Working with datasets

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 report, 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).

This article contains the following sections:

• Available datasets
• Choosing a dataset
• Creating a new dataset
• More dataset operations
• Next steps

Available datasets

The following datasets are currently available in Explore:

Tip: To learn about new and upcoming datasets, see our announcements section.

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.
• Updates history: Report all updates made to tickets during their lifetime.
• SLAs: Report about your Service Level Agreement (SLA) performance.
• Backlog history: Report about your unsolved tickets at the end of a given date.

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:

• 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.
• Knowledge Base: Report about your help center activity including page views, article votes, and more.
• Search: Reports about the searches that users performed and the terms they searched for in your knowledge base.
• Community: Reports on the activity in your community forums, including the number of posts and comments, upvotes and downvotes, community members, and more.

Zendesk live chat and messaging datasets

The following datasets can be used to produce reports based on your usage of live chat and messaging:

• Engagement: Reports about your customer engagement using Chat.
• Chat concurrency: Reports about your agents’ handling of concurrent chat engagements.
• Messaging tickets: Reports about all messaging channels, including web, mobile, and social messaging channels. This information includes number of tickets, resolution times, satisfaction, and more.

Zendesk Sell dataset

The following datasets can be used to produce reports based on your usage of Zendesk Sell:

• Sales: Reports about your sales pipeline using Sell.
• Calls: Reports on your Zendesk Sell sales calls, such as incoming and outgoing calls, call time, and more.
• Products: Reports on your product sales, such as how many products were sold over time or which products sold the most.
• Activities: Reports on Sell activity volume and sales team contribution, including number of emails, calls, tasks, appointments, and visits.

Zendesk Answer Bot datasets

The following datasets can be used to produce reports based on your usage of Zendesk Answer Bot:

• Article Recommendations: Reports on the performance of help center articles automatically recommended to customers.
• Flow Builder: Reports on bot performance across Zendesk channels.

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 reports, or while you create a report.

Choosing a dataset before you create a report

To choose a dataset from the datasets library

1. In Explore, click the Datasets icon ().
2. On the Datasets library page, select the product dataset you want to use. The prebuilt, 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 reports that use this dataset, consider deleting it.

   

The page for the dataset you chose opens. From here, you can select an existing report or create a new report.

Choosing a dataset when you create a report

To choose a dataset while you create a report

1. In Explore, click the reports icon ().
2. In the Reports library, click New report.
3. On the Select a dataset page, select the Zendesk product you want to create reports for.

   

4. Next, select a specific dataset within that Zendesk product. For example, Zendesk Support contains different datasets for tickets, updates, SLAs, and backlog history.

   When you select a dataset, the Dataset panel appears on the right. This panel allows you to select the Dataset version: either the default version of the dataset (most common) or a custom version. You can also see which metrics the dataset includes, which helps you determine that you're selecting the right dataset before you start creating your report.

   

5. Finally, click Start report.

The report builder opens using the dataset you chose. You can now begin to create your report.

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 reports 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

1. Click the Datasets icon ().
2. In the Datasets library, click New dataset.
3. On the Select a source page, choose the product you want to create reports for.
4. On the New dataset page, enter a name for your new dataset, and then choose the source data that you want to query, for example, Tickets.
5. Click Done.

The report builder opens using the dataset you chose. You can now begin to create your report.

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

1. Click the Datasets icon ().
2. In the Datasets library, choose a dataset and then click the options menu next to it.

   

3. From the options menu, choose one of the following:
   • New report from this: Opens a new report 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.

Next steps

• Creating a new report
• Adding a new dashboard