesk Support dashboard - Efficiency tab | See Overview of the Zendesk Support dashboard. |
| Agent activity dashboard tab | Zendesk Support dashboard - Assignee activity and Agent Updates tabs | See Overview of the Zendesk Support dashboard. |
| Chat dashboard tab | Zendesk Chat dashboard | See Overview of the Zendesk Chat dashboard. |
| Skills dashboard tab | No dashboard available, but you can use custom metrics to create your own queries. | See Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Support. |
| SLAs dashboard tab | Zendesk Support dashboard - SLAs tab | See Overview of the Zendesk Support dashboard. |
| Talk dashboard tab | Zendesk Talk dashboard | See Overview of the Zendesk Talk dashboard. |
| Answer Bot dashboard tab | Zendesk Guide dashboard - Answer Bot tab | See Overview of the Zendesk Guide dashboard. |
| Knowledge Capture dashboard tab | Zendesk Guide dashboard - Knowledge Capture tab | See Overview of the Zendesk Guide dashboard. |
| Team Publishing dashboard tab | Planned | Currently unavailable. |
2. Choosing a data source
With Insights, when you create a report, your metrics and attributes for all products are found in the What column of the report builder.
In Explore, your Zendesk data is split into manageable blocks called datasets. Before you can begin to create reports, you must choose the dataset that contains the data for your product.
For details about how to choose your dataset, and to find out what datasets are available, see Working with datasets.
Frequently asked questions about datasets
- Can I combine the information from two datasets into one report?
Not currently, however, this is planned in the future.
- How can I find out what datasets are coming in the future?
To learn about new and upcoming datasets, see our announcements section.
- How do I find out what's in each dataset?
Take a look at Working with datasets.
3. Creating queries
The reports that you created with Insights are known as queries in Explore.
The method you use to construct queries is similar in both products. Use the following table to help you understand where you'll find the features you used in Insights now that you are migrating to Explore:
| Insights | Explore | More information |
|---|---|---|
| Create a new report | Create a new query | Creating queries |
| Add metrics to the What panel | Add metrics to the Metrics panel | Adding metrics and attributes to your query |
| Add attributes to the How panel | Add attributes to the Columns or Rows panel | Adding metrics and attributes to your query |
| Click the Filter button to add filters | Add filter attributes in the Filters panel | Calculation types reference |
Finding metrics and attributes
If you've used Insights for a while, you're probably familiar with the articles Insights metrics reference, and Insights objects reference that help you find metrics and attributes that you can use in your custom reports.
In Explore, you'll find this information in Metric and attribute reference which gives you the metrics and attributes you can use, sorted by product.
After you review this article, if you can't find the metric or attribute you need, you might be able to configure your own. The article Creating basic calculated metrics and attributes can help get you off to a great start doing this.
Frequently asked questions about queries
- Do Insights reports work in Explore?
While you can't import an Insights report directly into an Explore query, most reports can be rewritten as a query.
- How do I find out what metrics and attributes I can use?
If the report you want isn't part of a pre-built dashboard, see Metric and attribute reference.
4. Creating dashboards
The method you use to create a dashboard in Explore is similar to the method you used in Insights.
In Explore, you typically create a blank dashboard, and then add queries and other static or interactive elements to it. These are known as widgets.
A great article to start learning about dashboards in Explore is Getting started creating dashboards.
To dig deeper into the capabilities of widgets, and customization options for dashboards, see Adding and arranging dashboard widgets and Customizing dashboards.
Frequently asked questions about dashboards
- Can I automatically migrate reports I created from Insights into Explore?
No. You will need to recreate these reports in Explore. Use the information in this article, and in Getting started with Zendesk Explore to help you get started.
5. Sharing dashboards and reports
Explore gives you similar sharing capabilities as you used in Insights. Use the following table to find out where the option you used previously can be found in Explore:
| Insights | Explore article |
|---|---|
| Emailing scheduled dashboards | Sharing dashboards through email |
| Emailing scheduled reports | Sharing dashboards through email |
| Setting permissions for dashboards and reports | Setting editor and admin permissions |
| Changing the schedule when a report is sent | Sharing dashboards through email |
| Exporting reports | Saving your query |
| Printing reports | Saving your query (export, then print the report) |
For more information, see Getting started sharing dashboards.
Frequently asked questions about sharing reports
- Can I share reports with anybody?
You can share to individuals, or groups, as long as they are registered in Zendesk Support.
- How do I print a report?
Currently, Explore does not provide built-in printing capabilities. However, you can export a dashboard to another format such as PDF, and then use the software of your choice to print it.
Next steps
Further reading
There is a lot more to Explore than you've read above. We encourage you to get to know the Explore documentation and also, to give us feedback. If you want to read more, start with the following articles:
Get involved!
The Explore community gives you a chance to interact with both the Explore team and other customers using the product. We love to hear from you!
Get started in the Explore community with the following resources:
- Ask a question: If there's anything you don't understand, or need help with, this is a great place to ask. Both the Zendesk team and other Explore experts hang out here, and can give you the help you need.
- Share a tip: Have you written a great query? Do you have a great tip for creating dashboards? Are you an Explore expert? Share your knowledge here!
- Make a suggestion: We are always improving our products to make your work easier and more productive. Many improvements come directly following feedback from you. While we can't promise to include every suggestion, we read all feedback.
11 Comments
Is there any place where we can find equivalent metrics between Insights and Explore? For instance, I'm pretty sure # Tickets in Insights is Tickets>Tickets in Explore, but since the metrics aren't written the same way, it is difficult to tell.
Chris,
We currently don't have a direct comparison chart for a side-by-side comparison of metrics between the 2 platforms.
However, I did ping our documentation team to see about adding this to our knowledge base to help with any confusion for our customers as they migrate from Insights to Explore.
Unfortunately, I do not have an ETA for you at this time.
Thanks for the update Patrick!
Just want to confirm explicitly -- after activating Explore, Insights will still be available for a long time (a) to actually use and (b) to refer to when setting up Explore, correct?
Thanks!
Hey Jonathan -
Yes and yes. Accounts that currently have Insights will keep it when they purchase Explore for the time being. More info here: The future of reporting for Zendesk products
I am excited about the new product but I am disappointed that there is so little support for moving our reports. We have years of reports used by many different users which will have to re-built in Explore. The lack of specific documentation on the data and metric conversions makes it harder- I hope to see that soon. For now I think we will probably stay put in Insight until we're forced to move.
We have a number of custom metrics written in MAQL. Will those metrics be usable in Explore? If not, are there any conversion tools for those metrics or do we have to re-learn formula writing for Explore?
Is there any way, or any roadmap plans, to move our queries from the old GoodData site into Explore? I have several queries that I didn't author and I don't want to even try to rewrite (they're complicated).
@Allison, thanks for your feedback! I will pass this on to our Explore product managers, and we are doing our best to update the documentation every day. I recommend if you have any specific requests that you'd like to pass on that you post in our Product Feedback Forum for Explore. We also have a Troubleshooting Forum if you are getting stuck on any particular reports and I definitely encourage you to get involved there.
@Crystal, at the moment there is no conversion tool from moving your custom Insights metrics over to Explore. If you post in the forums I mentioned above, or send a ticket to support@zendesk.com we should be able to assist you if you are getting stuck on moving any over.
In terms of learning Explore formula writing, this article is a great start. I also have personally found it valuable to run through a few of the Explore recipes in our help center to practice creating metrics.
@Katie, as our roadmaps are constantly changing I can't speak to whether or not a conversion tool is currently planned. Other than the options I mentioned above, you could consider engaging our Services team to create queries in Explore and update your current reporting offering.
Thanks for your feedback on this everyone! I am passing all of this on to the Explore team.
Hi Allison -
We hear you, and the good news is that we have several things in the works to assist users and ease this process as much as we can. Those pieces of documentation aren't available just yet, but I've been told they'll be live in the next few days. I'll update here once they're available.
Here's our official documentation on moving to Explore from Insights.
We're also hosting an AMA-style conversation around creating reporting recipes for Explore tomorrow in the Zendesk Community; please feel free to post your recipe-related questions there.
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