Get started with Explore and compare to Insights

Explore Professional only

If you are moving from Insights to Explore, the first thing you need to do is activate Explore. You can add other users and configure their access now or when you're ready.

Once you've activated Explore you can get started learning Explore and compare it to Insights. Be sure to check out the Explore pre-built dashboards for easy, out-of-the box reporting.

The following sections will help you complete these tasks.

Setting up Explore

Activating Explore (Required)

You have to activate Explore to start using it. Activating sets up your Explore account and gets your data ready. This might take a few hours, but we'll let you know when it's ready.

While you work through the migration, minimize disruption to your business by continuing to use your Insights reports while you and your agents get set up and learn Explore.

See Activating Zendesk Explore.

Adding your agents

After you activate Explore, only you have access to it. Because it's important to control access to your important business data, you'll need to manually give each agent access. You don't have to add and configure all of your agents now, but do so when you're ready to give agents access.

You can give agents full access (Admin), permission to create and edit reports (Editor), or read-only (Viewer) access when you add them to Explore.

Currently, you must add agents individually. There is not yet a bulk add or API option to add agents.

See Adding users to Explore.

Configuring agent access to data

Datasets give you access to business information stored in your Zendesk account. You'll read more about these in the guide.

Each Zendesk product has its own dataset and you can control access to these individually. Think about the level of access you want to give agents, then configure dataset authorizations in Explore.

See Setting editor and admin permissions.

Learning Explore

The getting started guide leads you through the basics of Explore from terminology through to creating and sharing reports. It also gives you a tour of the Explore interface.

Reading this guide is highly recommended for newcomers to Explore. Additionally, Zendesk offers a range of online and instructor-led paid training.

See Getting started with Zendesk Explore.

Comparing Insights and Explore capabilities and workflow

While many of the concepts are similar, there are differences between Insights and Explore capabilities and workflow. You might not need the resources in this section if you only use the Insights pre-built dashboard and haven't created custom reports in Insight.

Learn about the Explore workflow compared to Insights.
Read about the different capabilities of Insights and Explore.
Use the Insights to Explore terminology reference to help you learn what some of the processes you used in Insights are now called.

See Resources for moving from Insights to Explore.

Viewing the Explore pre-built dashboards

Just like with Insights, Explore includes a number of pre-built reports arranged in dashboards, covering many common business scenarios. You can use them as they are or you can make copies of them to use as a starting point for your own analysis.

You'll also want to understand how the Insights pre-built dashboards map to Explore pre-built dashboards.

To view the Explore pre-built dashboards

In Explore, click the dashboards icon () in the left toolbar. You'll see a list of all pre-built dashboards as well as dashboards that others have created.

Choose your next step

Prepare to stop using Insights → ← Go back to the start