Charts overview

Definition of charts

• A chart is a graphical representation of a report. It helps you understand changing business conditions at a glance and make timely, data-driven decisions through Data Analysis and Data Statistics.
• For example, you can analyze Account follow-ups, opportunity progress, lead conversion, order performance, and payment collection. Report designers can customize chart types, analyze the required dimensions, and subscribe to reports for periodic delivery.

Related concepts

• Business domain: A business domain defines the core analysis object and its related objects. For example, Product is the core object when you analyze product sales. A business domain contains dimensions and metrics.
• Dimension: A dimension usually corresponds to the X-axis. For example, Department is a dimension when you analyze sales by department. Dimensions usually come from text or date fields on the core object. You can also drag dimensions into the Data Range. Dimensions include grouping dimensions and attribute dimensions.
  • Grouping dimension: Groups records with the same attribute, then calculates totals or counts. An analysis can contain multiple grouping levels, from broad groups to detailed groups.
  • Attribute dimension: Displays an attribute of each detail record as supplementary information. For example, when Account Name is the analysis dimension, you can also display the account’s province, city, district, and Account Level.
• Metric: A metric is a measurement that defines a calculation rule. It can count unique values in text fields or sum numeric fields on the core object or a related object. Metrics include basic metrics and aggregate metrics.
  • Basic metric: Aggregates fields from the core object of a business domain.
  • Aggregate metric: Aggregates fields from an object related to the core object.
    • Metric status:
      • Enabled: The metric has been initialized and can be used to view values.
      • Disabled: The metric cannot be used.
      • Initializing: The new metric is being initialized. You can use it, but values are available the next day.
      • Trial calculation: The system calculates recent data immediately for debugging, then calculates all historical data overnight. Availability depends on the product version.
• Metric rule: Defines how a metric is calculated. For example, the Opportunity Amount metric in the Account business domain can sum distinct opportunity amounts whose status is not Not Effective or Voided, using Created On as the date. When you analyze the metric by date, the date represents Opportunity Created Time.
• Aggregate date: Each business domain has a date dimension. Its business meaning differs by metric. The aggregate date lets you compare different businesses under the same date dimension.

What you can do with metric management

• Modify metric rules: CRM administrators and report administrators can modify predefined metric rules from the metric management menu to meet enterprise analysis requirements. For example, they can change the date meaning of Opportunity Amount from opportunity creation date to Estimated Closing Date.
• Create metrics: When predefined metrics do not meet your needs, or when you need to analyze custom fields, CRM administrators and report administrators can create metrics from the metric management menu. A new metric requires one initialization. Values are available the next day and then update in near real time.
• Create a custom-object business domain: When you need to analyze data with dimensions from a custom object, CRM administrators and report administrators can create a business domain for the custom object from the metric management menu.