The Data Explorer Metric Builder is a powerful new way to build metrics in Grow. It allows you to quickly get insights, navigate your data, and use Dashboard Filters to slice and dice all your metrics at the same time from the dashboard. The Data Explorer and the Dashboard Filters were released in beta during our Escondido launch in Jan 2020.
Since every metric's data and use cases are unique, we cannot automatically convert existing metrics that are using Basic Builder to the new Data Explorer. However, you do not have to rebuild Basic Builder metrics to take advantage of all of the Data Explorer features. Here is the recommended process to convert metrics in your account:
- Turn on Data Explorer
- Remove Transforms on the Data Tab that limit your data.
- Update your Chart Selections
- Select the aggregation you want on each data series and the grouping granularity
- Apply any Chart Transforms to replace Transforms on the Data Tab
We will cover these steps in the following sections.
Turn on Data Explorer
Although Data Explorer is the default Metric Builder, any metric built in Basic Builder will stay in Basic Builder until you manually turn on Data Explorer. To turn on Data Explorer, check the Use Data Explorer box in the bottom left corner on the Chart Tab of the Metric Builder.
The "Use Data Explorer" setting is only available for Chart Types supported in Data Explorer.
Remove Transforms that Aggregate or Limit the Data
Since Data Explorer automatically aggregates your Chart selections, you can remove any transforms on the Data Tab that aggregate or limit your data. For example, using a Filter Transform to only display data for the Last 30 Days. Or a Group By Transform to aggregate your data.
All of the Transforms in the Analyze section of the Transform menu on the Data Tab can be applied in Data Explorer:
Update your Chart Selections
Select data series and grouping columns
When you remove Transforms on the Data Tab, it is likely that the column names of the chart selections will change. You will want to reselect the correct data series and grouping columns from the data table.
Select date column
You will also need to tell Grow which Date column in your data tab you want Data Explorer to reference for filtering.
Define aggregations and grouping granularity
Once you have updated your Chart Selections, you will want to make sure you are applying the correct aggregations and grouping granularity. If your data series is a numeric column, the aggregation will default to Sum. If your grouping column is a date, the granularity will default to a daily grouping.
Apply Chart Transforms
You can apply different chart transforms to replace the transforms you removed on the Data Tab. For example, if you remove a Date Filter for the last 30 days, you can update the Date Range Transform in Data Explorer so your Chart only displays data for the last 30 days. If you removed a Pivot Transform, you can Slice your Chart by the column source selection on the Data Tab.
With any update, we try to find ways to streamline and automate the process of using the updated features. However, since each metric is set up differently and each company's use of their data is unique, we cannot automatically change each of the settings and assume each metric is handling the data in the same way. The main areas that we cannot automate for each user is how the data is aggregated, which date columns to use, and which transforms are crucial to the definition of their data.