The flexibility offered by the Analytics feature when it comes to the creation of widgets and reports can appear overwhelming. However with some organization and planning, it is possible to streamline the process.
Here are a few suggested guidelines to improve your experience.
Identify the Scope of Your Report
We recommend breaking down reports into four categories, each defining the type and level of information.
| Reports | Goal | Recipients |
| Reports for upper management |
They usually include high level information on the activities performed over a given period. |
Executives |
| Reports for team performance tracking |
They are usually based on report filters and allow managers to track the activities performed by each staff member. |
Managers |
| Reports on activities tracking |
They usually give more detailed information than the reports prepared for upper management. They help managers understand the status of their team's activities. |
Managers and users |
| Reports on data quality |
Very data oriented, they allow teams to identify the level of data accuracy in the system, to detect incorrect patterns and to ensure long-term health of the system. |
Managers, superusers and users |
Clarify the Target Objectives of the Report
Borealis offers the option to add several widgets to the same report which means it is important to keep track of your objectives and avoid overcrowding your reports with out of scope information. We recommend that you start by listing what you want to measure or represent in that report, then determine the relevant information for each of those measures.
An interesting additional step is to review the added value of each widget. A way to do that is to ask yourself what information the widget brings you and what you are going to do with that information.
Example : I want to identify the five hottest topics of the week per neighborhood => for each hot topic identified, an action plan will be set and sent to the community relations managers for implementation.
Determine Which Widgets are Needed for Each Objectives
You can use the following to help you asses which widgets to use:
- Identify the most suitable format to represent your data (Calendar, Chart, Indicator, Map, Scatter plot, Table)
- Identify which data from Borealis should be displayed in the widget
- Identify which filters should be applied to your widget. Take the time to check if your filter should be set at the widget or at the report level
- Determine the title you will give to your widget.
You can consult our article about widget creation here.
Finalize your report
After you have prepared all the widgets to include in the report, you can start building your report.
- Add all required widgets to your report.
- By right clicking anywhere in your report, add labels to give precisions for your widgets, or to create sections within the report.
- Give your report a relevant title, that accurately reflects its general purpose.
Set up governance around your report
Your report is ready and now you need to make sure that continues to meet the expected goals. At this point you may want to:
- Determine the privacy level of your report: you can set it as either public or private
- Determine whether the report should be e-mailed to a target audience on a regular basis and if so, define the interval. Refer to our article Schedule an automated sending of a Report
- Share a link to the report, if you do not plan to send it automatically. You should consider encouraging users to bookmark a report
- Determine how often the report should be reviewed to ensure its continued relevance.