Clear up calculated metrics - Recommendations?

[sabined51282667]

Dear all, 

after some years of using Adobe Analytics we see more and more calculated metrics that are double or way more than double.

We totally understand why this is happening. Either some colleagues calculate their own metric without knowing about the existing one or when we push projects to multiple report suites and save them, they duplicate sometimes too. 

My question is, if there's an easy way or any recommendations how to handle this and how to clean this up. Our concern is, if we just delete some of the calculated metrics, they will disappear in the projects they are used in. We want to avoid this.

As far as we know it's not possible to see in which projects one special calculated metric is used, so we could replace it in those projects. 

Thank you for sharing your experiences with this and best regards

Sabine

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

I believe that IF there is a calculated metric in a report, and you "delete" the one that is your manage components that the one in the workspace will continue to exist....

I don't believe that "delete" actually deletes it... rather it deletes the record association to your components.... but before you go crazy deleting stuff.. test it out..

Create a "TEMP" calculated metric... add it to some test workspaces, and report builder if you are using it, etc... then delete the calculated metric and see what happens to those reports.

Sadly there is no feature that allows us to see the reports using specific components....

Now, this idea is more specifically about Segments, but I would suggest you add a comment about having this feature extended to Calculated Metrics and give it an upvote; and hopefully this idea will be considered for future enhancements of the product.

https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/adobe-analytics-ideas/segment-overview-to-identify-...

As for cleanup... if deletion of items in active use doesn't impact those reports, you can be a little more heavy handed in your approach... but I know the feeling... if I am going to delete a calculated metric, I would want to replace those instances with the "canonical" version so that any future updates roll to all reports....

[sabined51282667]

Hi Jennifer, 

thank you for your answer. I tried to do as you said with a test metric in a test project and the metric is still working after I deleted it.

So, it looks like we can delete metrics without affecting existing projects. 

Thanks again and best regards

Sabine

[Jennifer_Dungan]

You're welcome   Good luck cleaning up your Calculated Metrics... that's something I should probably tackle in my instance..... 

[liz25]

Hi Jennifer, 

I was reading your answer to Sabine because we're in my organization reached the same problem as Sabine initially described, and we're also looking at doing a general clean-up. 

I understand that deleting a segment or a calculated metric doesn't actually deletes them, could you elaborate a bit more on the record association part "I don't believe that "delete" actually deletes it... rather it deletes the record association to your components" ? I'm not sure I undertand that part, what do you mean by record association?

thanks in advance for your answer, 

Lise

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Hi Lise,

Basically "saved" components (segments, calculates metrics, etc) create a "record" or an association to your components list...

Think about a digital grocery list... you might add eggs, bread, cheese, etc to your list so that you can use that list when buying your groceries that week.... when you are done, you remove them from your list... removing them doesn't delete them from the program, you can add eggs to your list again in a week or two when you are ready to buy them again. The "delete" here just deletes the record from your active shopping list, not from the program itself.

Now, in Adobe's case, once you "delete" them, they aren't as easy to find (as the intention is that you are technically done with them)... but if they are used inside of Reports, they are still there, and if you re-save from there (and choose to re-add them to your component list) they will re-appear back in your reusable components...

Incidentally, even if you don't have the segment or calculated metric included as a report, if you know the ID of the component, you can recover it... (there's probably a limit to how far back you can go... I suspect that Adobe has some fancy rules to check where something is used, and if not a "saved" component, and not part of any reports, I bet they have a periodic purge)... but if someone accidentally deletes something, you can often use the Usage Logs in the Admin tools to find the ID of the component that was removed, open it by using that id, then re-save it.

[liz25]

Hi Jennifer, 

Thanks a lot for elaborating! Much clearer now  

Best,

/Lise