In Explore, datasets give you access to your Zendesk product data. Each dataset contains metrics and attributes that can be used to query your data. Before you create a query, you'll need to choose the dataset that gives access to the information you want. Typically, you select the default dataset that contains data for your product, for example, Support or Talk. However, you can also create copies of these datasets for testing (for example, if you want to test custom metrics or need to apply specific security permissions).
Available datasets
The following datasets are currently available in Explore:
Zendesk Support datasets
The following datasets can be used to produce reports based on your tickets, and support data:
- Tickets: Report key ticket metrics like number of tickets, ticket activity, and ticket type.
- SLAs: Report about your Service Level Agreement (SLA) performance.
- Backlog history: Report about your unsolved tickets at the end of a given date.
- Ticket updates: Report all updates made to tickets during their lifetime.
Zendesk Talk datasets
The following datasets can be used to produce reports based on your usage of Zendesk Talk:
- Calls: Report about your call center and agent activity.
Zendesk Guide datasets
The following datasets can be used to produce reports based on your usage of Zendesk Guide:
- Answer Bot: Reports about the effectiveness of your Answer Bot use.
- Knowledge Capture: Reports to help you understand the efficiency of selecting articles to deflect support tickets.
- Team Publishing: Reports to help you understand your team activity in Guide including when articles are created, published, edited and more.
Zendesk Chat datasets
The following datasets can be used to produce reports based on your usage of Zendesk Chat:
- Chat Engagement: Reports about your customer engagement using Chat.
Choosing a dataset
To access you business information, you must choose a dataset. To help you understand the information you can report about from each dataset, see Understanding Explore datasets. You can choose the dataset you want to use before you create queries, or while you create a query.
Choosing a dataset before you create a query
To choose a dataset from the datasets library
- In Explore, click the Datasets icon (
).
- On the Datasets library page, select the product dataset you want to use. The pre-built, original dataset names display the status Default, and should be used whenever possible.
If a dataset displays the status Out of date, it is no longer being updated by Zendesk. Unless you are maintaining queries that use this dataset, consider deleting it.
- The page for the dataset you chose opens. From here, you can select an existing query or create a new query.
Choosing a dataset when you create a query
To choose a dataset while you create a query
- In Explore, click the Queries icon (
).
- In the Queries library, click New query.
- On the Choose a dataset page, choose the Zendesk product you want to produce reports for.
- Next, choose the dataset type. For example, Zendesk Support contains four datasets for tickets, SLAs, updates, and backlog history.
- Finally, from the list of datasets, choose the dataset you want to connect to, then click New query.
- Query builder opens using the dataset you chose. You can now begin to create your query.
Creating a new dataset
In some circumstances, you might want to create your own dataset, for example, if you want to experiment with the data structure, or practice working with custom formulas. If you create your own dataset, formulas and queries from the original dataset will not be available. For most purposes, choose from one of the built-in datasets.
To create and connect to a new dataset
- Click the Datasets icon (
).
- In the Datasets library, click New dataset.
- On the Select a source page, choose the product you want to create reports for.
- On the Choose a dataset page, enter a name for your new dataset, and then choose the source data that you want to query, for example, Tickets.
- Click Done.
- Query builder opens using the dataset you chose. You can now begin to create your query.
More dataset operations
Explore offers further options for managing your datasets. The available options might differ depending on the level of permission you have to the dataset. For example, you can't delete the pre-built datasets.
To access the dataset operations
- Click the Datasets icon (
).
- In the Datasets library, choose a dataset and then click the options menu next to it.
- From the options menu, choose one of the following:
- New query from this: Opens a new query using the selected dataset.
- Edit: Opens the dataset configuration page where you can change the name of the dataset and review the product it is using.
- Rename: Enables you to change the name of the dataset.
- Clone: Creates a copy of the selected dataset.
- Delete: Deletes the selected dataset.
33 Comments
What if I want to create a query using data from two different connections. For example I want to look at Satisfaction by different criteria - requester locale, custom fields etc.
Please help - I know Explore is a game changer for our report building, but can't get it to report on the data I want to see at the moment.
Hi Daniel!
We are planning to introduce the possibility to join different connections later this year.
Until then, don't hesitate to drop us a note at explore@zendesk.com with use cases you can't address with the existing connectors.
Kind regards
Vincent
I sent an email with a use case from our team.
A piece that has been missing for a long time is the reporting on KB article metrics:
Also, these reports need to be able to be filtered by Month, quarter, annually. Should have ways to group teams of Agents by region or product and report on each group
HI, where do we stand with connecting two sets of data sets? I'm trying to create a dashboard that shows the # of tickets solved, AVG handle time of each ticket, and CSAT. I don't think I can currently do that.
Still no ability to add new data sets?
What I'm looking for is the ability to create a backlog dataset that includes any custom ticket fields we have added. Unfortunately, it looks like this is not currently supported.
Hi, wondering if there has been any progress on being able to to create a query using data from two different connections in explore? I'd like to create a query that includes a metric from the Support:Tickets, Users and Organisations data-set and the Support:Ticket SLA's data-set.
When will there be the ability to look at other data sets such as Users? We want to see what users are looking at service announcements so we know who not to target in our email campaigns. Visibility into user specifics is important not just the calculations.
hi
I've created a custom Database based on Support Tickets and created 3 Queries based on that new Dataset. Everything works fine, except no other Explore users can see the Dataset or any of the Queries I created. Should it be possible to share Custom Datasets and Queries with other Explore Users who have Edit rights?
thanks, Mark
Hello Mark Hinson,
It sounds like you might not have set settings up correctly when establishing your editor permissions. Thie first thing I would recommend is to go through the article I linked below which will guide you step by step on how to establish these settings. If this is still impacting you after, please let me know, and I'll be happy to troubleshoot this with you further.
Setting editor and admin permissions for custom datasets
Best Regards.
Is there a possibility in any way to join datasets when creating queries? We would like to view/fiter backlog based on organization, and it seems that organization is not included in the backlog dataset. Do we have any means to solve this at the moment?
Are Organization and User data in different (as yet unavailable) datasets? It seems Explore can only query the Ticket dataset and we lose reporting over General Organization and User data.
Hi Craig,
Just wanted to note to you, that organization, requester, group and assignee information is available in datasets like Tickets and Ticket Updates, but organization is not apparently included in Support backlog history dataset, which is an essential information for us.
Does anyone have an answer to my earlier question, whether there is a possibility to link the organization information somehow to the backlog dataset?
-Arno
Hey Arno,
I reached out to our Explore Product Managers and it looks like there's currently no way to connect organization data to the backlog dataset. I've let them know that this is a feature users are interested in so thanks for taking the time to share this with us :)
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Hi Brett,
Thought I would just leave a comment to also express my interest in having the functionality to join data across multiple datasets as well. Would prove to be extremely useful piece of functionality. Would be happy to provide use cases if required.
Kind regards,
Thanks for sharing Shane! I've marked this as product feedback so our Explore team is aware.
Cheers!
For time tracking purposes I am interested in joining call talk time, chat duration, and update handling time into a single table. However these 3 time tracking values exist exclusive to their individual dataset. Is there an update to when we will have the option of joining datasets within a query, or is there a solution to my issue already that I just need to find?
Hey Justin,
This is still on this years roadmap, however, we don't have any specific dates to share at this time.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Also interested in joining across data sets. We can today join Answer Bot metrics to a ticket fields in the legacy reporting system.
I see that some ticket related fields are available in Answer Bot related queries, but ideally we could have access to particular custom fields that we use to group and categorize tickets.
Hello Ed,
Appreciate the feedback, which I'll be sharing with our product team. I would also recommend posting your feedback in our Explore Product Feedback forums where our devs regularly look for user stories during their development process.
Best regards.
There is no dataset specifically for Guide, currently in Insights- we can view Knowlegebase stats, this is no longer possible in Explore, why would you take this function away?
Hi Marissa -
Guide datasets are currently under development. We don't have an ETA for when they will be available in Explore, but they will be forthcoming.
Using the talk datasets I can see call times and calls taken etc. but no metrics for the following:
Agent online time
Agent away time
Agent available time
Agent total wrap up time
The only way we can seem to get this info is in real time from zendesk.com/agent/talk
We need to access this historical data, can you direct me on how to locate it?
Hello Ben Lebeau,
Most of these can be found using the Talk dashboard metrics, which I've linked the article that goes into detail on this below. You should be able to find most of these, for example, Total online time, which gives the Agent online time.
Zendesk Talk dashboard metrics reference (Talk Team, Professional, and Enterprise)
Best regards.
Hi!
I'm looking for an organization dataset as I had custom reporting in Insights for items tracked in the Org fields & now I need to recreate these reports in Explore.
Is there a reason why Organization isn't one of the standard datasets? Is there any way to create a custom Org dataset? Is this on the list for future enhancement?
TIA!
Hi April Buck! Unfortunately, it's not possible to report solely on Organizations in Explore, without an Organization first having submitted a ticket.
While I can't speak to whether this is on Zendesk's product roadmap, I'd recommend adding your specific use case to this post for future consideration: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203190523-How-to-view-a-list-of-all-Organizations-with-the-Organization-fields-as-the-columns-
I'd personally love to see this functionality in the future! 🤞
Why are not all the organizational fields available in the default data sets or any of the ones that you create from the create options.
I created a custom organizational field to use with our customers but its not an available option to do reporting on. Only the tags that were created are available but use instead of what I created from a drop down selection.
How can I create my own data sets and chose all the the organizational fields instead of being limited to your default options?
Hello Ty Angell
Any custom fields you create should populate over to your Explore datasets automatically as soon as they've started being used on tickets. You can read more about how to find and work with those fields in this article: Reporting with custom fields.
I hope that helps!
If you're still having trouble finding a custom field in the datasets let us know!
Hi Team,
Where is the #Users dataset in Explore ?
I had a report which simply displayed Agent Name, Creation Date, Las login date etc in Insights. I am not able to create this in Explore.
Thanks
Lohith S
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