Metric Builder

Create Custom Metrics to Measure What Matters

Data is essential for defining the success of your organization, but using too many ‘cookie cutter’ metrics won’t help you understand the why behind your results. Your business is unique, so you need a way to get unique insights, too. With the Metric Builder, you can get the exact data you need to provide more context into your performance – with no coding experience necessary.

3 min read

After reading this guide, you’ll understand…

  • How to access new metrics to get a more complete picture of your performance
  • How to slice and dice your data to better interpret your results   
  • Ways to ensure your data focuses on what’s important 
Why use the Metric Builder?

Report On The Metrics Your Business Needs…

No matter your role, you’re probably using a variety of popular, out-of-the-box metrics to get a high-level overview of your performance. Even though these metrics are a great indication of your success, they don’t always give you all of the information needed to understand or improve results. Without a way to easily create custom metrics, you’ll be… 

  • At a standstill  –  if you don’t have enough technical knowledge, you’ll end up depending on other teams to create the metrics you need to measure your activities. 
  • Misled  –  if you can’t provide a complete picture of your performance, you’ll end up focusing on the wrong things. 
  • Misunderstood – including too much high-level data in your dashboards can make it hard to tell the right story to your team or clients.  

Using the Metric Builder in Databox, you’ll be able to…

  • Build the metrics you need – with a fully UI-powered tool, you’ll be able to easily create the metrics that matter to your organization without any coding skill. 
  • Drill down into results – using additional dimensions you can further dig into your data to get better insights into performance. 
  • Focus on what matters  – filtering your results can help you improve communication and make your insights more relevant. 
How to Use The Metric Builder

How To Access Additional Metrics Using The Metric Builder 

Depending on your objectives, the preconfigured metrics available in Databox might not be enough to effectively monitor your performance. As an example, if you are looking to report on specific conversions, goals, or events, you might need to create your own metric to get a more complete picture of your success. 

Before creating a custom metric, you’ll need to confirm that the Data Source you are working with supports this feature. This is because the Metric Builder is available for 32 of our Native Databox integrations.  To create a new Custom Metric, you’ll want to: 

  • Navigate to Metrics
  • Click on Custom Metrics 
  • Click + New Custom Metric 

Then, select the Data Source and Metric from the drop-down menu. Before saving your custom metric:

  • Click Preview Data to review metric values 
  • Name your Custom Metric
  • Click Save

How To Add Dimensions To Provide More Context Into a Metric

When planning new strategies or presenting results to your team, it’s not enough to say ‘deals have decreased by 10%’. You also need to understand the ‘why’ behind the results you are seeing. By digging a little deeper into your data you’ll have a better understanding of how your efforts are tied to performance. 

Dimensions allow you to categorize your results based on common criteria, like by team, campaign, initiative, and more. Metrics with dimensions are known as attributed metrics.  

When building an attributed metric, select a dimension from the drop-down menu to get deeper views of your data.  

So, let’s say you’re looking to report on the number of deals created for each of your sales reps. In the Metric Builder, you’ll select HubSpot as your Data Source then: 

  • Under Metrics, select Count Of Deals 
  • Select Deal Owner for your dimension

Depending on the Data Source you are working with, the Metric Builder fields might look slightly different. In our example, we’ll also need to specify a date.

  • Select Create Date

When you are done, you can check what your new metric looks like by clicking Preview Data. To complete your Custom Metric setup: 

  • Name your Custom Metric
    • Consider including the word ‘by’ between your metric and dimension name. 
  • Click Save
 

How To Use Filters To Focus On What Is Important 

Let’s say you’re managing two campaigns that have totally different objectives. Including data for both campaigns in one dashboard or table might not be what you’re interested in seeing. 

You can use filters to show different views of the same data and better explain how a specific metric is performing. Once you’ve selected the Metric and or Dimension for your Custom Metrics, you’ll want to: 

  • Click Advanced Options
  • Select the way in which you want to filter your data. You can choose from…
    • Metric – use this filtering option to filter results by metrics values. For example, you may only want to include results where the metric value is greater than 100.
    • Dimension – use this filtering option to filter results by dimensions. For example, you may only want to include results where the campaign name contains the word, Summer.
  • Select the condition you want to use to filter your data 
  • Define your filter value  
  • Click Preview Data to review metric values 
  • Name your Custom Metric
  • Click Save
 
Tips & Tricks

3 Tips & Tricks

  1. Preview Your Custom Metric In Different Visualization Types ⬇️

    Before saving your Custom Metric, use the Datablock preview to explore different visualization types. This will allow you to easily compare the different ways you can communicate insights and represent your data. 

  2. Exclude Dimensions To Remove Unknown Values ⬇️

    When creating a Custom Metric, you might notice some irrelevant dimensions under the Data Preview. In the Metric Builder, you can exclude Dimensions so they no longer show up as a result on your dashboard. 

  3. Rename Dimensions To Make Results Easily Understood ⬇️

    When adding specific dimensions to a metric, you may notice that the dimension name is displayed in a way that is not very meaningful to your viewer. Common examples are dimension names that include an ID, code, account number, and more. You can choose to rename dimensions to update the way these categories are returned in your dashboard.  

Need more guidance? Check out…

Overview: Metric Builder

How To Exclude Or Rename a Dimension Using The Metric Builder

How To Add Tags To Custom And Calculated Metrics