Creating standard calculated metrics and attributes

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Explore's built-in metrics and attributes give you great flexibility to create reports. However, every business is different, and eventually you might want to create reports using metrics and attributes that aren't included in Explore by default. To bridge this gap, you can create standard calculated metrics and standard calculated attributes.

This article contains the following sections:

Understanding standard calculated metrics and attributes
Creating a standard calculated metric
Creating a standard calculated attribute
Next steps

Understanding standard calculated metrics and attributes

Standard calculated metrics and attributes allow you to create new metrics and attributes by combining default metrics and attributes with a variety of formulas, mathematical functions, and more. For example, you could create a standard calculated metric to return a per-hour cost, or create a standard calculated attribute to return a value based on a certain condition.

Standard calculated metrics and attributes are located in the Calculations menu () in the right sidebar of the Explore report builder.

As with default metrics and attributes, you need to add standard calculated metrics and attributes to your report after creating them (see Using metrics and attributes in reports).

Tip: Adding a standard calculated metric or attribute to your report first filters your results before they’re processed. As a result, standard calculated metrics and attributes can help speed up loading times for large datasets.

Creating a standard calculated metric

Standard calculated metrics allow you to create new, custom metrics to add to your reports. For example, you could create a standard calculated metric that uses the following formula to return only tickets received through the email channel:

IF ([Ticket channel]="Email") THEN [Ticket ID] ENDIF

To create a standard calculated metric

In Explore, create a new report or open an existing one.
Click the Calculations menu () and select Standard calculated metric.
In the Name field, enter a descriptive name for your new metric.

Note: Don’t include quotation marks, parentheses, or square brackets in the name. Doing so will cause errors if the metric is referenced in another calculated metric or attribute, or in a result metric calculation.
In the Formula field, type or paste the formula that the metric should use. If you type your formula, you can click the auto-complete suggestions as they appear.
Alternatively, you can click the following fields to select elements to add to your formula:
- Fields > Select a field: Shows a list of existing metrics and attributes, including default and custom.
- Functions > Add: Shows a list of available functions. For more information about each one, see Explore functions reference.
If your formula uses existing calculated metrics and attributes and you don't want to affect their original calculations, select Compute separately .
Click Save. The metric is saved to the dataset you selected when you started the report.

You can now add this calculated metric to your report. When you click Add in the Metrics panel, you'll find your metric in the Calculated metrics folder.

Note: When you add a calculated metric to your report, the report shows all results by default, including null and zero results. To see only the results that apply to your calculated metric, add a metric filter to remove zero and null results.

Creating a standard calculated attribute

Standard calculated attributes allow you to create new, custom attributes to add to your reports. For example, you could create a standard calculated attribute that groups results based on defined values. See Creating standard calculated metrics and attributes: Hands-on tutorial.

To create a standard calculated attribute

In Explore, create a new report or open an existing one.
Click the Calculations menu () and select Standard calculated attribute.
In the Name field, enter a descriptive name for your new attribute.

Note: Don’t include quotation marks in the name. Doing so will cause errors if the attribute is referenced in another calculated metric or attribute.
In the Formula field, type or paste the formula that the metric should use. If you type your formula, you can click the auto-complete suggestions as they appear.
Alternatively, you can click the following fields to select elements to add to your formula:
- Fields > Select a field: Lists the existing metrics and attributes, including default and custom.
- Functions > Add: Lists the available functions. For more information about each one, see Explore functions reference.
Configure the additional settings as needed:
- Computed from: Lists the metrics and attributes you can use in your standard calculated attribute.
  
  Important: Although you can select standard calculated metrics from the list, doing so can lead to inaccurate results and is not supported. Use only default metrics in your standard calculated attributes.
- Sort like time attribute: If your calculated attribute represents a date, this option places your date values in the correct order.
  
  Note: This option applies only to single attributes. Combining attributes, such as adding a year to the end of a month, results in alphabetical sorting instead of chronological.
Click Save. The attribute is saved to the dataset you selected when you started the report.

You can now add this calculated attribute to your report. When you click Add in the Columns, Rows, Explosions, or Filters panels, you'll find your attribute in the Calculated attributes folder.

Next steps

Now that you understand the basics of creating standard calculated metrics and attributes, you're ready to put this knowledge into practice. See Creating standard calculated metrics and attributes: Hands-on tutorial to practice creating a calculated attribute by working through an example.