| Announced on | Calculations will stop working |
| May 30, 2023 | July 10, 2023 |
On July 10, 2023, the following Explore calculations will no longer be supported and will stop working:
- Top/bottom attribute
- Fixed calculated metric
- What if variable
- Time comparison metric
On the same day, some incorrectly configured standard calculated metrics and attributes will no longer work and will need to be reconfigured by users.
If you’re using one of these calculation types, or if some of your standard calculation formulas are misconfigured, read this announcement to understand how to fix the formulas and keep your reports working correctly.
This announcement contains the following topics:
- What’s changing and why?
- Will this change affect my account?
- What do I need to do?
- How can I achieve a similar functionality as the legacy calculations?
What’s changing and why?
We’re working to make data exploration more efficient and intuitive in Explore. One of the steps on this journey is to provide better formula-writing guardrails and remove calculations that don’t provide enough value to our users.
Formula-writing guardrails
Currently, Explore doesn’t fully enforce correct formula syntax when users create a calculated metric or attribute. So, users can unintentionally write an incorrectly constructed formula and Explore will execute the calculation, potentially resulting in incomplete results and longer report loading times.
To address this issue, we’re releasing a new, enhanced formula validator that warns users about incorrectly configured calculations. The warning messages are returned to users in real time as they write or edit calculation formulas, preventing them from saving incorrectly configured calculations and resulting in more accurate and faster reports.
On July 10, 2023, some reports with incorrectly configured formulas will stop working, and an error message will be displayed instead.
Legacy calculations removal
Some of the calculations that are available today are used very rarely because they are complex to use and slow to load. Only 0.003% of all Explore reports use such calculations, which include:
- Top/bottom attribute
- Fixed calculated metric
- Time comparison metric
- What if variable
Additionally, these calculations are based on a legacy technology that is reaching its end of life in September 2023.
On July 10, 2023, reports that use one of the calculations above will stop working, and an error message will be displayed instead. Creating the legacy calculations will no longer be allowed.
Will this change affect my account?
If your account has incorrectly configured calculation formulas that cannot be executed or one of the legacy calculations that are due to be removed, you’ll see a new Updates required category in your reports library. All recently used reports that are affected by this update will be listed in this category.
What do I need to do?
Review the reports listed in the Updates required category and update them by fixing the incorrectly configured formulas or removing the legacy calculations. When you access these reports, you’ll see an error message at the bottom of the page that provides more information about why the report needs to be updated.
If you’ll be removing the legacy calculations, make sure that you remove them from the report and the dataset. If one misconfigured calculation is used in multiple reports, fixing it fixes all reports it’s used in.
How can I achieve a similar functionality as the legacy calculations?
- Incorrectly configured formulas: for advice on fixing calculation formulas see Troubleshooting errors in Explore formulas.
- Top/bottom attribute: In the majority of cases, you can use a top/bottom filter to achieve the same results. To learn more, see Creating a top/bottom filter. In the demo below, the top/bottom attribute is replaced by a top/bottom filter to generate an identical report:
- Fixed calculated metric: You can use the ATTRIBUTE_FIX function for fixing your metric to a specific attribute, and you can also use it for fixing a metric overall. See Working with aggregation-level functions. In the demo below, the fixed calculated metric is replaced by a standard calculated metric that is not getting sliced by the attributes placed in the report:
- Time comparison metric: While there is no equivalent feature, a date range metric, result manipulation, or simply creating two reports placed next to each other in a dashboard will help to achieve your reporting goal. In the demo below, the time comparison metric is replaced by a date range metric to generate an identical report:
- What if variable: This can be easily replaced by a result metric calculation, which you can use to adjust the report results. See Using result metric calculations.
Questions or feedback?
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below or create a new post or comment in our user community.
35 Comments
This will affect a ton of my reports. I use "top 10" and fixed calculations. Unfortunately "Updates required" does not appear under my reports. How can I get that to show up.
Secondly, I use a fixed number for goals displayed on charts. I don't see how to do that, although I get an error on those Standard calculated metrics. What is a formula that will display a goal metric, say 1000 for tickets in the backlog?
Hi Larry,
I have created a ticket for you to investigate the issues you mentioned and to find a way to fix the formulas that are affected.
How do I replace constant metrics, used for OKR targets? It is unclear from the confusing ATTRIBUTE_FIX syntax.
Martin Cubitt, if you simply need a constant then the best to use the Trad line > Constant
If you are using a Table or another visualization where the trend line feature is not available you can use the Result metric calculation:
Hey! Thanks for the post.
Can you help me with my CSAT calculation? We have a field called "CSAT" in our Zendesk which we've connected with an API to another Survey tool, so the field fills in when a Survey is completed.
But now with the new changes, it says I "Can't use [CSAT] as text and 1 as number."
How would I rewrite this formula?
André, ideally you need to store your CSAT in a numeric custom field not in a text field. Then it will appear in Explore as a metric. See how custom fields are mapped to Explore in Reporting with custom fields. If you will go with this approach then your formulas will look like this:
I'm getting a very generic error on some of my reports that was on the "Updates Required" and there are no errors on the formulas that I do have within it (they are regex formulas to parse data that has a bunch of extra characters) and the formula continues to work fine today.
REGEXP_EXTRACT(REGEXP_REPLACE([Data Source],"\\"","\""),"data_column\\":\s*\\"?([^,]+?)\\"")
Is this function going away as well as it is not mentioned in this article?
Please find the background of the issue
I came across the change which is happening on explore that
"Update Required" doesn't show on my account either.
Hi Eugene Orman - in relation to this statement "On the same day, incorrectly configured standard calculated metrics and attributes will no longer work and will need to be reconfigured by users."
How do you define incorrectly configured standard calculated metrics? Just wondering given I created a couple and it's been accepted by Zendesk and there's an actual value and result.
Larry Click & Guruprasad Satyanarayana
If the Updates required section is not displayed in the report library it means that you don't have any reports impacted. This section is shown only if you have at least one report flagged as being impacted. So, it is a good thing that you don't have the Updates required section.
Jahn Bronilla if some of the calculations can not be executed in the database reports that use them will stop returning results and will return an error instead.
If such reports were opened/loaded in your account in the past two months they were flagged and placed in the Updates required section of the reports library.
Eugene Orman That isn't true. I keep running across reports with the warning at the bottom that they are affected. They've stopped returning results. I have to go through all the Dashboards I have to find ones not returning results?
Hi Eugene Orman,
I am experiencing issues just like Larry. I am not able to see an "Updates required" section, but a lot of my reports are not working and give me error messages.
What a brutal update. Reporting is so time consuming to put together and the out-of-the-box doesn't cut it for anyone working at the Enterprise level. Fields now intermittently give the 'incorrect formula' error, but sometimes load without issue. Explore performance is severely degraded for the last several days... I assume that is somehow related to the inconsistent way in which the system reports an 'outdated' calculation.
Is there documentation on this stuff yet? I understand it is supposed to simplify but in some cases it is more confusing. For example, we apparently cannot use VALUE() anymore in calculated metrics? But the relevant documentation still says we can? (https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408846897178-Choosing-metric-aggregators)
There seems to be something off with the function validator as well? I have a super simple report. A single metric is returned and it filters on two standard fields. Reports a 'calculation issue' -- you drill down into the one metric. Green check-marks for the whole thing. What is wrong? Who knows.
I'm having issues where I have written a function in line with the documentation, the validator says a function is fine, but when trying to load the report an error says it's incorrectly formatted.
If the way formula functions work has been updated why has the documentation not been updated to reflect these changes? How are we supposed to troubleshoot the problem if both documentation and validator says it's correct?
Our use case is simple and straightforward - we need a trend line for the top 90% and top 93% (as well as the top 85% in some cases)
How can we accomplish this with this design?
As we must create several "fixed metrics" the "trend line" solution will not work for us.
How can we configure multiple "fixed attributes" using ATTRIBUTE_FIX so that I could have several "trend lines" as we could do with the fixed attribute?
Is there an alternative, or should we stop using these reports?
I just want to point out that we have dozens of reports that are now broken, I assume that the figure of 0.003% of reports using these features is correct, but I would love to know how many customers are impacted - as I would suspect that some customers (such as us) will be severely impacted.
Update - I just noticed that all our "KPI" type reports are also broken as they relied on the "fixed metric" to define the upwards or downwards value of the KPI value - so in effect, we can't use several full pages from our dashboards.
We're using a fixed attribute to provide monthly values for comparing the number of new tickets against.
The metric is like:
if ([Ticket created - Year]=2023 and [Ticket created - Month]="January") then 500
elif ([Ticket created - Year]=2023 and [Ticket created - Month]="February") then 550
elif ([Ticket created - Year]=2023 and [Ticket created - Month]="March") then 540
elif ([Ticket created - Year]=2023 and [Ticket created - Month]="April") then 540
elif ([Ticket created - Year]=2023 and [Ticket created - Month]="May") then 555
elif ([Ticket created - Year]=2023 and [Ticket created - Month]="June") then 560
elif ([Ticket created - Year]=2023 and [Ticket created - Month]="July") then 558
endif
I really cannot understand how to change this to use the ATTRIBUTE_FIX function.
I have a similar issue to Ilia Kosenko:
I need a constant KPI goal line in reports.
Something that usually shows up on the secondary axis.
All solutions only work on the primary axis...
@Zendesk: maybe you check how functionalities are used before changing them?
Hi everyone,
My apologies for the belated reply. Thank you for asking good questions. I will not be able to answer all of the questions in great detail because the majority of them are about the individual set-up of your reports and the solutions need to be validated on your account. So, if you will need further advice please reach out to our customer support team.
Larry Click & Ulises Soto, we were flagging the affected reports and placing them into the Updates required folder for two months but this process stopped on July 10. As I mentioned in the announcement we were checking reports that were accessed/loaded during this period of time. If a report wasn't loaded during this time it will not appear in the Updates required section. Unfortunately, we only can identify the misconfigured reports when they are executed on the database side.
Bryan Haeussler, you raised a few points.
Jacqui, your question is answered in the last bullet point above.
Ilia Kosenko & Kai Schmitte, if you are referring to the constant metrics then the best approach is to use the result metric calculations. Here is an example. However, if you need to use it as a secondary axis or apply some other configuration that is not compatible with the result metric calculations then you can create a standard calculated metric and apply it with the MIN or MAX aggregator. Here is an example.
Martin Cubitt, you can follow the same approach as in the last example above. Create a standard calculated metric with the same formula you mentioned and use the MIN or MAX aggregator in the report.
Thank you for taking the time to reply-- the troubleshooting page is helpful. I see your point on VALUE as well. I do think that information is something that belongs in the reference table, vs. buried in a sentence amidst examples, but that's my mistake.
Hi Eugene Orman,
thanks for the answer.
Unfortunately not helpful - the example with the calculated metric doesn't work regardless of the aggregator:
Kai Schmitte, in the screenshot you shared the metric type you have used, is still the Fixed metric. You need to use the Standard calculated metric instead:
i was using the following sytax to get the date when the implementation status was closed ,
although the format is being accepted but still i am not able to see any results in the dashboard.
the new calculation reforms are preventing us from returning the date values.
IF ([Changes - Field name]= "Implementation Status"
AND [Changes - New value]= "imp_closed"
AND DATE_LAST_FIX([Update - Timestamp],[Update ticket ID],[Changes - Field name],[Changes - New value])=[Update - Timestamp])
THEN [Update - Date]
ENDIF
Shivam Garg, The formula's syntax looks good to me. Please contact our Customer support team so they can investigate this.
Bryan Haeussler This is a great point! I've added more information to the VALUE description in the Choosing metric aggregators article.
Thanks Eugene Orman,
Realized that the screenshot was from my first test.
And that the last issues have been with the general setup of the report -> I needed to set up the full axis to be % and align with the CSAT % secondary axis.
After spending a lot of time on the configuration of this, everything works as expected.
This setup of a constant value to allow visualization of production data to a constant value (KPI Goal) should be more simple.
Hello, I am trying to create a group but it seems that it is not working for our use case. I created a group based on Ticket. Why is this giving me an error?
Created - hour
I'm also having the same issue as above (although not with groups)
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