Report Builder: very old metric can't be found

[figsy]

Hi all

I am trying to fix/investigate a file generated via a Report Builder schedule which was created probably 8 or so years ago.
The original owner is still in the business, but does not have the detail needed.

The report uses a metric "popularity" which is a calculated metric.

However, no matter where we look, we cannot find this metric - it's not in metrics manager, it's not on his or anyone else's accounts.
And now, when I try and edit the report builder, it removes the metric, so I cannot make any edits without breaking the file!

(I am trying to investigate an unrelated problem with the file, but won't be able to, as I can't risk breaking the original file.)

Does anyone have any smart ideas on how to find this metric?

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

Under All Admin > Logs, there is a tab for "Usage & Access Logs"

You can check in here for changes made to Calculated Metrics, you can even further reduce this list by adding the name, or even a partial name of the metric that is missing.

Since you don't know when it was "deleted", you may have to run this query multiple times going back in increments (there's a limit to how long a time span you can search).

Once you find it, you can grab the ID of the metric. Now, open ANY calculated metric in your inventory, and replace the ID in the URL...

Deletions are really "soft" deletions... basically the item is removed from the components list, but it should still exist... 

If you click on the "Make this metric available to all your projects...." checkbox

and Apply the changes, this should restore the calculated metric

[figsy]

Thanks @Jennifer_Dungan 
I love the logic - and believe it would work for most people, so I'll mark it as the right answer.

Looking at our logs, it seems they don't go back far enough (we have "only" 3 years of logs by the look of it), and I estimate this was set up / potentially deleted more like 4-5 years ago (but somehow report builder can still use the metric)

Happy to have any more even more inventive ideas, but I fear we might have hit a wall!

Thanks again

[Jennifer_Dungan]

OK, there might be one more thing we can try... 

Client Care might be able to see the API requests for that Report Builder report, if they can, they can probably provide those to you, and it would include all the IDs, it may take a little bit of time to go through them all until you find the correct one (depending on the complexity of your report)