When you are creating a new metric and after you have selected the data source you want to use, or when you are editing an existing metric, you will be brought to the Metric Builder.
If you are building a new metric, you will see the Data tab, which is where you can select reports, add transforms, and generally organize your data. If you are editing an existing metric you will first see the Chart tab (where you can select the data to be displayed and edit formatting options), but you can click on Data at the top center to get to the Data tab.
There are four main areas in the Data tab:
- Transform Pipeline
- Working Area
- Chart Preview
- Data Area
Transform Pipeline and Working Area
To organize your data to get it ready to use in a chart, you will add transforms to the transform pipeline. You can add multiple transforms and rearrange them as needed. The options in the working area will change depending on what transform you have selected. Learn more about what transforms are and how to use them.
Reports from each data source will have different options and criteria to select in the working area. Search our help center to find more information about each data source.
There are some advanced settings that are available for any data source. Most of the time you will not need to use them, but sometimes they will come in handy:
Table Date Format
If your data isn't in YYYY-MM-DD format, that can sometimes cause issues when using SQL and some other features and transforms. This option will let you specify a column to reformat the date data. See the example below.
Rotate Table Data
Sometimes you will want to switch the rows to be columns and the columns to be rows to make it easier to use certain transforms.
Add Column Headers
If your data has any blank or duplicate column headers and you are unable to edit the original data, you can add another row at the top of your data with generic headers (i.e., columnA, columnB). You can then use the Rename Columns transforms to change the names of each column and the filter transform to remove the old header row.
Chart Preview
If you have selected any data to be displayed in the chart, you will see the preview of that chart in this area at the bottom left. As you add and edit transforms, you will be able to see how it affects the chart. If there is no data selected yet, you can click on Build Chart or Create Your Chart to switch to the Chart tab where you can begin making the chart.
Data Area
Under the working area you will see the data that you are working with. You can have multiple reports from several data sources (see below), and you can see the data from each report by clicking on its report tab (i.e., Report 1, Report 2). You can see the data source that the report is pulling from in its data settings in the transform pipeline.
You can change the way Grow reads the data in a specific column. Sometimes Grow might misidentify the data as a number when it is a date (or vice versa), so you can tell Grow if a column's data is text, a number, a date, or date/time. You can only edit it in the "Data Settings" step in the transform pipeline at the top right.
This functionality will soon be phased out in lieu of a new Data Typing transform. Note that you currently can't use this functionality on any reports that pull in data from a Dataset or a Warehouse table.
If you want to make the data area bigger so you can see more of the data or if you want to make the working area bigger to edit a transform's settings, you can click and drag on the gray divider line to resize that area.
Any column header names that include double quotations marks (for example, "Phone 2") are not compatible with many transforms and Data Explorer. Please remove double-quotations from the data before pulling it into Grow, using the Tag Transform, or using SQL to clean the data.
Report Menu
Click on the down arrow next to the report number to see a list of options for that report.
Add/Edit Label: You can add a label that will display directly under "Report 1" to help identify each report.
Duplicate Report: This will make an exact copy of the report, including all of the transforms and settings, and place it after any other reports.
Export raw data: Download a CSV file of the original data from the data source before any transforms are applied.
Export with Transforms: Download a CSV of the data after all of the current transforms are applied.
Remove Report: Delete the report. A dialog box will pop up to confirm your choice before it is deleted.
Show pre-transformed data: When this box is checked, the data displayed will be the original data before transforms were added. This can help you confirm any changes made to the data settings or look through the available data that might be hidden after a transform was applied.
Data preview: To help Grow load and display your data faster, only the first 300 rows are shown by default. The rest of the data is still there and will still show up in the chart. If you want to see the full report, uncheck this box to see more than 300 rows. If the data in the report has less than 300 rows to start with, this option will be unavailable.
Add Report
If you want to add another report from any data source, click on the Add Report button at the far right of the data area. You will then select the data source and report settings like you did with the first report.
If you click on the down arrow next to that, you will see a list of options for special reports:
Spreadsheet Functions: This adds a blank spreadsheet to your report which you can use to add custom data or perform calculations between reports. It is basically a very rudimentary Excel sheet. Learn more about how to use Spreadsheet Functions.
Joined Report: You can combine two reports together based on a common field (like a date or ID number) to perform more advanced analytics. Learn more about how to use Joined Reports.
Master SQL: This allows you to write your own custom SQL query using data from all of the reports. Learn more about how to use the Master SQL report.
Add Report: Will add another report from any data source. This is the same as clicking the main Add Report button.
Create Dataset
If you want to save your reports (with the current transforms added) as a dataset so you can use that data for other metrics, click on the "Create Dataset" button at the far right. You can then give your new dataset a name and description. If there's only one report you want to use as the dataset, you can select it as the Primary Report. Learn more about creating datasets.
Column Transform Shortcuts
Instead of clicking on Add Transform in the transform pipeline and editing the settings from scratch, you can save a couple clicks and just click on the column letter to see a list of transforms you can apply to that column.
