Creating and Editing Reports Using the Report Builder

What is the Report Builder?

Use Watershed's report builder to fill your dashboards with reports that help measure the impact of your organization’s learning and training data. It provides a number of report types and filter options that enable you to take a closer look at your data so you can find new insights and correlations you might not have discovered otherwise.

Who can use this feature?
 User Types
All Admins have access to the report builder, and some Users can be given access to use the report builder. If you don't have access to the report builder but think you should, reach out to your organization's Watershed administrator.
 Pricing 
Available on paid plans (AnalystCLO, and Enterprise).
 Expertise
Anybody (both beginners and experts) can use this feature.

How to Get to the Report Builder

There are three ways to access the report builder:

  1. To create a new report, click Report builder in the main navigation (the report will be created on whichever dashboard you're currently on): reportbuilder.png
  2. To edit an existing report, hover over the report on a dashboard and click the gear icon in the bottom right corner:gearicon.png
  3. In the report options menu, click Configure or Advanced Configuration to access the report builder for that report: configureoradvanced.png
  4. On the top right corner of an existing report's detail page, click the pen Configure icon: configure.png

Using the Report Builder

There are four main sections in the report builder:

  1. Report Previews - One preview shows how your report will look on dashboards, while the other shows a live preview of your report's detail view. As you update the report options, both report previews update in real time: previews.png
  2. Report Types - Here, you'll choose what type of report you want to create. Use the arrows on either side of the carousel to scroll through every report type:reporttypes.png
  3. Report Filters - Once you choose a report type, use the options to customize the data your report analyzes:reportoptions.png
  4. Action Menu - After you’re satisfied with your report, save changes to an existing report or save as a new report. Also use it to access Advanced Configuration or leave the report builder without changing anything with Cancel:commands.png 

Report Types

Watershed has many report types to choose from depending on the type of data you have and how you want to present your findings.

interactions.png

Interactions - Watershed is powered by moments of activity called interactions. Sources ranging from mobile apps to learning management systems are connected to Watershed, and as learners perform actions in these programs, data about these actions is sent to Watershed in the form of interactions. The Interactions Report collects and lists each of these actions.

activity.png Activity - The Activity Report provides in-depth analysis of an activity such as a course, video, or assessment. Beyond providing insights on how learners perform, this report can perform advanced question analysis to make sure organizations are asking the right questions in their assessments.
leaderboard.png Leaderboard - The Leaderboard Report allows you to rank people, activities, or activity types by score, usage, or any custom measure. For instance, use a Leaderboard Report to show a list of your most active users or most viewed pieces of content. This report type is good for exporting tables into a spreadsheet because it shows text-based data.
heatmap.png Heatmap - The Heatmap Report provides an ideal way to quickly compare activity between learners. Like the Leaderboard Report, each Heatmap Report shows text-based data, but also presents a visual representation of your learners’ activities by using varying intensities of color. Darker and lighter backgrounds on cells are used to visually highlight outlier values. For instance, if you are looking at test scores for a group of learners, you can easily identify higher performers because their corresponding colors would be darker.
bar.png Bar - The Bar Report displays learner performance with a bar chart. It displays horizontal or vertical bars based on measure values. You can use multiple measures on the same chart or set up a series of charts that measure anything from score to KPI measurements.
line.png Line - The Line Report displays learner performance on a line chart. Choose multiple measures and the Line Report will display values with colored lines. It’s ideal for viewing change in measure values over time.
scatter.png Scatter - The Scatter Report displays learner performance on a scatter plot. Choose two measures, and Watershed displays individual or group performance of those measures on an X and Y axes. It’s ideal for identifying high and low performers on measures such as KPIs, competencies, or assessment scores.
spider.png  Spider - The Spider Report displays learner performance in a spider chart. Multiple performance measures (e.g., KPIs, competencies, or assessment scores) are plotted on the same scale. You can quickly compare how different individuals and groups are performing on the selected performance measures.
range.png Range - The Range Report visualizes change between measure values. It’s perfect to view change of performance measures (e.g., KPIs, competencies, or assessment scores) before and after training, and it can also be used to visualize learners’ engagement with video.
program.png 

Program - The Program Report offers an overview of a pre-defined learning program—like compliance training or new hire training. Watch as your learners progress through courses, videos, assessments and keep up with high-level metrics like average assessment scores and competencies demonstrated. Answer common questions, such as who has or hasn’t completed parts of a learning program and share it with managers and leadership.

pie.png Pie - The Pie Report displays learner performance by showing how smaller parts represent proportions of a whole on a pie chart. Use it to track compliance, show what's most popular on your Learning Experience Platform, or see how people answer questions on an assessment.
correlation.png  Correlation - The Correlation Report allows you to explore relationships between multiple performance measures and find dependent relationships. It’s ideal to help show a relationship (or lack of relationship) between scores on sales training and actual sales numbers.
person.png Person - The Person Report allows you to create learner profiles for anyone in your organization. In addition to demographic information, you see a comprehensive overview of each learner’s activity—including information about course registrations, assessment performance, class attendance, and learning programs.
Screen_Shot_2019-04-07_at_7.32.01_PM.png  Metric - The Metric Report allows you to highlight a metric—such as a specific KPI or other key measure—on a dashboard so you can easily tell stories with your data. Choose a measure, and the Metric Report will see that measure's most recent value. You also can use this report to create text boxes on your dashboards, giving you the ability to provide context to your data.

Report Filters

Watershed provides a variety of filters to use when building your reports. Four main filters—Activities, People, Verbs, and Dates— automatically appear on most report types in Watershed. Some report types also allow you to use additional filters, while Admins can add even more filtering options. In each report, only data that meets all of the conditions of your filters will be displayed. report_filters.png

Activities Filter

An activity is anything you want to measure (i.e., an assessment, course, survey, video, etc). The Activities filter lets you choose which activities you want your report to focus on.

In the report builder, click Activities to pull up the filter: activitiesfilter.png

Use the search bar to find an activity: searchbaractivities.png

Or, click Pick From a List to choose an activity from the list of every activity you have permission to see: pickfromalist-activities.png

Click the Activity Type dropdown to filter the activities shown by their activity type. This list is automatically generated from the data associated with the activities you have permission to see:activitytypes.png

In Pick from a List, you can also choose all activities of a certain activity type with Activity Types. For instance, this would be useful if you want to create a report that focuses on all of your surveys:pickallactivitytypes.png

When using Pick from a List, click once to include the activity and click again to exclude the activity:multiclick.gif

You can choose to include more than one activity for your report. The data used to create your report will be data from all included activities without any data from excluded activities.

 Please note: Exclusion filters work in the same way as inclusion filters in that the different filters are applied in addition to one another. This means that if you exclude an activity and a verb, for example, only data about both that activity and verb will be excluded. Data about the activity using a different verb will not be excluded from the report.

If you want to exclude an included activity, hover over the activity and click the circle with the line through it: circleline.png

If you want to include an excluded activity, hover over the filter and click the checkmark:

checkbox.png

If you want to deselect an activity you’ve already chosen, hover over the activity and click the trash can icon next to the activity’s name:

trashcan.png

By default on new reports, no activities are chosen. In this case, your report will focus on every activity that you have permission to see.

  Related Activities

Some users can see a Related Activities checkbox in the Activities filter. Learn about Related Activities, how to turn on the Related Activities checkbox, and how to use the Related Activities checkbox.

People Filter

The People filter lets you choose the individuals and groups from your organization that should be included in your report.

Click People in the report builder to pull up the filter:peoplesection.png

Use the search bar to find people or groups:peoplesearch.png

Or click the Pick From a List button to see individual people, groups, or group-types that you have permission to see:picklistpeople.png

Select people, groups, and group types from Pick people, Pick groups, and Pick group types respectively:newpickpeople.png

Under Pick People, you'll see everyone you have permission to see. With the Logged In User option, you can create reports that always show the data for the person that is viewing the report. This is a great way to set up a personal learning dashboard so anyone who accesses Watershed can have a quick view into his or her personal data—even if they’re able to see many other people’s data:loggedinuser.png

Under Pick Group Types, if you choose a group type, every group as identified in your data that you have permission to see will be included in your report:pickgrouptypes.png

When using Pick from a List, click once to include the person, group, or group type and click again to exclude the person, group, or group type:muliclickpeople.gif

You can choose to include more than one person, group, or group type in your report. The data used to create your report will be data from all included people without any data from excluded people.

 Please note: Exclusion filters work in the same way as inclusion filters in that the different filters are applied in addition to one another. This means that if you exclude an activity and a verb, for example, only data about both that activity and verb will be excluded. Data about the activity using a different verb will not be excluded from the report.

If you want to exclude an included person, group, or group type, hover over the activity and click the circle with the line through it:peoplecircleline.png

If you want to include an excluded person, group, or group type, hover over the activity and click the checkbox:checkboxpeople.png

By default on new reports, no people, groups, or group types are chosen. In this case, your report will focus on every person and group that you have permission to see.

If you want to deselect an person, group, or group type you’ve already chosen, hover and click the trash can icon next to the person’s, group’s, or group type’s name:peopletrashcan.png

Intersecting Groups

By default, when you add multiple groups to your filter Watershed will include everybody who belongs to one or more of those groups. If instead you want to include only people who belong to every group in the filter, tick the Only include people who are in all selected groups option:onlyinclude.png

This can also be applied to excluded groups:excludeintersect.png

Groups Output Filter

Sometimes in reports organized by group, you want to compare groups of a particular type, and you also want to filter the report by a group that is from a different type. For example, perhaps you want to compare different job types, but only show data about people in the Sales division. If you were to add both the group type "Job Types", and the group "Sales" to the filter you would see the Sales group listed alongside the various job types in your report. The Groups Output filter provides a way to filter by a group, without that group actually showing in the report. 

Because the Output Filter is only relevant for certain report configurations, the settings section is normally hidden, and only appears when it is relevant. Specifically, the section will appear for reports which:

  • Contain a Group Type filter,
  • Contain a Group filter, and
  • Are organized by Group. 

Once the Output Filter section appears, it will present you with a list of all the groups used to filter the report. You can tick these in order to hide them, or leave them un-ticked to display them in the report. 

Verbs Filter

Data is sent to Watershed in the form of individual interactions (i.e., Meredith passed an assessment or John attended a class). The Verbs filter allows you to isolate just the verbs from those interactions and filter reports based on those verbs.

Click Verbs in the report builder to pull up the filter:verbsfilter.png

Use the search bar to find a verb:searchbox.png

Or click the Pick From a List button to choose a verb from the list of every verb you have permission to see:picklistverbs.png

When using Pick from a List, click once to include the verb and click again to exclude the verb:clickingverbs.gif

You can choose to include more than one verb in your report. The data use to create your report will be data from all included verbs without any data from excluded verbs.

 Please note: Exclusion filters work in the same way as inclusion filters in that the different filters are applied in addition to one another. This means that if you exclude an activity and a verb, for example, only data about both that activity and verb will be excluded. Data about the activity using a different verb will not be excluded from the report.

If you want to exclude an included verb, hover over the verb and click the circle with the line through it:verbscircleline.png

If you want to include an excluded verb, hover over the verb and click the checkmark:verbscheckmark.png

By default on new reports, no verbs are chosen. In this case, your report will focus on every verb that you have permission to see.

If you want to deselect an verb you’ve already chosen, have over the verb and click the trash can icon next to the verb’s name:verbstrash.png

Extensions Filter

Some users can see Extensions filters in the report builder. Learn about the Extensions filter, how to turn on the Extensions filter, and how to use the Extensions filter.

Dates Filter

You’re able to select a time range for your report to analyze.

Click Dates in the report builder to pull up the filter:datesfilter.png

Use the dropdown to select Trailing or Custom:

  • Use Trailing to select the previous X days, weeks, months, calendar months, years, quarter or calendar year from when the report is viewed. While the range stays the same, the dates change to keep up with the present day. If you use a trailing date filter, the report will change every day to only look at the data within the selected range.
  • Use the Custom option to choose a specific date range that will not change.

datesdropdown.png

To remove a Dates filter, choose All statement dates. If you don’t select any dates, the report will analyze all interactions in the account.

It's also possible to set a dates filter with a start date and no end date. Just select a Custom filter option, choose a start date, and click Clear for the end date. The example below sets a filter starting at January 1, 2018 and will constantly update with new data:noeenddate.png

 Heads up: the Dates filter looks at the timestamp of the original interaction, not the timestamp when Watershed received the data.

The Time Zone option allows you to control the time zone for your report (the default time zone for reports is UTC):timezone.png

To change the time zone for the report, search for the time zone using the search box and click it in order to use it for the report (here is a list of time zone options):timezonesearch.png

The Time Zone option controls:

  • the period of time that your Dates filters use to filter your data.
  • the period of time that measures in your report use.
  • time-based groups of learners.

Report Text

From the Report Text menu, customize the text on the report on both the dashboard and in the detail view:reporttext.png

  • The Title is at the top of the report on both the dashboard and the report’s detail view.
  • The Summary appears at the footer of the report on the dashboard.
  • The Description appears at the top of the report’s detail view under the header.

Quick Filters

Quick Filters allow your users to filter reports without needing to access the report builder. These filters, which aren't saved, are perfect for providing limited report control to users not familiar with Watershed.

 Related: Learn about Quick Filters.

Organized

The Organized dropdown allows you to select the dimension the report will be organized by. Dimensions (normally) contain qualitative values such as people, groups, time periods, activities or verbs. The dimension is used to categorize the data returned by measures. For example, if the person dimension is selected the first column of your report will be the persons information, and then all data returned in that row from the measures will be from data associated with that person. 

See the article What are Dimensions? for more information about how to utilise the Organised By section of report builder.

Measures

Measures are how you display data from your xAPI statements in reports. They are typically numbers that are aggregated and displayed in Watershed’s graphs and charts, but they can output text in certain situations.

See the article What are Measures? for more information about how to use measures in your reports.

Default Sort

The Default Sort dropdown lets you select which dimension or measure the report should sort by and in which order (IE descending or ascending). Only measures that have been added to the report will show up in the menu.

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Report-Specific Options & Filters

Each type of report has unique options:

  1. Interactions
  2. Activity
  3. Leaderboard
  4. Heatmap
  5. Bar
  6. Line
  7. Scatter
  8. Spider
  9. Range
  10. Program
  11. Pie
  12. Correlation
  13. Person
  14. Metric

 

Advanced Configuration

Advanced Configuration is direct access the JSON code that controls every report. Check out our Advanced Configuration guide to learn more.

If you create a report without using Advanced Configuration, you’ll hear us refer to that as Simple Configuration.

Creating New Reports

  Only Admins can create reports on shared dashboards. If you’re an Admin, your report will be created on the active dashboard. If you’re not an Admin, your report will be created on your Your Reports page.

To create a new report, click Report Builder in the main navigation and use the report builder to customize the report. Click Save As New Report to create a new report with the options you’ve chosen:saveasnewreport.png

Click Reset when you’re creating a new report to remove all filters you’ve chosen:reset.png

Editing Reports

  Only Admins can edit and save reports on shared dashboards.

To edit an existing report, configure the report and use the report builder to change the filters and options for the report.

Click Save changes to this report to update the existing report with the options you’ve chosen:savechangestothisreport.png

Click Save as new report to create a new report based on the options you’ve chosen. This will not change the report you first configured:saveasnewreport.png

  Only Admins can create reports on shared dashboards. If you’re an Admin, your report will be created on the active dashboard. If you’re not an Admin, your report will be created on your Your Reports page.

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