Using the Report Manager

Last updated on Sep 25, 2020

Reports allow you to track progress and internally convey the functioning of your defined metrics and internal KPIs, gathering insights for different segments of your customer base according to your criteria, for instance:

  1. Dive deep into video playback and platform data on a view-by-view basis and see the full user experience when consuming video.

  2. See a full list of ongoing and finished views and sessions with their unique user ID and then filter by any dimension to see the data that is relevant to you.

  3. Then jump into the view and see a timeline representing the view in addition to session, location, device, network and quality data.

You can set custom data reports that detail how your platform is performing and share that information in different formats.

Contents

Accessing Reports

To access the Reports Manager:

  • Click Reports under the Tools section of the sidebar.

Creating an Analytics Report

To create a report:

  1. On the Reports Manager page, click Create New Report.



  2. Select a report type. Choose "Blank" to create a custom report, or choose from one of the following templates:

    1. Audience



    2. Titles



    3. CDN



    4. Devices



    5. Errors



    6. Countries



    7. Plays – QoE



    8. Plays – Tracking



    9. Error and Switching Events




  3. Click Next. The Report Creator page appears (the "Blank" report type is shown here and used in the example below):

     

    The panel on the left (Sheet 1) is used to specify the data to be included in Sheet 1 of the report. You can add additional sheets to a report by clicking on the + symbol. The panel on the left provides a preview     of the data being explored based on your selections, showing up to 20 rows and as many columns as desired. To view the full report, you must save it.

  4. To configure how data is aggregated in the generated report, you can specify grouping conditions. This will turn your report from a view-by-view report into a report which groups data based on different dimensions.
    To begin, click Add Group, and then select the Dimension by which you wish to group your data. For example, you could select you just want to see the top 5 countries based on their traffic (total playtime), this will then group all your views, only showing the data from the top 5 performing countries in terms of traffic.



  5.  The group wizard is launched, prompting you to choose a grouping segment (e.g. "Top ALL") and sorting criterion (e.g. "Sort by number of plays"):





  6. Click Add to apply your group settings:



  7. To display additional data associated with a group in your report, you can add one or more columns. Click Add Column:



  8. Select the metrics or dimensions you wish to add to the report from the list. Metrics that appear grayed out in the menu are not available for that group. 

    Once you have selected your columns, you may then change the order by dragging and dropping the cards into place.

    If you select columns without selecting any groups, the resulting report would display a view on each row. This means if there are one thousand views within your report, there will be one thousand rows showing the data for each individual view in every column.

  9. Click Add. A preview of your report appears in the Report Creator window:



  10. You can apply up to 3 groupings by clicking the Add Group button again and following the steps above. In the example shown below, report data is initially grouped by Top 100 Countries based on the number of plays, then by the Top 5 Streaming Protocols employed (also sorted by number of plays). The total number of plays associated with each primary and secondary group is shown in the last column:



  11. At this point, you may optionally apply an existing filter or create a new one (see Applying Filters):

     

  12. Click Apply. The report preview is updated with the filter settings:



  13. After configuring your report, you can further edit it by using the checkboxes at the top of the wizard. These are the three checkboxes you can select and what they mean:

    • Show headers: Select this box to make the headers at the top of each column appear. If you plan on feeding the report into another piece of software, it is advised to leave the checkbox unselected.

    • Show totals: Select this box to add an extra row to the bottom of all columns showing its total, adding and making averages as necessary.

    • Show others: Select this box to add an extra row to the bottom of all columns, showing a total sum or average of all values that weren’t included in tops or bottoms. For example, if you choose top 5 countries, this row would show the total value of all other countries. This function is not possible when grouping by TOPALL or BOTALL.

  14. When you are finished defining parameters for the report, click Next. The Export screen appears.



  15. Review the settings for the final report. You can modify the export fields and set the frequency of the report.

    • Name: Name of the report that will appear in the Report Manager.
    • Export format: Defines the format the report will be exported as.



    • Create as: Defines whether the report will be public (available to all users) or private (available only to users in an admin role).
    • One time: Choose a frequency of One-time and set the date and time range over which you wish to include data in a single report instance.

    • Recurrent: Choose a frequency of Recurrent to specify settings for reports to be generated on a regular basis:



      Under Generate Every, choose an interval.
      Under Execution Time, choose a delay of from 1 to 8 hours for the start of the report generation. 
      Use the Collect data from slider to specify an interval over which to aggregate data for the report.

      Note

      The way that data is aggregated for reports and the UI is different. For example, if you were pulling data in the reports from 12:00 to 2:30, only the plays that had already stopped in that interval would be considered. Plays that are still active would not be counted in the report, whereas they would appear in the real time UI data.

      The Execution Time feature helps to assure that whenever a report is generated the data being aggregated are the same as in the UI, based on the Average Effective Playtime of each play session (which is automatically calculated and displayed). So, for example, if the Average Effective Playtime is 2.86 minutes, an execution time of one hour should be more than sufficient to allow all those play sessions to end and therefore be aggregated in the report.

    • Timezone: Choose a frequency of One-time and set the date and time range over which you wish to include data in a single report instance.

Configuring Storage

By default, data are kept for a pre-determined amount of time on a default server. Under Report storage you can specify an alternate S3 or FTP storage location.

  

Configuring Notifications

Under Notification Channels you can specify one or more channels over which a notification will be sent when a report is generated.

Slack

  1. In the Notification Channels section, select Slack from the drop-down menu.
  2. Enter the Slack Name and Webhook URL and select the recipients from the list.
  3. Click Save.

  

Email

  1. In the Notification Channels section, select Email from the drop-down menu.

  2. Enter the email addresses to receive the report.

  3. Click Create.


URL Callback

You can set your own API URL to receive the processed report download information. External systems can dynamically process the reports, and with this option you can set up your own service to receive a 'processed report' notification and execute a download of the report data.

The URL that you provide in this configuration should be enabled to receive a POST with the following JSON content structure:


{
"title":"Report title (ReportABC_20190501)",
"startDate":"Report start date (20190501)",
"endDate":"Report end date (20190502)",
"url":"Report download url (https://youbora-
reports.s3.amazonaws.com/ReportABC_20190501)"
}


To download the report, you would have to then follow these steps:

  1. Parse the received JSON

  2. Execute a GET on the provided "url".

  3. In the Notification Channels section, select URL Callback from the drop-down menu.

  4. Paste the provided download URL in the corresponding field.

  5. Click Create.

The provided download URL ("url") can be used up to 5 days after the report creation.



Exporting Reports

  1. When you have finished configuring all of the report settings described above, click Create. The created report appears with its progress displayed in the Report Manager. Click the icon to view instances of recurring reports:



  2. Click on a report name in the list to view a details panel from which you can preview, edit, download or delete that report:




  3. Click on the vertical ellipsis icon at the end of a row for a menu that allows you to download, edit, delete that report. Or use the clone function to create make of a report to use as a basis for creating a new one:




  4. Example of a downloaded report in Excel format:







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