Tutorial: Merging reports (App)

This article explains the basics of merging reports in App.

In this article

Overview

In the Analytics workspace of App, you can combine two or more reports into a single report. This is called merging reports. 

Merging reports lets you combine multiple data sources so long as they share a mutual column. Reasons for merging reports include:

• Merging useful (but not closely related) data: If you have reports created from different data sources, you can merge them into a single view if they share a common column.

• Joining reports from the same data source with different filters: If you have multiple reports that cover the same topic (like interactions), you can apply different filters to cover distinct time ranges. After merging the reports, you could see changes over time in one chart on the report instead of having to make a chart for each report.

The goal of this tutorial is to show how you can merge one or more reports or charts into a single report. Suppose that your organization has two reports: one that tracks inbound call data and one that lists all interactions. They contain different types of data, but you want to see the data from the list of interactions for the inbound calls that resulted in interactions. To accomplish this, you can merge the list of interactions report into the inbound calls report to combine the data.

Continue reading the subsections below to follow along with this tutorial.

Setup: Creating the reports

To get started, we’re going to create a pair of reports:

• List of inbound calls (Data source: Inbound Call Data)

• List of interactions (Data source: Interactions)

As its names suggest, the List of inbound calls report is intended to simply retrieve a list of all inbound calls to your organization’s account. 

Meanwhile, the List of interactions report is intended to retrieve a list of all interactions on your organization’s account (regardless of call direction, if applicable).

To learn how to create a report, read this guide on report creation. We’ll walk through how to configure them in Step 1.

Step 1: Building the reports

The first step after setup is to build our reports. We’ll build them in this order:

• List of interactions

• List of inbound calls

Continue reading the subsections below to set up these reports.

List of interactions

The List of interactions report is intended to be a reverse-chronological list of all of the interactions that have ever existed in our organization’s account.

To accomplish this, we’ll add the following columns to our report:

• Interaction Id

• Call Id

• Created At (sorted in descending order)

• Queue Name

• Communication Type

See the screenshot below for an example of what the report might look like:

Once you’ve set this report up, click Save.

List of inbound calls

The next report we’ll configure is our List of inbound calls report. This is intended to be a reverse-chronological list of all calls made into our organization’s account.

To accomplish this, we’ll add the following columns to our report:

• Call Id (inbound call data)

• Duration

• Created At (sorted in descending order)

• Inbound Number Name

Key concept: Mutual columns

The key to understanding report merging is mutual columns. But what is a mutual column? 

A mutual column is a data value that’s present on two different reports. Remember that the system bases its report builder on data sources, which are collections of tables. Each table has columns that contain certain types of data. 

A mutual column is a column that exists on two reports. Mutual columns can exist on multiple tables and multiple data sources. By merging reports, we can use a common piece of information to unite two distinct reports into one.

See the two screenshots below for an example.

Note that the mutual column between the list of interactions and the list of inbound calls is the Call Id field. 

Also note that the type of data we’re showing in our list of interactions is fairly distinct from the information we’re showing in the list of inbound calls. 

• Our list of inbound calls is showing us the duration of the call and the name of the phone number dialed 

• …but the list of interactions is showing us the queue and communication type.

We can merge the reports together to view this data holistically.  We’ll cover how to do that in Step 2 below.

Step 2: Merging the reports

The next step is to merge one of our reports into the other report. Merging the reports based on the common column will combine their data into one view, which can make it easier to digest the data in the report without having to flip back and forth between windows.

In this tutorial, we’ll merge the list of interactions into the list of inbound calls, but you could also do it the reverse way and get the same result.

1. Navigate to your List of inbound calls report.

2. Click Edit in the vertical tri-dot menu.

3. Click Settings in the smaller vertical tri-dot menu.

4. Click Add Reports to Merge.

5. In the Merge with menu, search for the List of interactions report.

6. In the Main Report Column, choose the Call Id column to act as the mutual column for merging.

7. In the Merge Report Column, choose the Call Id column to act as the other mutual column for merging.

8. Click Save. Then, close out of the Settings panel.

9. Notice on the report editor view that there are new columns added to the report. These are the columns merged from the list of interactions. Click the Refresh button to populate data onto the report.

The final result should be a report that contains the columns of both the original report and the merged-in report.

Examining the merged reports

Let’s take a look at the finished report to break it down.

• Merged report columns in sidebar (A)

  • • The merged columns appear in the left sidebar.

    • Note that you cannot apply filters or functions to these columns from this report. 

      • • If you want to modify them, you must go to the report the columns originate from.

        • In this case, since we merged into the list of inbound calls, if you wanted to modify these columns you’d want to go to the list of interactions report.

• Merged report columns in the report (B): The merged columns also appear in the main report.

• No-match records (C):

  • • • Some of the records (like C annotated above) have no data listed in the merged columns. 

      • This means that there wasn’t a match on the mutual column (in this case, Call Id).

      • If a record with a mutual column value doesn’t have a match on the other report, the value appears as blank.