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The focus of this chapter will be around how to get started with building your first report.

In this first chapter we will explain the thought process and steps you can use to identify the information in the system you would like to report on, and how to build your first report to filter and report on the desired records. In this example we will discuss how to create a report for the total number of applications submitted in the last 6 months grouped by a specific job division selected on the job card.

1.1 - How to choose which explore?

What are you wanting to report on?

Start by confirming a known example of a record you want to report on with your business and locate the record in the system, making a note of the values and area(s) in the system that will uniquely identify this record such as the job number on the job card, title of an application form, applicant email address and job number of an offer. For this example make note of the job number of a job that is in the desired division.

To create your report select the various explore options to view different explores and read the quick description of what that explore is best for reporting on and choose the most suitable option. 

If you are wanting to report on anything regarding applications for example job or offer information, the Jobs explore is the best explore to start with. If it’s purely applicant information that you need to report on and no application related information is required the Applicant Search / All Candidates explore is your best option.

For this example choose the Jobs explore as we will be reporting on application and job related information.

Note: If the chosen explore doesn’t seem to have the information you require you can simply choose to not save the explore as a Look (report) and create a new report and choose another explore and view the information available in that explore to see if it is better suited to your reporting requirements.

Once you have confirmed which explore to use the next step is to add fields to your report.

1.2 - Adding fields to your report.

Fields in enhanced reporting are split into two categories called Dimensions and Measures. 

• Dimensions are static fields such as a job number or job title that won’t change in value regardless of what else is included in your report. These are shown in blue/grey.
• Measures are dynamic fields where the value may change depending on what else is included in your report. For example, a measure may be a count of applications. These are shown in orange.

To add fields to your report start by adding Dimensions, add the Dimensions via the left hand panel of the explore by clicking on the Dimensions tab and selecting the field that will allow you to uniquely identify your known record for example the job number or applicant email address, as well as any other dimensions that you think will be useful to identify common values that could be used to filter out additional similar records of this type in the next section regarding adding filters. The search field can also be used to quickly search for a required field.

For this example start by adding the dimensions for Job no. and Job Division.

Note: The Job no. and Job Division fields may have different labels in your specific system so it's best to view an example job in your system to confirm what these fields are labelled as.

1.3 - How to decide which filters to use

Start first by filtering your report on the uniquely identifiable value for just the one known example/record. Such as a job number, applicant email address or employee email address

To add the field that contains the known value to the filters section of your report use one of the two ways a filter can be added:

If the field has already been added to your report, mouse hover over the field click the cog icon and click Filter. Alternatively from the field listing on the left, mouse hover over the field and click Filter.

Once the field has been added to your reports filter section you can now adjust the filter criteria to be equal to your known record.

Note: If you don't have a specific record you're filtering to, you could also filter to show a small subset or result by applying a relevant date filter, such as the date a record was created or submitted and to limit this to the last week or month.

For this example add the Job no dimension and set it equal to your known record/value from step 1.1 as shown below.

1.4 - Select how you would like to visualise the report

The visualisation option lets you control how your reports data is represented. For the purposes of viewing the values of your reporting fields and to check what filter options can be used initially it is highly recommended to leave/set this as the Table option. To select this visualisation option click the Table icon in the Visualisation section of the report.

Different visualisation options can be tried later once you are happy with the output of your report and have confirmed the required filters and any groupings that need to be used.

1.5 - Run your report to view the output 

Click Run from the top right to run your report and view the output.

After viewing the output of your report, consider if there is any other value in the system that makes this record unique to other records but will also be common across similar records of this type.

• Can a certain field on the offer or job card that has a common value be used? For example a particular Business unit, recruitment process,  salary type or pay scale group.

Try adding the additional filter for the suspected common criteria that other similar records may have in common, then remove the original filter on the known record and run the report again.

Confirm if the results returned include the expected known record as well as similar records of its type.

If the reporting output is including additional unwanted records examine if these records have a common value that can be used to filter out just these records by adding an additional filter or try refining your existing filter criteria to still include the similar records you want to report on but filter out the additional unwanted ones. Feel free to try adding additional dimensions to your report at this stage to identify any additional filter criteria that can be used.

For this example we will remove the filter based on the known Job no. and will add the filter for the Job Division equal to Ground Maintenance.

Note: A quick way to add this is filter for the known value is to click the value from the results section and click Filter on as shown below.

Run the report again and you should now see results for all similar jobs that all have this same division.

1.6 - Do we need to group data using measures?

Consider if you need to group the data so that a sum or total of the records needs to be reported on such as the Total applications submitted, Total jobs, or Total offers accepted .

Add the appropriate measure to the report that you would like to see the totals for. 

Note: The total shown for the measure will be the total based on the unique combination of the existing dimensions already in the report output.  

For example if your report only has the Division of the job as well as the total applications measure, the measure would show the total applications received for all of the jobs under a particular Division. 

For this example add the Total applications submitted measure and remove the Job no. dimension so that the Total applications submitted will be grouped by only the Job Division.

Also add an additional date based filter for Application Submit date to only show applications submitted in the last 6 months as shown below.

Run the report again and view the results.

Total applications submitted in last 6 months by Division.

If you were to add an additional dimension to the same report such as the Job no. again, then the Total applications submitted measure would be broken down further and would be shown for each unique combination of Division and Job number. In the example output shown below you can see that job 858067 received the most (15) applications in the last 6 months for the Grounds and Maintenance job division.

Total applications submitted in last 6 months by Division and Job no.

If you were to add another dimension such as the date the application was submitted, the total would then adjust for the total applications submitted each day for each combination of Job division unit and Job no..

Total applications submitted in last 6 months by Division, Job no. and submit date

The next step is to decide how to best visualise or represent your reporting output.

1.7 - Visualising the reporting output with graphs

Consider how you would like to display this information depending on the dimensions and measures you have included in your report. If detailed data is required and your report included a large number of dimensions the table format is best. If you just need to show totals, trends or snapshots then pie charts and other visual representations maybe the best option. Feel free to try the different visualisations out as they can easily be toggled.

Below is an example showing the total applications received for the top 5 Divisions in the last 6 months displayed as a Pie chart.

1.8 - Downloading and exporting your report

To download the report output while you are viewing the report, from the top right, click the cog icon and Click Download.

If you are currently editing the report, from the top right first click Explore from here, then from the top right, click the cog icon and Click Download.

Select the file format, results, values, any row limits, the filename and click download.

Note: To download all results change the Limit option to All Results as the default for results in table are limited to 500 rows.

To download just the raw data and not any visualisations select the Results option As displayed in the data table.