Explore recipe: Help center category views

In this Explore recipe, you’ll learn how to report on the total number of views a category in your knowledge base has received, across all articles in that category.

While Explore doesn't include a default attribute for help center category, you can create a group attribute that groups articles by the categories they belong to.

Tip: You can use this report to mirror the exact categories of your help center, or you can create "categories" that group together whichever articles you choose (like articles about a specific topic, or directed at a specific audience).

This article contains the following topics:

• What you'll need
• Creating the group attribute
• Creating the report
• Enhancing the report

What you'll need

Skill level: Intermediate

Time required: 10 minutes

• Zendesk Explore Professional or Enterprise
• Editor or Admin permissions (see Giving users access to Explore)
• Article data in Zendesk Guide

Creating the group attribute

1. In Explore, click the reports () icon.
2. In the Reports library, click New report.
3. On the Select a dataset page, click Guide > Guide - Knowledge Base, then click Start report. The report builder opens.
4. In the Calculations menu (), select Group.
5. In the Attribute name field, name your calculated attribute Articles by category.
6. In the Computed from field, select Article title.
7. In the left column under the Search box, select an article and click the plus (+) icon to create your first category. Add more articles to that same category by selecting their titles in the left column and clicking the right arrow (→) icon.
8. Rename your category by clicking the line in the right column that starts with "Group [title of the first article you added to the category]" and entering your desired category name.
   
9. Repeat the previous two steps to create more categories. For help, see Creating groups.
10. Click Save.

Creating the report

1. In the Metrics panel, click Add > Article views > Views.
2. Click Apply.
3. Change the metric aggregator to SUM.
4. In the Rows panel, click Add > Calculated attributes > Articles by category.
5. Click Apply.

The resulting report is a table that lists the categories in your help center and how many views each category has.

Enhancing the report

If you want, you can take a few extra steps to list the specific articles that belong to each category, with a subtotal row that still shows the total number of views for each category. 

1. In the Rows panel, click Add > Articles > Article title.
2. (Optional) Filter out the NULL value by clicking the Article title attribute you just added, selecting the Excluded tab, and selecting NULL > Apply. (The NULL value comes from articles that previously had views but have since been deleted.)  
3. In the Result manipulation () menu, click Totals, select Subtotals on Rows, and click Apply.

Your report now shows which articles are included in each category, with a Sum line that still shows the total views for that category. 

Additionally, you might have noticed that the total number of views for the Testing category in the screenshot above is different than in the previous section's screenshot. This is because we filtered out the NULL value.