What means "null"?

Hi there,

we are happily testing the new Analytics but are having a pressing question.

What means "null" in this context:

Page Views per Subcommunitiy locale. We have a table with all our Subcommunitiy locale plus null. What is null? Especially because null has the most page views.

We also found "null" in the context of "Posts by Subcommunitiy" locale and here we thought it might be the "Reported posts" as this board is out of the language-locale structure. Is that correct?

Thanks!

Esther

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Accepted answers

Val

@Esther99 Just figured out why the subcommunity locale filtering is being difficult! It seems that KB and Subcommunities are using different locale names. SO when im filtering to exclude pageviews from the EN locale, its only filtering out community pages, but if I filter to exclude pages from the English locale, KB content is being filtered out!

Flagging it to the team for fixing.

All comments

Val

Hey @Esther99, you are correct! Where you're seeing "null" is when there is some data in your chart that falls outside of your group-by parameter. In the example you provided for pageviews per subcommunity, you're seeing your total pageviews broken down by subcommunity, BUT you have some pages that are being viewed that aren't tied to a subcommunity. So, instead of removing that whole set of pageviews from the chart, we represent that as ''null."

For Posts per Subcommunity, it is possible to set yourself up with categories that aren't organized into subcommunities, so "null" in that case is showing you posts that were published in a category that has not been place within a subcommunity. Most often with subcommunity set up this will be your Reported Posts and/or Social Group categories.

Now, with release 2021.023, which is on staging already, you'll notice that 'Null' no longer appears in Charts. We've chosen to rename this to 'Other'

Screen Shot 2021-11-19 at 8.48.43 AM.png

Let me know what you think, or if you have any additional questions!

Val

Esther99

Hi Val,

Thanks for your feedback! Fully understood!

Now I am wondering what those pages are in our Community 👀 Or can it be the KB? I mean the number is really high.

(I might open other topics here for other things we noticed as we start to use Analytics intensely now.)

Talk to you soon and wish you a lovely weekend!

Thanks, Esther

Val

@Esther99 One thing that you can do to investigate a bit more, is update, or create the same Table shown above, but add filters to exclude the pages using the subcommunity locales listed, leaving only those with none... that can tell us which non-subcommunity/localed pages are being viewed. Let me know if you have any questions on how to do that!

Esther99

Thanks for the hint and thanks for offering your help.

How do I exclude via the filter?

as soon as I choose more than one filter with these settings, I get no results:

I think I am on a wrong track :-)

Val

@Esther99 I've sent you some notes privately on how to get the chart you need set up to investigate those pageviews a bit further.

With regards to chart data not loading when you add filters.

I've noticed on some queries the data can be a bit slow to load. In this case you'll see a loading icon for a while, but eventually the data will load. To confirm, I'd say just save the chart and dashboard, and play around with the Date Filter on view mode. I'm raising the slow load times to my team for further investigation.
If the spinning wheel continues and nothing ever loads, check your chart settings and make sure you don't have an incomplete filter, or metric configuration. It's currently possible to accidentally save a query that has incomplete settings. We're working on adding some validation and alerts to the chart editor if ever your query is missing a setting.

Esther99

Thanks Val!

I appreciate your help 💙

Will play around with it today and see whether I can get it all working.

Thanks, Esther

Val

Flagging it to the team for fixing.