Explore recipe: Time Tracking app - Measuring update handling time

What's my plan?

Suite

Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus

Support with

Explore Professional or Enterprise

In this recipe, you'll learn how to report on handling time per update. You can use this information to report on individual agent performance, or to report on complex workflows where the same ticket is handled by multiple agents.

Tip: You can also report on handling time per ticket, instead of per update. See Time Tracking app - Measuring ticket handling time.

This recipe contains the following topics:

• What you'll need
• Creating the standard calculated metric
• Measuring update handling time by agent

Related articles:

• Time Tracking app - Metrics you need to be measuring
• Explore recipe: Time Tracking app - Measuring ticket handling time

What you'll need

Skill level: Intermediate

Time required: 15 minutes

• Zendesk Explore Professional or Enterprise
• Editor or Admin permissions (See Giving users access to Explore)
• Time Tracking app installed and configured (See Setting up the Time Tracking app)

Note: The Time Tracking app stores data in custom numeric fields that are synchronized with Explore on a schedule. If you’ve installed the Time Tracking app recently, the data required to build necessary calculated metrics might not yet be synced with Explore.

Creating the standard calculated metric

To report on update handling time, you'll first need to create a standard calculated metric.

Note: The Time Tracking app must be installed and configured before the metric and report described in this recipe will work. See Setting up the Time Tracking app. If the app hasn’t been configured, the metric won’t return any values.

To create the standard calculated metric

1. In Explore, click the Reports () icon.
2. In the Reports library, click New report.
3. On the Select a dataset page, click Support > Support - Updates history, then click Start report. The report builder opens.
4. Click the Calculations menu (), and select Standard calculated metric.
5. In the Name field, enter a name for your calculated metric, such as Update handling time (min) (or (min)).
6. In the Formula field, enter the formula below:

   IF ([Changes - Field name] = "Total time spent (sec)") 
   THEN 
   IF (([Changes - Previous value]=NULL OR [Changes - Previous value]="") AND [Changes - New value]!="") 
   THEN NUMBER([Changes - New value])/60
   ELIF (REGEXP_MATCH([Changes - New value], "[0-9]+") AND REGEXP_MATCH([Changes - Previous value], "[0-9]+"))
   THEN(NUMBER([Changes - New value])-NUMBER([Changes - Previous value]))/60
   ENDIF
   ENDIF

   If you want to measure update handling time in hours, use the following formula instead:

   IF ([Changes - Field name] = "Total time spent (sec)") 
   THEN 
   IF (([Changes - Previous value]=NULL OR [Changes - Previous value]="") AND [Changes - New value]!="") 
   THEN NUMBER([Changes - New value])/60/60
   ELIF (REGEXP_MATCH([Changes - New value], "[0-9]+") AND REGEXP_MATCH([Changes - Previous value], "[0-9]+"))
   THEN(NUMBER([Changes - New value])-NUMBER([Changes - Previous value]))/60/60
   ENDIF
   ENDIF

   Tip: If you're working in a language other than English, see this article to help you enter Explore formulas in your language.
7. Click Save.
8. (Optional) Determine which aggregators should be available for the metric. For additional help, see Setting a metric's default and visible aggregators.
   1. In the Metrics panel, click Add.
   2. From the list of attributes, expand the Calculated metrics folder, find your calculated metric, then click the pencil icon () next to it.
   3. In the top-right corner of the Standard calculated metric panel, click Options > Edit aggregators.
   4. Set the following aggregators as visible: SUM, AVG, MIN, MAX, and MED.
   5. (Optional) Change the default aggregator.
   6. Click Save.
9. (Optional) Customize the metric's display format. For additional help, see Customizing the result format.
   1. In the Metrics panel, click Add.
   2. From the list of attributes, expand the Calculated metrics folder, find your calculated metric, then click the pencil icon () next to it.
   3. In the top-right corner of the Standard calculated metric panel, click Options > Edit display format.
   4. In the first drop-down, select Custom.
   5. Customize the metric's display format as needed. For example, you could add the suffix "min" or "hrs," or increase the number of decimal places.
   6. Click Save.

Now that you've created your standard calculated metric, you can use it in other reports in the Support: Updates history dataset. See below for an example report.

Measuring update handling time by agent

In this example report, you'll use the standard calculated metric you created above to produce a graph showing agents with the top ten average handling time.

To create the report

1. In Zendesk Explore, click the Reports () icon.
2. In the Reports library, click New report.
3. On the Select a dataset page, click Support > Support - Updates history, then click New report. The report builder opens.
4. In the Metrics panel, click Add.
5. From the list of metrics, select Calculated metrics > Update handling time (min) (or whatever you named the metric you created above), then click Apply.
6. Change the metric aggregator to AVG, if it's not already.
7. In the Columns panel, click Add.
8. From the list of attributes, select Updater > Updater name, then click Apply.
9. In the Filters panel, click Add.
10. From the list of attributes, select Updater > Updater role, then click Apply.
11. Click the Updater role attribute you just added, select Admin and Agent , then click Apply.
12. In the Filters panel, click Add.
13. From the list of attributes, select Time - Ticket update > Update - Date, then click Apply.
14. Click the Update - Date attribute you just added and filter by the time period you want to see. For help, see Filtering by an attribute in the Filters panel.
15. From the Visualization type menu (), select Bar.
16. (Optional) Show only the top ten users. For additional information, see Creating a top/bottom filter.
    1. Click the Result manipulation menu () and select Top/bottom.
    2. In the Top/bottom panel, select Top and set the number to 10.
    3. Click Apply.
17. (Optional) Adjust the chart colors, labels, and more using the Chart configuration menu (). For help, see Customizing your chart.

You'll end up with a chart that looks something like the following: