This is part of a series of articles on Metrics. Here's a summary of some more helpful articles to help you get started...

Or, if you're looking to unlock some more advanced use cases, you can check out a deeper dive into the Calculated Metrics concept here and a technical introduction here.

You can also check out the Metrics folder and pick for yourself.

There's a lot of depth to Planhat's time-series data capabilities, and there's no need to get stuck into it all at once. This is a good place to start...

Time-series data is integral to Customer Success, as it is the best way to understand the development of your customer relationship over time. It allows you to ask important questions like: "What's the trending usage of Module A vs Module B in our Enterprise customers?" or "What's the pattern in Ticket requests from Customer A?".

There are several types of time-series data in Planhat and they can be saved to different data models, but in summary they are:

All time-series data can be transformed into Calculated Metrics. These let you create totally custom views of your raw data, grouping it over time, combining different metrics together and performing wide range of other operations.

For example:

The more time series data you bring into Planhat, the more important it becomes to organise it, which makes it easy to ensure that the metrics you're tracking are being utilised, and identify new opportunities to transform your raw data to action.

That's why Metrics are just like any other model: you can enrich them with custom fields create filters for them (in the "Data" Global Tool), and visualize and interact with their data in Data Explorer and Pages.

Here's the Metrics section within the "Data" Global Tool:

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In Data Explorer, you'll find "Metric" both listed as a data model - in this menu is where you can add a new metric ...

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... and also for models that can have associated Metrics (Company, End User, Project and Asset), you'll see Metric data in the "Time-series" tab:

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When in the Data Explorer with "Metric" selected, you can click on the name of any Metric to open up its Preview (slide-out), including details such as the raw data or formula (depending on the type of Metric) - click through the different tabs.

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In the "Overview" tab of each Metric Preview, you'll find a chart. This is a summary view of the time-series data, which can be adjusted to show any period between a week and 3 years, and aggregate across Companies as a sum, average (of all Companies), average (of Companies with values), maximum or minimum.

You can use the filter in the top left to view the data for a specific Company.

For Custom Metrics and User Activities, the chart is directly reflecting the raw time series data logged for that given metric. For Calculated and System Metrics, it reflects the final processed time series, and will not show any values while the Metric is building.

Custom Metrics in Planhat are stored daily, with 1 data point per model (Company, End User, Asset, Project) each day. This means that if you push multiple data points to a specific model in a given day, Planhat needs to aggregate them into 1. This is why for Custom Metrics, you can choose whether Planhat should obtain a daily value via:

This tab is where you set the formula your Calculated Metric should use to generate daily values. Here, you'll find a helpful set-up guide, and a magic example-generator, to get you started.

When you configure each Calculated Metric, you can also add conditions on what type of records the metric should apply to, and decide whether the metric should treat missed values as NULLs or 0's (more about that here).

Metric availability in app (Calculated Metrics only)

Availability in Planhat setting allows you to specify in which cases will the Calculated Metric be available for use in app. Over time you will have lots of data in Planhat, This setting ensures Metrics are only available where you need them, helping keep Planhat simple and easy to use.

In a calculated metric Preview, you can see at the top what is the availability type for the metric.

When creating new calculated metric you can specify "Availability in Planhat" right away in the calculated metric creation form.

This setting has 3 options that you can choose from:

Choosing the right option depends on what you intend to do with the calculated metric. If metric value is needed to roll up to higher level KPI and you don't expect to actually use it in your Planhat workflow then Reporting only is the right option for you.
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Keeping only most important metrics with options Reporting & Data models (Featured) and Reporting & Data models will make creating filters, managing data table views easier for you as it will declutter the interface.

The Raw Data tab shows you the raw time-series data points for each record, in reverse chronological order, in addition to the relevant Company and End User, the timestamp of the ingested event, and the time it was ingested at.

Calculated Metric formulas refer to Custom Metrics and User Activities, meaning that these values must be logged before relevant Calculated Metrics are built to ensure accurate results.

Additionally, Calculated Metrics can refer to other Calculated Metrics, resulting in both nesting of metric calculations, and cross-model references between Company and End User/Asset/Project Calculated Metrics. This means the order in which Calculated Metrics are built also matters.

Fortunately, Planhat has a host of smart logic to ensure everything gets built in the right order, and on schedule. Here's a quick overview...

Raw data is brought into Planhat in the form of Custom Metrics and User Activities. Generally, you can expect these to be ingested within a few minutes, although the ingestion process can take longer if there is a large volume of raw data points.

Calculated Metrics are built automatically, once a day (nightly CET). The specific time window will vary depending on your specific tenant settings, and you can speak to your TAM or CSM if for any reason you would like your daily build to occur no earlier than a specific daily hour, to ensure that all your Custom Metrics and User Activities are received in time. Here's some important things to keep in mind:

💡Quick Tip: you can change the default Metric Build Period to any value between 1 day and your tenant's Data Access Period (which by default is 730 days: 2 years). This default value will apply to all Metrics which do not have a value for the Metric Build Period, meaning that you can override the default Build Period by inputting any value for a specific metric.

Since Calculated Metrics can reference one another, it's important to keep track of which Metrics depend on which other Metrics.

In the "Trace" tab of a Metric Preview, you can see where that Metric is used across your tenant. In the screenshot below, the Calculated Metric in question is used in another Calculated Metric as well as multiple Pages.

There is no difference importing & exporting Metric data using "Export to Excel" or API: you can...

When exporting via API, there is a default of 200, which can be overridden by manually updating the limit (up to a feasible value of 100000).

There is no limit on the number of rows/datapoints you can export at a time using our Raw Values export, however there is a limit on the period: you can export a maximum of 1 month of data.