Fundamentals of reporting (App)
This article provides an overview of fundamental concepts related to creating reports in App.
The purpose of this article is to give you an overview of the key concepts related to making useful reports.
Databases, tables, columns, and rows
A database is a collection of organized data that’s accessed electronically. All of the data you can see in App, Console, or the API Platform, is stored in the database.
Databases are organized into tables. A table is like a spreadsheet that tracks specific kinds of information. They’re always named for the kind of information they track. For example, the Interaction Details table contains information about interactions.
And, just like a spreadsheet, tables are organized with columns and rows.
Let’s imagine a table that contains information about the users on your account. The mock table below is an example of the columns and rows in action:
The example table above has four columns per row.
Each column records a specific piece of data like:
The user's unique identifier (userId)
The user's first name (firstName)
The user's last name (lastName)
The user's role in the company (role)
The intersection of a column and a row represents a specific piece of information called a data point.
So, how do we read the table?
The column (yellow / bold) represents the "lastName" value recorded.
The row (blue / italic) represents the unique user record)
The data point (green / bold-italic) is the intersection of the column and the row.
We can see from the example above that the last name of user 002123 is "Franks".
What is a data source?
The database automatically records several types of data and key metrics related to your account. To make this data more easily accessible, we’ve organized it into data sources.
A data source (also known as a table group in the API Platform) is a collection of tables. By grouping tables together into a single data source, this gives you access to lots of related data through one source
When creating a new report, you’ll pick the data source that matches the type of report you want to create. That data source is the foundation to the report. It houses all the data that you’ll have access to when building your report.
In short, with data sources, you can get access to values from multiple tables and view them all in one report.
For a list of data sources and their descriptions, see: Overview: Data sources for reports (App)
Next steps
Now that we've covered the basics of analytics in App, you're ready to learn how to Create a report (App).