Creating a new report

You can create a new Ortto report either from an existing template or from scratch.

Creating from a template

To create a new Ortto report from a template:

1. On the Reports page, click New report.
2. Select a template based on a particular use case or data source integration as the basis to build your report. You can also select previously Saved templates or choose from templates shared with you from another Ortto account under Shared with me.
   When you choose a template, click Use template to get started. If the template you selected uses data from a connected data source, you’ll need to choose the relevant accounts. Once selected, you can also rename the report if needed.
3. The report will be pre-configured and shown as a preview of the last 30 days.

Creating from scratch with multiple activities

To create a new Ortto report from scratch (with multiple activities):

1. On the Reports page, click New report > Start from scratch.
2. Select a report type then click Next. This example will teach you about column charts.
3. Name your report something memorable. The convention we typically follow is the activity followed by the precision of the report. For example if you were looking at how many times your emails were opened each week this report would be named "Opened emails by week".
4. Select an activity to see data display on the column chart. In this example we will select Opened email.
5. Next we want to change the precision to Weeks.
6. Let’s add a second activity to compare. We will select Clicked email as our second activity.
7. Under chart options you can display the activities as "stacked" to compare them in the same column. This is useful for when you have multiple activities.

Types of reports

Ortto provides two types of reports: snapshot and dynamic.

Snapshot

Every report created initially begins life as a snapshot.

This means that the report represents a snapshot of data in time and is not automatically updated with new information. Depending on your plan, snapshot reports are able to represent data from the last 30 or 90 days.

Snapshot reports allow you to analyze activities that occur between specific time period. They are best used for quick analysis when you don’t require information outside of this specific time period. Snapshot reports can look back up to 90 days depending on your plan.

• When you create a report it’s a snapshot by default.
• It’s a fixed period in time.
• It won’t update beyond this fixed period.

To record data over time or add it to a dashboard you need to switch your report type to dynamic.

Dynamic

Dynamic reports are "live" reports which update with new information over time.

You can switch a snapshot report into a dynamic report. This is done either by switching the report to dynamic or when you pin the report to a dashboard. When the report is dynamic it means the report will continuously update with new information. As the report accumulates more and more information you can look back further and further. For example if a report with monthly precision has been dynamic for an entire year you could look back at specific months or all months over that year.

• You can switch a report to dynamic.
• Dynamic reports continuously collect new information so you can analyze longer periods.
• When you pin a report to a dashboard it becomes dynamic.

Creating a field-based report

Creating a field-based report enables you to see how many users have a certain value for a custom, system or data source field on a particular day, week or month so you can track relative group sizes over time.

Using field metrics is available in pie, metric, line, table, area, column, and geo chart report types.

As an example, you have a subscription-based product with plan tiers named Bronze, Silver and Gold. Where you have a custom single-select field called Plan tier, you can use this field as a metric will show you how many people had a value during that particular time. Adding a clause to say where Plan tier is Gold, you can see how many contacts had the Plan tier value of gold in that period.

To view how many people there are with each different field value use Group by attribute or field and select the same field.

To create a field-based report:

1. Follow steps 1 to 3 under Creating from scratch with multiple activities.
2. Click Add metric and select a field. Using our subscription plan example above, this could be Plan tier.
3. To see different field values, select Group by attribute or field and select the same field activity you chose as the initial activity metric (e.g. Plan tier).
4. Click Create to finish.

Uniqueness window

When you create a report with the Aggregate by option Unique total count, you are able determine the Uniqueness window. The uniqueness window enables you to choose the window in which the report captures unique contact activities (for the timeframe of your report).

For example, a report with a Timeframe of 30 days and:

• a Uniqueness window of 24 hours will capture unique contact activities for each day of the 30 days. So if your report metric is Clicked email and a contact clicks an email once per day in 30 days, the report will count 30 unique clicks.
  But,
• a Uniqueness window of 30 days will capture unique contact activities over the whole 30 days. So for a report on the Clicked email activity, where a contact clicks an email once per day in 30 days the report will count 1 unique click.

Uniqueness filter for table reports

When you create a table report with the Aggregate by option Unique total count, by default, the Apply uniqueness filter against each group checkbox is selected. This setting collects 1 activity event per person, per group (instead of 1 activity event per person across all groups).

For example, you have sent 5 different email campaigns to 1 person in 1 day. The recipient clicks each campaign, some more than once, resulting in 8 clicks across the 5 campaigns. 

When you build a report for the activity Clicked email, grouped by Campaign name, the report will display 1 Clicked email activity event for each of the 5 different campaigns.

Without Apply uniqueness filter against each group selected, the report would only capture 1 of the Clicked email activity events, because our system will count the first event matching the activity metric then stop counting.



Chart options

The following table details by report type the chart options available when you create a report from a template or from scratch.