"Data Explorer" is a key feature within your "Home" in upgraded Planhat.

As the name suggests, it's a way for you to explore your data!

Data is at the heart of customer management, as well as other business processes. To understand your customers and prospects, and take the most effective action, you need data. After compiling all your data in Planhat, so it's your central source of truth, there are many ways in which you can act in response to data in Planhat, both automatically and manually.

Data Explorer specifically is designed for you to carry out quick, temporary data analysis with ease. You don't need to be an admin or have a really technical background to ask questions of your data and get answers - you don't need to know code or create formulas. You also don't need to create something permanent within your Planhat tenant (e.g. a Data Table Page or a Dashboard Page, or a Global Filter) when you only want to quickly look up something in your data, helping your tenant stay sleek and uncluttered.

Data Explorer is made up of two parts:

Dataset is a tabular display of your CRM data, similar to a "Data Table" Page.

Within Dataset, you choose a data model to show in the table, and then quickly and easily build (temporary) filters.

Simply select your criteria - you can filter via one or multiple factors at once - and see the data table automatically update in front of your eyes!

You can also quickly and easily define which columns are shown in the table and in which order, and you can also choose to sort the table (by your choice of field, and in ascending or descending order).

For example:

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This is a fantastic way for you to quickly and easy explore your static/CRM data without creating something permanent that could cause clutter in your tenant.

There are many different ways you may choose to filter your data - the possibilities are almost endless! You can investigate something "on the fly". Explore, play and have fun!

Let's walk through some illustrated examples. In this case study, this is what the data table looks like before applying any filtering:

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Let's say you want to see all of the Companies where the Owner is equal to Bob.

To filter on "Owner", just click "Owner" in the field list (ensuring first that the Company model is selected), and then select your desired Owner from the list. You can use the search box to find your chosen Owner more quickly.

After selecting Bob, you can see the table is now only showing Companies owned by him:

You can easily add new criteria to the filter. For example, if you now want to filter by Phase as well, you can simply select that additional field/property from the list on the right-hand side:

You can see that the results now update to match the two filter criteria:

There's a search box just above the field names for you to choose from, making it easier to find a specific one if you have a long list:

If you want to deselect a filter criteria, simply click the "x" next to its name:

Do this and you'll see the results table immediately update.

What if you want to filter on multiple Owners at once? For example, maybe you are a manager of three CSMs, and you want to select all of them.

You can do this by selecting a different operator when adding a filter:

You can edit the filter when it's showing in the top-right of the window.

The screenshot below shows how multiple Owners can be selected as the operator is "any of". As you change the checkbox selection, the table view automatically live-updates for you.

As well as creating filters to cut down on which data is visible in Dataset, you can also choose which columns (fields) are shown, and in which order.

You do this by clicking on the settings button (slider icon) as shown below, and selecting "Columns".

You can also make changes here to how the rows are sorted.

The process is the same as you use when you're editing a Data Table Page.

Learn more about configuring your column preferences in our separate article here.

As well as being able to easily create filters in Dataset, you can also create charts!

This is a great way to visualize your data to allow deeper (yet still quick and temporary) insights.

To view a chart in Dataset, simply click on the "Add chart" button above the data table.

It will open up a form with some values automatically selected for you, and a corresponding chart will load above the data table, so you can view both at once.

In the form, you can easily make changes to the chart specification, and the chart will automatically update for you - e.g. here I have selected the other available chart type - Pie:

You'll notice that the filter selection on the right-hand side still applies to the data in the chart, so all you learned above still applies.

If you've clicked out of the chart settings form to view your chart, simply click on the "Chart" button if you want to edit the settings again.

To remove the chart, click "Remove chart" at the bottom of the chart settings form.

"Time-series" is the second part of Data Explorer. As its name indicates, this is where you can explore your time-series data (Metrics) - both "raw" time-series data such as User Activities and Custom Metrics, and any Calculated Metrics you have built on top. Time-series data often represents product usage data, although it also includes other data tracked over time, such as the number of tickets or other Conversation Types.

Similar to what we discussed for "Dataset", sometimes you'll just want to explore your time-series data so you can quickly understand what's going on, without having to create charts in a permanent Dashboard or Presentation Page. The "Time-series" part of Data Explorer is how you can achieve this!

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