With Higher Logic Vanilla's (Vanilla) updated Analytics experience, called Analytics Dashboard Beta, you can:
- run out-of-the-box reports to measure the health and activity of your Vanilla communities and
- build custom Analytics dashboards to create your own reporting to visualize the data that matters most to you.
Enable the Analytics Dashboard Beta
Analytics Dashboard Beta is available to all cloud customers who have Advanced Analytics as part of their subscription. While this is in beta, you can enable and disable the updated experience from the Vanilla Labs page.
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Addons > Labs.
- Click the Analytics BETA toggle to turn it on/off.
📝 NOTE: If you're not using our Advanced Editor but are interested in seeing a demo or adding Analytics to your subscription, reach out to your CSM.
Out-of-the-box Dashboards
On the Dashboard > Analytics page, the Analytics Dashboard Beta includes the following out-of-the-box Dashboards so that you can quickly and easily understand what's happening in your community.
- Engagement
- Ideation
- Knowledge
- Posting
- Q&A
- Search
- Traffic
Engagement
The Engagement dashboard provides an overview of user engagement across your Vanilla community. You can see:
- How many new and/or active members there are
- How many users are logging in vs how many are posting
- How long it takes for users to start commenting on new discussions
- Which users have the highest reputation score
- Which discussions have the highest score
- How users are reacting to your content, and which reactions are being used
Ideation
The Ideation dashboard provides a high-level view of your ideation strategy, including:
- How many new ideas and insights were added, and who is contributing them
- Which ideas have received the most votes, activity, and views
Knowledge
The Knowledge dashboard will inform you of:
- How many articles have been added and edited
- Which articles are getting the most views
- How many articles are rated as helpful and unhelpful
Posting
The Posting dashboard helps you understand your community’s posting trends. Use it to see:
- How many discussions and comments have been added
- How your posting volume has evolved over time
- How many contributors you have
- Which users, Roles, Categories, Subcommunities, and discussions are the most active
Q&A
The Q&A dashboard is designed to help you understand how your community is contributing to your support strategy. Use it to see:
- How many questions were asked, answered, and solved
- How many answers were provided and accepted
- Which users provided answers
- How long it takes to get answers and resolve questions
Search
The Search dashboard provides an overview of search activity in your Vanilla community. This dashboard has the following areas:
- Subcommunity Filter - If you have subcommunities, you can select one to filter the data to it.
- Total Searches - How many times users have searched your community.
- Members Searching - How many unique members are searching your community.
- Daily Searches - A line graph visualizing search occurrences by date.
- Searches by Type - After searching, users can narrow their search term by content type via the following tabs: All, Discussions, Articles, Places, Events, Members. Searches are grouped by type in the pie graph.
- Top Searches - A list of all terms searched, grouped by most used.
- Search Queries without Results - Lists all user searches with no results. ✔️ TIP: A best practice is to monitor this chart on a regular basis to understand what content your users are unable to find in your community. These insights can help you provide content tailored to your users' needs.
📝 NOTE: When reviewing your Top Searches, the term “Other” indicates an empty search string was used.
Traffic
The Traffic dashboards tells you how busy your communities are. Its charts display:
- How many page views and visits you’re getting, and whether these are coming from active members, guests, admins, or community managers
- Which subcommunities, pages, and/or posts are getting the most views
User & content insights
Insights are out-of-the-box reports about individual users, discussions, or articles.
User insights
User insights can be accessed from User Cards and/or the user's profile.
User profile example
For any user across your Vanilla community, you can navigate to their profile and select Analytics from options dropdown.
These reports show an individual user's contributions and engagement in your community, including:
- Number of visits
- Discussions viewed and participated
- Questions asked and answered
- Ideas added or upvoted
- Articles viewed
- Reactions added and received
- Points earned
Discussion insights
From a discussion, select Analytics from its ellipsis (...) menu. These reports provide data on how many users are engaging with the post.
Reports include:
- Viewers
- Page views
- Participants
- Users reacting
- Participation broken down by Role
Article insights
From an article in your Knowledge Base, select Analytics from its ellipsis (...) menu. These reports provide an overview of who is viewing your content and whether or not it's been rated as helpful.
Reports include:
- Page views
- Viewers
- Article feedback (i.e., was this article helpful?)
Create custom Dashboards & Charts
In addition to the out-of-the-box Dashboards, you can also create your own custom Analytics charts and Dashboards.
To create a custom Dashboard:
1. On the Dashboard > Analytics page, click the Add Dashboard option in the side-panel to launch our Dashboard Editor.
2. Give your Dashboard a unique name and select your first Chart from the available options.
3. Use the available Chart editor options to build your Analytics query and view the data you want to see.
Your Analytics query is made up of:
- A Data Source that determines which analytics events to pull from
- A Metric Function that determines how data is calculated. The options are:
- Count: the total number of events for a data stream, such as count of page views
- Count Unique: the number of unique values for a given property. This will require you to select metric field (e.g., Count the unique views by userID to get the number of visits to your community).
- Average: the average of all numeric values, such as average number of posts, average time to answer a question.
- Minimum: the minimum numeric value in a collection
- Maximum: the maximum numeric value in a collection
- Median: the median numeric value in a collection
You can also configure grouping and filtering options for your chart.
- The Group By setting (in the Data section) is available for pie graphs, line graphs, bar graphs, and tables. With them, you can break down data, for example, by subcommunity, category, country, and more.
- Filters can be added to your query to drill into or exclude specific types of events. For example, exclude guests from traffic data or focus your chart on traffic seen in a specific category.
✔️ TIP: We've put together an Analytics Data Reference Guide to give you information on what all of this means, which data sources are available, and which filters and grouping options you can use.
Chart types
For each chart you create, you can configure how you would like the data to display.
Let's take a look at the available chart types.
Scorecards
Scorecards show the total result of an analytics query, such as total number of discussions added, users joining, or average time to first comment.
Bar and Line graphs
Line graphs and Bar graphs show analytics results (such as number of page views, posts, or new users per day) over a period of time. With these, you can break down analytics events in various ways using the Group By option. For example:
- Group Page view data by Category name to see posting trends per Category over time.
- Group Point data by Point Source to understand how many points were awarded within a time frame and how they were earned (by answering and solving questions, through badges, or by receiving positive reactions to posts).
Pie graphs
Pie graphs allow you to group and compare data such as reactions added by type, posts added by Subcommunity or Category, and user participation rate.
Tables
Tables allow you to create leaderboards or see the results of an analytics query in table format.
- Tables require you to set a Group By option. For example, group Pageview Data by Article Name to see a list of your articles and their associated pageview count.
- To create a Leaderboard, configure the Order by option on Tables to Result; this will order your table entries by the results of your data analysis.
For example, when I configure my chart to use:
- Data Source: Page views
- Ordered by: Result
- Grouped by: Article Name
I get a list of all my articles (pages), ranked by the number of views:
- You can easily take action on the data shown in a table. For example, when viewing a table of your most viewed articles, click an Article Name to visit that article and take action as needed.
- Tables are paginated so you can see more than just the top results.
- Table columns are sortable in view mode so you can sort results data alphabetically or in ascending or descending order.
Edit your Dashboard layout
After you've added charts to your custom Dashboard, you can modify its layout with our drag-and-drop interface.
FAQ
What will happen to my historic data when I enable Analytics Dashboard Beta?
Nothing! This is a front-end update. We are using the same Analytics provider and backend, so all the historic data you've collected is preserved and available to you in our updated interface, our out-of-the-box Dashboards, and our Chart editor.
Where can I ask questions and submit feedback?
We've added an Analytics Beta Category to our Product Discussions area for you to submit your feedback or ask for help. We will continue working on our Analytics Experience offering, so we're here, happy to help, and eager to get your feedback.
Can I export (e.g., in CSV files) my Analytics data?
Yes! You can export CSVs of chart data when viewing Analytics Dashborads.
Who can view and edit my Analytics Dashboards?
- In order to view Analytics out-of-the-box Dashboards and custom Dashboards, you must have the
Analytics > Data > View permission. - In order to create and/or edit custom Dashboards, you must have the
Analytics > Data > Manage permission.
Currently, all Dashboards are shared across teams. So:
- All users with the
Analytics > Data > Manage permission can create new Dashboards and edit existing Dashboards. - All users with the
Analytics > Data > View permission can see all out-of-the-box Dashboards, and all custom Dashboards created by themselves or other team members.
You can copy our out-of-the-box Dashboards and add/edit their Charts.
Why can't I see page views and visits for some users?
For users in the EU, our Analytics cookie is automatically anonymized, meaning we're not tracking page view data for these users. You will see them listed as @anonymous when grouping page view data by username. Visits also use the page view data source and are thus equally impacted.
