About Reports

A report is a configurable overview of some aspect of contact center operations. For example, a report may include information about the number and type of contacts (activities, calls, etc.) handled by a group of agents in a time period, and the average duration of each type of contact.

Reports enable users to understand what is happening in the contact center. They can highlight problem areas to enable management to use agents and teams more efficiently, and to improve customer service and satisfaction. They can also help identify trends and provide information for cost control and auditing purposes.

Analytics enables users to:

  • Define a wide range of customizable reports, based on standard report models that are supplied with Analytics.

  • Specify report parameters to define the range of resources to report on, the time period the report covers and the way the data is presented to the user.

  • View the report interactively in the Analytics web application, or save the results in one of several output formats.

There are multiple aspects to a report:

  • Report Definition: Definitions specify the structure of the report. This includes the metrics, the resource types that are reported on, grouping and aggregation options, and report formatting. The report definition is created and edited using Report Builder.

  • Report Model: Most reports are based on a report model. Each model consists of a set of options, such as columns, resource types, aggregations, etc., which may be included in reports for a given channel and theme. These are the options that appear in Report Builder.

  • Report Parameters: The inputs to a report that determine the scope of the report when it is run. This typically includes a parameter set (list of resources to include), date range, sort order and other options. These options are selected in the report parameter bar. They can be selected each time the report is run, or they can be saved for future use.

  • Thresholds: The set of rules that provides conditional formatting in a report, for example, traffic light color-coding. Thresholds can filter the report to show exceptions only as well.

  • Schedules: One or more schedules can be saved for a report so that it runs automatically and be sent to a distribution list.

  • Report Output: The data and formatting that are returned each time the report is run. You can view this on-screen or download it to various formats including PDF, Excel, CSV and HTML.

It is possible to create linked reports, which are links to a given report in a different location and/or under a different name. A linked report shares the same definition (and model, if applicable) as its parent report, but the parameters, thresholds and schedules can be set and saved independently for the linked report. This makes it easy to use a standard report format across the business but allow different users to have their own instances of the report.

Once you have saved the reports you need, they can be visualized in a variety of ways using the Charts gadget. For more information, see Charts Gadget.

About KPI Trend Arrow Metrics

Some report models include KPI Trend Arrow metrics. Rather than showing a value, these metrics show the trend based on how the value of the current interval compares to the value for the previous interval and the same resource. The value itself is generally available as another metric in the same model.

For example, the Chat Activity model can show the average chat survey score itself and also a trend indicating if the average score has gone up or down compared to the previous interval.

These trends are displayed as arrow icons indicating an up or down direction (or sideways if the trend is level). If the report is downloaded or scheduled, then the icon images may not be supported by the export format at all (for example, CSV) or may not be displayable because the Analytics server is not available to download the images at the time that someone opens the export file (for example, HTML).

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