Hi everyone, I’m Rob Stack and I’m a Senior Technical Writer on the Zendesk docs team. Much of my time is taken up working on documentation for Explore and my aim is to make it as easy for you to learn about as possible.

I recently did a short presentation for an Insights to Explore best practices Q and A and I thought I'd post a summary of it here for reference.

In this presentation, we’ll examine a simple Insights report, and then create the same report in Explore. Then, we’ll point you to a bunch of resources that can really help you get started with Explore.

So, let’s pick a simple report. I want to know how many tickets were created from each channel (like Talk, Chat, Email, etc.) this month. I have this report in Insights and want to recreate it in Explore. But first …..

STOP!

Before you get started, there’s something you should check. Explore has a whole bunch of pre-built reports and it’s possible the report you want already exists. You have two choices here:

1. Open up the dashboards and have a look around. There are dashboards for Support, Talk, Chat, and Guide.
2. Read the Viewing and using dashboards article in the docs (https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/360004062394). You’ll find information about all of the pre-built reports in there.

Let’s assume you didn’t find the report you want and need to create it.

GO!

Here’s the report in Insights. Let’s look at how it’s made up.

You can see here it contains three elements, What, How, and a filter. It’s set up as a column chart.

The "what" is known as a metric, in other words, a measure of something. If you click What and scroll down the list, you’ll see the metric is the number of tickets in your Zendesk account.

The “how” is known as an attribute, and you’ll use this to slice the metric value you returned into more useful results, in this case, the Ticket channel. Click How, In the attributes list, you’ll see that Ticket via is selected which represents the ticket channel

Finally, click Filter. You’ll see that the filter selected to restrict the results is the current calendar month.

Now you have everything you need to recreate this report in Explore.

In Explore, set up a new query using the Support: Tickets dataset (most ticket-related data is in this dataset). If you’re not sure, take a look at our metrics and attributes articles to find what you need:

• Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Support
• Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Guide
• Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Talk
• Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Chat

In the new query, let’s first add the tickets metric, our “What” from Insights. In the Metrics panel, click Add, open up Tickets, and click Tickets. Click Apply. Explore shows the number of tickets in your account.

Now let’s add the ticket channel attribute, our “How” from Insights. In the Columns panel, click Add. Open up Ticket, and click Ticket channel. Finally, click Apply.

You’ll see that Explore automatically chooses the best visualization for this chart, but if you’d like the same column chart as the Insights version, click the visualization menu and choose Column.

Finally, just like with the Insights report, we want to filter the results to only show tickets created in the current month.

In the Filters panel, click Add, open up Time - Ticket created, click Ticket created - Date, then click Apply.

Now, click the filter you just added so you can set its limits. Click Edit date ranges, in the Date range list, choose this month, then click Apply. You’ll see the chart change to only display tickets created this month.

Now what?

If you’re new to Explore, it’s a great idea to spend some time browsing the articles in our getting started section (https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/360004062194). Once you’re familiar with the basics, you’ll find links to everything you need to get the best from Explore.

Finally, I spend a LOT of time writing, editing, and updating the Explore documentation. If there’s ever something you’re not sure about or need help with, don’t hesitate to leave a comment in the article. One of our great Explore experts will get back to you as soon as they can!

More resources

• Getting started with Zendesk Explore
• Zendesk Explore resources
• Overview of the Zendesk Support dashboard
• Overview of the Zendesk Talk dashboard
• Overview of the Zendesk Guide dashboard
• Overview of the Zendesk Chat dashboard
• Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Support
• Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Guide
• Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Talk
• Metrics and attributes for Zendesk Chat