Analytics and Reporting
What to know
Analytics in Designer Cloud spans aggregation (Summarize), calculated metrics (Formula), and reporting outputs (tables, charts, rendered reports). Understand grouping and aggregation functions (Sum, Count, CountDistinct, Min, Max, Avg), and how to build a metric from components. Reporting tools assemble layout, tables, and charts into a rendered document.
Traps
- Count vs. CountDistinct: counting rows vs. unique values.
- Averaging averages instead of computing from raw values.
- Aggregating after a join that duplicated rows, inflating sums.
- Charts bound to the wrong field or stale after schema changes.
- Percent-of-total computed before filtering vs. after.
Rule of thumb
Aggregate from the most granular, deduplicated dataset. If a total looks too high, suspect row multiplication upstream.
Worked example: Average order value is computed as the average of daily averages, giving a skewed number. Fix: aggregate from the raw order rows with Sum(amount)/CountDistinct(order_id), not from pre-aggregated daily figures.