Data Explorer

Last updated: September 07, 2024 00:52

Data Explorer is a custom reporting tool that helps you analyze how your customers interact with your product using visualizations and breakdowns of usage data in a single report.

With the ability to customize measurements, compare behavior by segments and properties, and compare behavior over time, Data Explorer helps you uncover usage behavior and patterns so that you can use these insights to make improvements to your product and customer experience.

This article reviews how to build and analyze a report in Data Explorer.

Decide what you want to explore

Data Explorer helps you examine product usage to understand how users engage with your product. We thus recommend that you start with a question that you'd like to answer or an area of the product that you'd like to investigate.

Events are the central part of Data Explorer. Events refer to tagged Feature clicks, Page views, Track Events, and guide views. Consider how you want to analyze visitor or account usage related to one or more specific events.

Common ways of approaching Data Explorer include:

Analyzing a large set of events, such as what the most-used or least-used feature is in an app.
Comparing usage, whether by timeframe or segment, for a subset of events, such as differences in behavior associated with an event, like feature usage by region.

You can come to Data Explorer with general visitor or account questions (for example, how many clients exist in each industry using your application) or specific event-based questions (for example, what industry uses a specific feature the most or least).

Some additional examples include:

Which revenue tier uses the “CSV download” feature the most?
Which roles used the Dashboard page the most in the past 30 days?
What are the five most-used features by different browsers in the past 90 days?
What features are most commonly used by paid users?
What are the top 10 buttons used across my application?
What are the most used Features, Pages, or Track Events within a specific product area?

Once you have an idea of what you want to explore, it's time to build your report. Open the Behavior menu from the left-side menu, and then select Create report > Data Explorer.

Alternatively, you can navigate to Behavior > Data Explorer to view all existing Data Explorer reports in your subscription, and then select Create Data Explorer report in the top-right corner of the page.

Add event groups

Define your query inputs with one or two event groups. An event group can represent any of the following:

Activity across one or more apps.
Activity across one or more events.
Views across one or more guides.

To get started, choose Select events in the Query section.

This opens the Select activity side panel with several filters to choose from.

In the first dropdown menu, Events is automatically selected, which allows you to select any Features, Pages, and Track Events in each of your apps.

You can filter the events that display for selection by modifying the Event types, Product Areas, and Apps selections. A potential use case example for viewing specific event data is to assess app-wide behavior differences between segments or device type (an event property) over time. You could also choose events that show a given product team's adoption rates for a new feature by user segmentation.
If you don't want to query specific Feature click events, Page load events, or Track Events, you can use the first dropdown menu to instead select Any activity to measure all events that occurred within your selected apps. A potential use case example for viewing any activity is to view what device types are trending over time (rather than as an aggregation in the existing device type dashboard widget).
To view usage data related to guides, select Guide views from the first dropdown menu. A potential use case example for viewing guide data is to see if there's a potential correlation between guide views having an impact on existing feature adoption compared to before a guide was launched.

When you're done selecting your events, select Apply in the bottom-right corner of the side panel. All selected events populate in the Query section as part of your first event group, labeled A.

Optionally, name your event group to help improve data contextualization for other Pendo users who view your report. To name your event group, select Name event group, enter your desired text, then press < Enter > on your keyboard or select outside of the field to save your entry. This name appears on axes labels, in the breakdown table, and in the formula selection.

Tip: Data Explorer supports up to two event groups for data comparison in a report. If you want to know how visitor usage is growing over time respective to the total number of Feature clicks or Page views, you can create two groups and use both the Total events and Number of unique visitors measurements, which are explained in Set measurements.

To add a second event group, select Add Event Group and repeat the guidelines above to create a second group, labeled B.

To edit an event group, select Edit using the pencil icon to the right of the group. To delete an event group, select Delete using the trash icon to the right of the group.

You can also select Add or remove events at the bottom of your event group to modify your event selection.

Set measurements

Once you select all relevant events, choose a specific measurement for the report to use for each event group. The default is Total events.

Each measurement option calculates the following:

Total events. Total number of event generations related to the event group, such as total Feature clicks, total Page views, or total Track Event calls.
Visitor event average. Average number of event generations per visitor associated with the event group.
Account event average. Average number of event generations per account associated with the event group.
Median events. Median number of event generations related to the event group.
Number of unique visitors. Total number of unique visitors who generated events related to the event group.
Percent of visitors. Total percentage of visitors who generated events related to the event group. This includes all visitors within the specified segment who used any of your subscription's apps during the specified time period.
Number of unique accounts. Total number of unique accounts that generated events related to the event group.
Percent of accounts. Total percentage of accounts that generated events related to the event group. This includes all accounts within the specified segment that used any of your subscription's apps during the specified time period.
Error clicks. Instances where a Feature click caused a client-side JavaScript error within 100 milliseconds of the click. Only available if your Pendo plan includes Session Replay.
Rage clicks. Instances where repetitive clicks occurred in a focused area of your UI within a short timeframe. Only available if your Pendo plan includes Session Replay.
U-turns. Instances where a visitor navigated to a Page and returned to the previous Page within seven seconds. Only available if your Pendo plan includes Session Replay.

Note: Measurements vary based on the filters chosen in the Select activity side panel.

Apply event property filters

Event property filtering is one way to filter usage data by specific properties that are captured at the time an event is generated.

Event properties are data attached to Feature click events, Page load events, and Track Events. Browser name, browser version, device type, and operating system are event properties collected by default on all events. You can also define custom event properties when editing a Feature in the Visual Design Studio, such as cart value, location or region, visitor source, or any other custom value available in your application at the time of a click.

With event property filters, you can look at or compare a subset of usage data. This could be for a specific device (like mobile or desktop), specific browser (like Chrome or Firefox), or specific event property (which is specific to your product and the event you’re trying to filter on). For example, a car rental company might want to filter by airport, whereas a retail store might want to filter by product types in cart at purchase time.

Event property filters can help you answer questions like what the most-used Features are for visitors who used Chrome over the past 90 days or how many visitors viewed a specific Page on their mobile device over the last 30 days.

You can add event property filters at the event level or at the report level, including automatically-captured device data, historical metadata, and any custom event properties configured for click events and Track Events.

Note: Custom event properties aren't supported with Any activity filters.

Add event-level filters

If you want to apply different filters on certain events or only want to apply filters on a subset of the selected events, you should apply event property filters to each individual event.

To add an event-level event property filter, select the filter icon located to the right of the relevant event.
Select an event property from the dropdown menu that populates below the event, then select the correct operator. The default is equals to (=).
Select one or more property values from the dropdown menu. Note that any additional values selected for this specific filter are considered an “OR” rule.
To add another event property filter, select Add Filter, then repeat steps 2 to 4 for each new filter. Note that any new filters added to the event are considered an “AND” rule.
Repeat steps 1 to 4 for each event you’d like to filter with specific event properties.
If you need to remove an event property filter, select the X icon located to the right of the filter.

Add report-level filters

Report-level filters allow you to apply event property filters to all events selected for the query. Any filters applied at the report level override event property filters applied on individual events.

To add a report-level filter, find the Report Filters section, and then select Add Filter.
Select an event property from the dropdown menu that populates below the event, then select the correct operator. The default is equals to (=).
Select one or more event property values from the dropdown menu. Note that any additional values selected for this specific filter are considered an “OR” rule.
Repeat steps 1 to 3 for each filter you'd like to add to the report. Each new filter is considered an "AND" rule.
If you need to remove an event property filter, select the X icon located to the right of the filter.

Add formulas

Formulas allow you to apply sum and division functions to your selected events. This lets you calculate total usage per product area and compare usage between product areas. For more information about common use cases for formulas, see Formula use cases.

When you apply a sum or ratio function, all usage counts across the specified event group are totaled or divided up and presented as a single line in the chart visualization and a single row in the breakdown table.

When you apply a relative percentage division function, the usage count for each event within each relevant event group is totaled and presented as multiple lines in the chart visualization and multiple rows in the breakdown table.

To add a formula to your query, select Add Formula.
Using the dropdown menu, select the formula that best matches the question you're trying to answer. The available options vary depending on the number of event groups and the specific measurements you selected for each event group.
- Sum. Sums help you get an aggregate understanding of how a specific set of events are used. A common use case is summing the clicks of multiple buttons that have the same or similar functions, such as an email app that contains three different buttons to send an email. You can also calculate the number of users who interact with all events within a specific Product Area.
- Ratio. This division function helps you understand the relationship between two events. A common use case for this division involves aggregating your selected events and performing ratio calculations. This allows you to examine the ratio of users who interact with a specific Feature when they view a specific Page.
- Relative percentage. This division function helps you understand individual event usage in relation to a larger group of events. It takes the total measurement of each event within an event group and divides that by the sum of all events within an event group. A common use case for this division involves looking at the relative number of Page views or Feature clicks over the total number of active visitors within an app if you have multiple apps.
If you selected a division function, the division is calculated as a percentage by default. If you'd prefer a decimal as the output, select Decimal from the dropdown menu.
If desired, enter a name for the formula. This name appears in the legend and as a table row. If you don't enter a name, the formula name shows as it's displayed below the question.
To add a new formula, repeat steps 1 to 4.

Apply segments

By default, the Everyone segment is selected. You can change this to view data for a specific set of users by selecting the Segment dropdown menu, then choosing the appropriate group of users you’d like to analyze.

If the segment you’d like to use doesn't currently exist, you have two options:

Create New Segment. This appears at the bottom of the dropdown menu, and once created, the segment is added to the list of segments under People > Segments.
Create Draft Segment. This appears next to the Segment dropdown menu and creates a draft segment that is only used for this report, making it unavailable to use outside of this Data Explorer report.

For more information about creating segments, see Segments.

Create draft segment

Draft segments allow you to build a segment and run your report without adding a new segment to your subscription or changing an existing segment in the subscription. Depending on other selections in the query builder, you can add up to five draft segments.

To get started, select Create Draft Segment to populate the segment rule builder.

By default, the segment is named Draft Segment A. If you’d like to change the name of the segment, select the name and enter a new value. Make your selections in the rule builder, and then continue to the next section.

Tip: If you decide that you want to save the draft segment to your subscription to use outside of this report, tap the Save as Segment icon in the top-right corner of the segment builder. Once selected, you can update the segment name and visibility before saving it to the subscription.

Compare segments

If you have only one date range specified and five or fewer events selected, you can add up to five segments for further comparison. When you apply multiple segments, the query is repeated for each segment.

To add an additional segment, select Compare Segments and choose the appropriate segment or create a new segment.

To remove a chosen segment, select the X located to the right of the segment.

Categorize with groupings

The Group By option allows you to group your data by visitor metadata (like role or region), account metadata (like industry or account tier), or an event property (like browser name or device type). This is typically used to easily understand usage trends across different cohorts based on metadata or event properties. With groupings, you don’t need to create a separate segment for each group of visitors/accounts you want to compare—allowing you to uncover insights quickly and efficiently.

Without a grouping applied, the report summarizes your usage data by combining all metadata and event properties for each event. If you apply a grouping, the report shows you separate usage quantities for each grouping/event pair. For example, if you have one event group for a Feature called “Add New button” that is measured by “Total events” and you use the Group By visitor metadata option to show user role, the breakdown table contains a row with each unique visitor’s role and tells you how many times they clicked the Add New button in the given time period. You can group by a maximum of 50,000 events.

To categorize your data with a grouping, select Group By.
From the dropdown menu, choose the type of data you'd like to group by.
- Visitor Metadata. Visitor-level metadata and Account ID. Available fields are listed under Settings > Data Mappings.
- Account Metadata. Account-level metadata. Available fields are listed under Settings > Data Mappings.
- Historical Metadata. Visitor or account metadata that's enabled as historical. For more information, see Historical metadata.
- Event Property. Data associated with a Feature click, Page view, or Track Event at the time that event was interacted with. Available fields vary depending on the type of event property.
- Parent Account Metadata. Parent Account-level metadata. Available fields are listed under Settings > Data Mappings.
Select the specific field you'd like to group by from the second dropdown menu.
If you'd like to add multiple groupings, select Add Group By and repeat step 3 for each new grouping. Up to five groupings are supported.
- To adjust the order of the columns as they appear in the table, simply select the dotted icon to the left of the grouping and drag the field to your desired placement. Multi-column sorting isn't currently supported in the breakdown table.
- When you run the report, each grouping value is added as a separate column in the breakdown table.
- If you have 10 or fewer events selected, the breakdown table shows up to 10,000 rows per event. If you have more than 10 events selected, the table shows up to 10,000 rows across all events. This means that we'd show up to 50,000 rows of data for one event with five groupings.

To remove an applied grouping, select the X located to the right of the selected Group By value.

Considerations when grouping

When using Group By to group your report data, there are a few considerations to keep in mind:

Groupings are only supported if you select only one segment and one date range.
Metadata and event property values must be categorized as string or boolean. Data categorized as text, number, date, or list don't appear in the dropdown menu.
When grouping, the report returns all possible values of the selected metadata or event property field and includes that in the report, even if it doesn't have data within the given constraints.
When applying a segment and grouping together, all Group By values appear in the table regardless of segment. For example, if you're grouping by Account ID, then all Account ID values are shown. However, the values outside the segment display as 0s.
When you have more than 10 events selected, the breakdown table or CSV export only displays 10,000 rows of data. If you're dealing with 10 or fewer events, the breakdown table can show more than 10,000 rows of data, but for better performance, we recommend exporting to CSV for more efficient data analysis.
While there's no limit to the number of values you can group by, our data reporting stops once we detect more than 10,000 unique Group By values. This limit applies to all events if your query involves more than 10 events, and it applies to each event individually if you're dealing with 10 or fewer events. If this limit is reached, Pendo stops capturing unique values, and this data isn't included in the breakdown table to avoid displaying incorrect data. To avoid reaching this limit, or if you suspect you've already reached it, consider applying more precise filters or groupings and then re-run the report.

Define date ranges

From the Date Range dropdown menus, select the timeframe you’d like to analyze usage of the selected events and select the data breakdown within the date range. The data is aggregated according to the breakdown frequency in the data visualization.

The date range options available in the first dropdown menu are as follows:

Today
Yesterday
Last 7 days (doesn't include today)
Last 30 days (doesn't include today)
Last 90 days (doesn't include today)
Last 180 days (doesn't include today)
Custom Date Range (max of 180 days)

For the data breakdown, you have the following options in the second dropdown menu:

Hourly. Default for one-day selection.
Daily. Available for 2–59 day date ranges.
Weekly. Available for 14–180 day date ranges (Sunday–Saturday).
Monthly. Available for 60–180 day date ranges.

Compare date ranges

If you have five or fewer events selected, you can add a second date range for further comparison. Comparing date ranges repeats the query for a different time period and allows you to compare your analysis for the same group at different times in one data visualization.

To do this, simply select Compare Date Ranges and choose the appropriate values. The second date range must be the same duration and breakdown as the first date range selected. The default selection is the date range immediately before your first date range.

When comparing date ranges, the chart displays the previous period with a dashed pattern so that you can differentiate between the current and previous data sets.

To cancel the date range comparison, select the X located to the right of the dropdown menus.

Run your report

When you’re finished building your query, select Run to create your report.

Tip: The fewer events and filters applied, the quicker the report loads.

Once the report loads, the Chart and Breakdown sections populate with a visualization and the raw data used to generate the chart.

Analyze the chart

The left and right Y-axes correspond to the event group measurements defined in your query. If your query has only one event group, only the left Y-axis is used.

The X-axis of the chart corresponds to the selected date range.

The legend displays beneath the chart, which populates up to 10 events. If you select an event from the legend, it hides the event data from the chart. To add the event data back into the chart, simply select it again. You can also modify which events appear in the chart using the dropdown menu in the top-right corner of the chart and the table in the Breakdown section.

If you have formulas added to your query, the chart displays the formula data. If you'd like to see data for individual events instead, consider removing any applied formulas.

Modify the chart

You can adjust both the chart type and view to meet your needs.

Adjust the chart type. In the top-left of the Chart section, you can update the type of chart that displays by selecting the dropdown menu and selecting a new chart type: line, area, column, bar, and donut. If you have two event groups selected, you can choose the chart type for each event group.

The available options vary depending on your query. If an option is grayed out, you can hover over the option to read why it’s unavailable for selection.

Adjust the chart view. Using the dropdown menu in the top-right corner of the chart, choose which data displays in the chart. The two options are as follows:

Top 10 values (or Top 10 formulas if you have a formula applied) uses the top ten Summary values in the breakdown table. These values update dynamically after each report run.
Custom visibility allows you to choose the values that display in the table by selecting the eye icons in the breakdown table.

Interact with the data

To view additional information, hover over a data point in the plot area to view the corresponding date and quantity. For line, area, and column charts, you can also view trending information based on the previous datapoint. If the trending information is "N/A", this indicates that the previous value was 0.

If you select a data point, a side panel opens that lists the specific visitors and accounts included in the quantity of that specific data point. By default, the table in this side panel shows data by Visitor ID and Account ID.

If you want to change the metadata values that display for visitors or accounts, select the Filter icon next to the first column in the table.

This substitutes the Visitor or Account ID with the new value and doesn't recalculate the data or quantities displayed in the side panel. When changed, the setting applies until the report is closed or the metadata field is changed again.

If you want to export the data in the side panel, select Download CSV below the table.

If desired, you can include additional metadata to the CSV by selecting Add Metadata and selecting a value from the dropdown menu. Once you choose your desired metadata, select Generate CSV to download the file to your device.

You can also hover over a label in the legend, located below the chart, to highlight the associated data in the chart.

Download the chart

If you want to download the chart as a PNG image file, select the Download PNG icon in the top-right corner of the Chart section.

View the breakdown

The Breakdown section contains a table that summarizes the data shown in the chart.

Above the breakdown table, there's a toggle to easily filter out rows with no activity or events. You can also use the search field to quickly find a specific data point.

Update the chart view

In the first column of the breakdown table, you can find a Show in chart icon in each row that represents whether the associated data displays in the chart. Up to 10 events populate in the X-axis of the chart. By default, these are the first 10 events sorted by the Summary column in the table in descending order.

To update which events display in the chart, choose Custom visibility with the dropdown menu located in the top-right of the chart, then select Show in chart using the eye icon next to each appropriate event. If you have formulas in your query, you must have Custom visibility selected in the top-right corner of the chart to view individual event data in the chart.

If 10 events are already visible, you must hide one of these events before you can select a new event to display.

Understand the breakdown summary

The values in the Summary column of the breakdown table reflect the total counts based on the Measure you selected for the event group across the selected date range.

It's important to note that the numbers in the columns located to the right of the Summary column might not add up to the Summary count since this count depends on the selected measure.

When measuring by Total events, the Summary count includes all event interactions within the date range. The totals across the date range do total up to the Summary count in this instance.

When measuring by Number of unique visitors or Number of unique accounts, the Summary count might not match the total of each preceding column because it is looking at unique usage.

To better understand this, consider the following example:

You're reporting on the Number of unique visitors that used a specific Feature across a two-week date range.
In the first week, two visitors clicked the Feature: Visitor A and Visitor B. The total that shows in the breakdown table for the first week is 2.
In the second week, two visitors clicked the Feature: Visitor A and Visitor C. The total that shows in the breakdown table for the second week is 2.
Even though the totals over the date range sum up to 4, the Summary column shows a total of 3 since Visitor A is a single unique visitor and is only counted once.

Understand groupings

When organizing your data with a Group By value, the breakdown table returns all possible values of your selected grouping option (visitor metadata, account metadata, historical metadata, or event property), as long as the number of unique values doesn't exceed 10,000 (per event if you have 10 or fewer events selected, or across all events if you have more than 10 events selected). The results are filtered by the chosen segment.

Export the breakdown table

If you want to export the full table of data as a CSV, select the Download CSV icon in the top-right corner of the Breakdown section. Once selected, the file automatically downloads to your device.

Save and share your report

Once you finish building and analyzing your report, you should save your report so that you can easily return to your findings or modify your query as needed. You can also share your findings with others at the time of saving.

To save your report, select Save on the top-right corner of the page.
Enter a Report Name and Description.
If you’d like other users in your Pendo subscription to view and edit the report, update the Visibility to Everyone. (If your user account is only assigned the Viewer role, you can only choose Only Me.)
If you’d like to add the report to an existing dashboard for quick access, select the dashboard name from the Add to Dashboard dropdown menu.
Select Save Report. You can now access the report through Behavior > Data Explorer and Behavior > View all reports.

As long as you choose the Everyone visibility at the time you save the Data Explorer report, all Pendo users in your subscription can access the report through Behavior > Data Explorer or Behavior > View all reports.

If you need to update the visibility, simply select your report from the Saved Reports page, ensure Visibility is set to Everyone using the Share icon at the top of the report, then share the URL found in the address bar in your web browser or let them know it's available to view on the Saved Reports page.

As an alternative to direct sharing, you can also add the report to a dashboard using the Data Explorer widget and share the dashboard with that user. You can do this by adding a new dashboard widget to a dashboard or by selecting Add to Dashboard at the top of an existing report.