Date range for report

[AEPAA]

Hi everyone,

I am getting confused with date ranges for UV and visit and for seperate subsection segment.

since , I need to create report for daily, monthly  and last 90 days.

->So, Does daily means Today report or just days in dimension for over a month.

->Monthly view should be this month (a custom date range filter) or month in dimension .

->What should be The date range for the panel and will it affect if the custom date range are  different.

Because, I have been doing comparision for visits and UV on the basis of  - this year this month and last year This month.

->I have a doubt on this too can you tell me  should I compare last month and 2 months ago data or This month and last year same month. Which one makes more sense.Same goes to day.

Can anyone please tell me how should I approach or  how normally you deal with date ranges. Any example would be helpful.. Thanks !

[kayawalton · Accepted solution]

Hi @AEPAA --

I typically would ask the person requesting the report for their date range preference for what the report covers OR if they are not sure, I would look at the data I am analyzing and provide a recommended date range. Because daily and monthly are different date views or breakdown and they did not ask for quarterly but last 90 days, it seems like they might be looking for the last 90 days. (I would double-check.) If they are, make sure you are using the Last Full 90 Days option.

As to how to present the daily and monthly views of the data:

To show daily trends of the data, I would drop Day as the rows and the metric as a column. It sounds like you have multiple metrics, so you would have to think about what you're trying to say about those metrics.

If you want to compare trends between UV and visits, I would use UV and visits as different columns and turn that freeform table into a line visualization.

If you want to showcase how a specific metric trends over time, I would keep that table to one metric and right-click to add time-period columns. You can add a column for the 90 days prior to your current date range and/or the same 90 days last year. It really depends on the change from these two time periods to your current data. You will have to update these columns if you change the date range to your panel. There are options to create custom rolling date ranges, but that depends on how often you want to run this report. I would not leave the data as a freeform table, however. It would be easier for you and your stakeholders to digest the data using a line visualization. 

For the monthly view, it is the same approach as daily. What are you trying to communicate to your stakeholders? Is it a particular metric over time, or a comparison of both over time? Because you have less rows (if you are using the last 90 days), using a bar graph might be less clunky (I also prefer it to differentiate from the daily view).

I think I covered all of your questions. Happy to help if you have any follow-ups.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I agree with @kayawalton, every person who requests a report may have a different idea about what "monthly" means... so best to confirm by talking to the person... it's better to spend a few minutes chatting to make sure you understand what they want before starting than to spend hours building a report that you may have to go back and spend additional time re-building.

Sometimes I will compare "Yesterday" to "2 Days Ago"... Sometimes I will pull a "Last 7 full days" or a "Last 14 full days trend" or even a "Last 30 full days trend". Sometimes the report will show both...comparisons between the last 2 full days with a larger daily trend to show some history.. I rarely use "Today" since trying to compare a partial day to the previous day.. however, you can get fancy and look at hourly trends, and create a custom date range that can pull data from yesterday up the "hour" we have data today for better comparisons:

Now, when we speak about Monthly, again, that could be a comparison to the previous month, or to the equivalent month last year... normally if someone says "Monthly" they want recent months... last month to two months ago or a trend of last 3 full months or last 6 full months, etc.. if they want to see a comparison to this month... but sometimes they want a MoM (Month over Month) which generally means they want to see a comparison to the same month last year... but again, I always check because people don't always use the same terms to mean the same thing....

Both of our suggestions are just that, suggestions... working with the people who will be using these reports is the most important thing... find the date ranges and comparisons that the requester wants... it's safer to ask than to assume.

[AEPAA]

Thanks! @Jennifer_Dungan , 

Does, DoD means same day last year too.  The report you have shown is Traffic by time of the right.

Also, I had asked for one more doubt I have is on  panel creation.

Does panel date and custom date range in report under that panel should be in same ranges. What happens if custom date range in out of scope of panel date range

Also, for monthly and 90 days should I need to  create seperate panels?

Because, I need to create panels for subsection also. 

Can you please give me your suggestions and insights on this

Thanks!

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Custom Date ranges will supersede the panel date range... so many of my reports will set the Panel to "Last Month", then I will use Custom Date Ranges in my freeforms to pull the "comparative" data. So even though my custom date range is outside of the scope of the panel, it will pull the correct data based on the custom date range (so you don't have to make your panel range a whole year for these comparisons)

And yes, my sample was just showing you how you could do an "up to the current hour" comparison, if you really needed to compare "today" against another day (so that it wasn't a full day to a partial day... you might just want to stick to comparing "yesterday" to its equivalent)

DoD, is probably the Day vs Same Day Last Year... no one has really asked me for that granular a report... plus that one has extra challenges..

Feb 29th for instance...  you will never have that day two years in a row....

The other issue is the "Day of the Week".. as in Jan 12 this year is a Friday, but last year it was a Thursday... this can yield very different results based on how people use your site... (Friday may be a high traffic day, whereas Thursdays may not)... sometimes you may want to try and create an equivalence based on the day of the week (so not compare Jan 12, 2024 to Jan 12, 2023, but instead to Jan 13, 2023 as the equivalent Friday) I don't have a custom date range handy for that one at the moment..  

Finally, about the 90 Days and the 3 Months... Unless you decide to add custom date ranges everywhere, you want to be sure that tables that show breakdowns by the Month dimension are returning "full months". Panels set to Last 3 Months can break down by day (but you won't have any days from this month)... Week is again a tricky thing, because the month doesn't always start on your calendar "week start" (i.e. Sunday or Monday depending on your configuration)

If you do a panel with "Last 90 full days" today, and you break down by "Month", you will have partial data for Oct (missing about 2 weeks at the beginning of the month), all of Nov, all of Dec, and about 2 weeks of Jan.. so not the best way to compare the data.

So I try to choose the best panel range for my report, but again, you can use custom dates to augment certain tables to make the data show more what you want...  I guess it depends on how you want to organize your data.

If I have a lot of "Monthly" comparisons, and a lot of "Daily", I will often use multiple panels, and name them appropriately about the scope of each panel (i.e. "Key Metrics - Last 3 Full Months")

[AEPAA]

Thanks ! @kayawalton , 

As you have said you would be using trend line . Set dimension as day and metrics.

But, Can we use , summary change for visits UV, Average time spent metrics. Is summary change recommended too.

Since , I have many metric my report would be huge , so is it okay if I keep my metrics in row and Custom date ranges in column and Put he aggregate values for summary change. I think if I do like this I won't be getting trend line but can summary. Please let me know Would you recommend this approach ?

Thanks!

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I often create a summary panel for key Summary Change and Summary Number as highlighted stats, or just do a section at the top of my panel... the below (either in separate panel(s) or just organized below in the same panel) I will have the detailed graphs and charts and data tables, etc... basically, "important items" at the top as a quick glance, easily digestible info, then more "meaty" content below that users can dig into.