Explore recipe: Comparing today's ticket volume to yesterday's

With thanks to Taylor Bowser from Zendesk customer advocates.

A common request from Explore admins is to compare the volume of tickets (or any other metric) between two date ranges. In this Explore recipe, you'll find out how to use date range calculated metrics to create a report showing the percentage variation in tickets created between yesterday and today. You can modify this query to suit your own business needs.

This article contains the following sections:

• What you'll need
• Creating the first metric
• Creating the second metric
• Creating the query

What you'll need

Skill level: Easy

Time required: 10 minutes

• Zendesk Explore Professional or Enterprise
• Editor or Admin permissions (see Giving agents access to Explore)
• Ticket data in Zendesk Support

Creating the first metric

In this first procedure, you'll create a date range calculated metric that displays the number of tickets that were created today.

To create the metric

1. In Explore, click the query () icon.
2. In the Queries library, click New query.
3. On the Choose a dataset page, click Support > Tickets > Support: Tickets [default], then click New query. Query builder opens.
4. In the Calculations menu (), click Date range calculated metric.
5. On the Date range calculated metric page, configure the following options:
   • Name: Tickets created today
   • Original metric: Tickets
   • Defined on: Ticket created
   • Date range: Simple > Today
6. When you are finished, click Save.

Creating the second metric

In this procedure, you'll create a date range calculated metric that displays the number of tickets that were created yesterday.

To create the metric

1. In Explore, click the query () icon.
2. In the Queries library, click New query.
3. On the Choose a dataset page, click Support > Tickets > Support: Tickets [default], then click New query. Query builder opens.
4. In the Calculations menu (), click Date range calculated metric.
5. On the Date range calculated metric page, configure the following options:
   • Name: Tickets created yesterday
   • Original metric: Tickets
   • Defined on: Ticket created
   • Date range: Simple > Yesterday
   Tip: You can use these metrics as the basis for your own queries. For example, you could report on Talk or Chat volume changes, or solved tickets instead of created tickets. For help with the available metrics and attributes, see the building queries section of the Explore documentation.
6. When you are finished, click Save.

Creating the query

In this final procedure, you'll add the two date range calculated metrics you created and format them to create the final query.

To create the query

1. In the Metrics panel of query builder, click Add.
2. From the list of metrics, expand Calculated metrics and choose the two date range calculated metrics you created, Tickets created today and Tickets created yesterday. When you are finished, click Apply.
3. Ensure that the Tickets created today metric appears first in the Metrics panel. If it doesn't, you can drag and drop it into the correct position.
4. Click each metric you just added and change the aggregator to COUNT.

   Your query will look like the following screenshot:

   

5. In the visualization type menu (), click KPI.
6. In the chart configuration menu (), click Chart.
7. On the Chart page, configure the following settings:
   • Label: Enter Tickets created today (and change since yesterday)
   • Hide label: Uncheck this setting
   • Show variation: Enable this setting
   • Variation type: Set to Percentage

The query is now complete and will look similar to the screenshot below: