Learn how to create a simple list report in Explore.
This article is part of a series and we recommend reading through the articles in the following order:
- Introduction to List Reports
- Creating a Simple List Report (this article)
- Creating a Detailed List Report
- Using Dimensions in List Reports
- Formatting a List Report
If you need to dig into the details of your data, then the List Report is your friend. If you’re unsure whether a list report is right for you, read the Introduction to list reports.
List reports can be as simple as you need or they can be detailed with many different parts. If you’re new to list reports, we recommend starting with something simple, such as a location headcount, before moving into the more detailed variations.
A couple of important points to consider when creating your list reports;
- You will either build a query from scratch or edit an existing query to create the list report.
- Your metric selection will determine what other dimensions, columns and information to include or exclude in the list report.
- Queries should specify a time period.
- This arrow > symbol indicates that there is more information nested beneath the heading in a dropdown menu. This is how you will select your levels.
Let’s start with a simple list report.
Create a Simple List Report
One of the quickest and easiest list reports that you can create is a simple location Headcount (EOP), or your equivalent grouping. Below is an example of Headcount (EOP) for Germany with the locations of Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich.
So, let’s walk through the steps to recreate this list report.
Step 1. Navigate to the Explore tab
- Start at the Explore tab.
- Then select List from the Visualization Type dropdown menu.
Step 2. Choose your Metrics
- From the Metrics menu, click on the > next to Headcount* to open the dropdown menu.
* Your instance may use a different term for your grouping so select your equivalent.
- From here you can either scroll down the list until you find Headcount (EOP) or type Headcount (EOP) into the search box to find this metric*.
* Your instance may use a different term for your grouping so select your equivalent.
Step 3. Choose a Time Period
- You should choose a Time Period for your list report.
- When you start with a blank query, there should be a default time period dimension already in the selection panel. You can swap the default dimension out for a different time dimension if needed, e.g. change from Calendar dimension to Fiscal dimension, but we do recommend including a time dimension to ensure the expected time period is queried.
- Once you have the right dimension, then make a node selection with options ranging from a day, a month, a quarter, a year, multiple years, and a bunch of time periods in between.
- For this example, click on the filter icon at the end of the row of Time Periods.
- Then you can either scroll or input the time period into the search box. Let’s choose the node 2020.
- Beneath the > is another dropdown with options to include or exclude specific Quarters. The check mark works to include the selection while the cross mark excludes the selection. For the purposes of this example, select the entire year 2020.
Step 4. Select the Dimensions
- Next you will need to select the Dimensions. Dimensions will filter your metric data.
- For this example, we will open the dropdown menu > Employment and then select Country followed by Location. You should select Country first and then Locations.
- When you click on the filter icon at the end of the row, you will open the menu of filter nodes to choose from. In this example, when we click on Country, we have the options of the countries shown in the image below. The exact list that you will see in your One Model instance is determined by your data, so it may be similar or vastly different to the list you see here.
- For this example we will select Level 1 so that we see the node name in our query, and filter to Germany only by clicking on the check mark. Click Close to come back to the dimensions menu.
- To view where employees are located on the city level, we need to add the Location dimension. To do this, click on the filter icon alongside Location to open the menu.
Again, the exact list that you will see in your instance is determined by your data. Generally, the levels under location refer to;
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- Level 1 - Region such as Europe, America
- Level 2 - Country
- Level 3 - State, and;
- Level 4 - City
- In this example, we will select Level 4 which will show the Cities that the data relates to.
Step 5. Run Query
- From here you can select Close to return to the query builder or you can click Run query to create your list report. Your result should look like this:
Step 6. Pin your Query
Now you have a few different options for your list report.
- Click on the pin icon to open the menu:
- Click on the the arrow icon to export your list report as a CSV file.
- If you select Pin to a New Storyboard, this description box will appear:
Complete the details and click Save and go to the Storyboard. This will take you to your new Storyboard with the details you entered - the name of the Storyboard, page name, and the tile title as shown below.
Your list report appears here in this Storyboard as a table. Using the Storyboard settings and modify mode you can make further changes and edits to the visualizations such as tile style.
- For the purposes of this example, let’s select Pin to Existing Storyboard as we have a Workforce Profile Storyboard that we want to add this list report to.
Again, we will click Save and go to the Storyboard which will take us to the Workforce Profile Storyboard.
Highlighted in the middle is the list report we just created. On either side are examples of two more list reports for different regions - North America and Asia-Pacific so you can see some of the different ways you can use simple list reports to present data.
Drillthrough
If a user has permission to drill-through, then they can click on the highlighted numbers to dive deeper into the data.
Query Too Large to Display
- Your list report can contain multiple data points, and if you create a list report with a large volume, more than 1,000 rows of data, you will not be able to view all of your query results on-screen. This doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t create these types of list reports, it just means that;
- If your list report generates more than 1,000 rows of data, You will see this message pop up:
- If you do see this message, you have a couple of options to choose from:
- You can choose to refine the query to reduce your results to less than 1,000 rows to view your complete list report with reliable results on-screen, or
- If you don’t wish to refine your query, you can export the entire list report to a CSV file.
Now that you have created a simple list report, you’re ready to move on to detailed list reports.
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Creating a Detailed List Report (next article)
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