📝 NOTE: It is assumed you know how to create custom Dashboards and Charts, and have an understanding of chart Types, Presets, and Metrics. If not, read this article before proceeding.
When building your own Dashboard Charts, you can pull data from various data sources to view different types of analytics events.
- In this article, we're going to focus on the Post modifications data source, which tracks all updates to discussions and comments across your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community.
Overview
The Post modifications data source tracks when:
Discussions are:
- Edited
- Tagged
- Moved
- Merged
- Closed
- Deleted
Comments are:
For each modification event logged, you can see:
- the Type of modification that was made
- information about the User who published the post that was modified, or the Insert User
- information about the User who made the modification
- the Category the modified post is published in
- the Discussion that was modified
Some modification events include additional information. For example:
When a discussion is moved you can see:
- the Category it was originally posted in, or the Source Category
- the Category it was moved to
When a comment is split, or discussions are merged, you can see:
- the discussion that was originally posted, or the Source Discussion
- the new discussion that is now posted, or the Destination Discussion
Filter Chart data
Controlling what data is shown in a Chart is accomplished via the Group By and Filter options.
- The Group By options (available for pie graphs, line graphs, bar graphs, and tables) enable you to view data by modification action (type), subcommunity, Category, country, and more.
- You can add Filters to your query to drill into or exclude specific types of events (e.g., exclude members from modification data or focus your Chart on changes made in a specific Category).
✔️ TIP: You can add one or multiple Group By and Filter options to dissect the data how you see fit. Generally speaking, you'll select Group By options to view a specific slice of data, and, if needed, use Filters to dig deeper.
Let's learn about each of the available Group By and Filter options.
📝 NOTE: These options can be used both to group and filter data.
Type
The Type parameters define the type of modification that occurred:
- comment_edit: when a comment is edited
- comment_delete: when a comment is deleted
- comment_split: when a comment is split from its original discussion to create a new thread
- discussionTagged: when a discussion is tagged
- discussion_edit: when a discussion is edited
- discussion_close: when a discussion is closed for commenting
- discussion_move: when a discussion is moved from one category to another
- discussion_merge: when two or more discussions are merged together
- discussion_delete: when a discussion is deleted
User Name, ID, Role, Rank
The User data shows who modified the post.
Group data by:
- User Rank Name or ID to see a breakdown of which Ranks are modifying posts
- User Role Name or ID to see a breakdown of which Roles are modifying posts
- User Name, ID, or UUID to see a breakdown of all users modifying posts
Filter data by:
- User Role Name or ID to see post modifications made by users of a specific Role
- User Rank Name or ID to see post modifications made by users of a specific Rank
- User Name, ID, or UUID to see post modifications made by a specific user
Insert User Name, ID, Role, Rank
The Insert User data shows who posted the content that was modified.
Group data by:
- Insert User Name, ID, or UUID to see a breakdown of all users who have posted content that was then modified
- Insert User Rank Name or ID to see a breakdown of which Ranks have posted content that was then modified
- Insert User Role Name or ID to see a breakdown of which Roles have posted content that was then modified
Filter data by:
- Insert User Name, ID, or UUID to see modifications made to posts by a specific user
- Role Name or ID to see modifications made to posts by users of a specific Role
- Rank Name or ID to see modifications made to posts by users of a specific Rank
Category
The Category data shows where the modified post is published.
📝 NOTE: For discussion_move events, the Category is the Category the post was moved to.
Source Category
The Source Category data appears only for discussion_move events and is the post's original Category.
Source Discussion
The Source Discussion data appears only for discussion_merge and comment_split events and will define:
- The name of the discussion that was posted and then merged
- The name of the discussion where a split comment was originally posted
Destination Discussion
The Destination Discussion data appears only for discussion_merge and comment_split events and will define:
- The new discussion created from merged discussions
- The new discussion created from split comments