Dashboards - Overview

 

Dashboards are custom visualizations using your Fullstory data. This article is an overview and in-depth guide for crafting Dashboards that tell a story with numbers. For a quicker read about how to get started, see our Dashboard Quick Start Guide here.

Dashboards are protected objects in Fullstory, which means they can only be modified, archived, or deleted by the original object creator, an Admin, or an Architect. This helps ensure that important objects aren’t accidentally changed or removed by a teammate in your Fullstory account.

To read more on modifying objects like Dashboards in Fullstory, check out this helpful article.

Contents:

• Card Types and How to Use Them
• Components of Cards
• Dashboard Filters
• Metrics - Your Key to Dashboards
• Types of Metrics and How to Use Them
• Creating Ratios with Metrics
• Formatting Numbers
• FAQ

Card Types and How to Use Them

Single Metric - Visualize your data as a single number or percent. Perfect for answering questions like "What is our average order value this week?" or "What percent of our users are on mobile devices?"

Metric Trend - Understand how interactions and experiences change over time. "Are purchases going up or down week over week?" "Do our customers encounter fewer bugs as we iterate or more?" These are examples of questions Trend Cards can help you answer. (Tip: if you've been using Fullstory for a while and have ever wished you could compare two Segments, this is for you.)

 

Metric Dimensionality - Compare a specific metric grouped by specific attributes. Dimensionality cards are perfect for answering questions about the most popular browsers, URLs, or top UTM campaigns. 

 

Funnel - Understand actions toward a goal and where users are dropping out of key flows. A funnel card will show you overall completion rate from the first step to the last, as well as the number of users who make it to each step.

Funnel Trend - Understand funnel conversion rate over time with a funnel trend card. 

Text - Organize and contextualize your Dashboard with Text cards.

Page Flow - Allows you to analyze micro user journeys. Specifically, the previous and next Pages viewed from a given Page. In addition, you can see the percentage of page views that were “Entry” or “Exit” Pages, meaning the user started or ended their session on that Page. In order to accurately represent next page flows and site exits, data from live sessions is excluded from Page Flow cards.

Retention - Retention Charting gives you a way to understand how many users are returning to your product. By measuring user retention, you can determine if your users are engaged, active, and are finding enough value within a product.

Heatmaps - Heatmaps visualize how users engage with a specific page in your product. Fullstory offers click maps, scroll maps, and conversion maps for pages you've defined or specific URLs. Heatmap cards are a simplified version of these analyses, showing the high-level metrics and a preview of the analysis. Click the card to dig deeper!

Components of Dashboard Cards

Segment - This is a group of Users. Segments can be built based on the type of user someone is (First Time vs. Return, International vs. Domestic) and can also be based off of Behavioral Data on your site (Visited a Landing Page, Submitted a Support Ticket).

Time Range - The period of time you want the Card to cover. This can be rolling time ranges like Past Week (i.e. the last 7 days) or custom static time ranges like 5/1/20 - 5/15/20.

Metric - This is the heart of the Card.  The Metric is the specific event and aggregation type you want to track. This could be the Count of Unique Sessions where 'Purchase' button was clicked or Average Load Speed for the Checkout Page. More on Metrics below.

Funnel - A series of events that must be done in order and within the same session. This can be the onboarding flow or checkout flow.

Interval - How time is grouped on a Trends card. Selecting Hour will show the count of your Metric every Hour, while selecting week will show the Metric grouped by Week. The time interval you select is represented in each dot on your trend chart. For example, if your metric was set to a daily interval of the past 90 days, you would see 90 dots on your chart.

Title - Title of the Card you want seen on your Dashboard

Description (Optional) - Any information to help better describe the Card for when other users view it. 

Note: Not all Card types use each component.

Dashboard Filters

Use Dashboard Filters to apply a property, segment and/or time range to all cards on a given dashboard, without individually altering each one. 

• Properties: Adding properties to cards will append the new criteria to the card, without affecting any other properties that might already be included in the object definition.
• Segment: Adding a segment to dashboards looks at data for only that slice of users. 
• Time Range: Adding a time range to cards will override the existing criteria of the object. 

Save or Revert Filters

Once a filter is applied, select Save changes to apply those filters to all dashboard viewers. Save changes must be selected anytime you want to apply (or remove) a filter that is visible to any dashboard viewer. Use Revert changes to navigate back to the previously saved state. 

Metrics - Your Key to Dashboards

Metrics are an Event (click, page visit, error, or Custom Event) and aggregation type. The aggregations available include a count of the event itself, the number of users who performed the event, the number of sessions in which the event was performed, or a calculation of Custom Event properties. Metrics help give Dashboards the power and flexibility to track the specific behavioral interactions that are meaningful to you. The process for creating Metrics is based on Fullstory Search. If you have used Search before, creating your first Metric will be a breeze.

Are you new to Fullstory or need a refresher on Search? Head over to our Getting Started guide to get the knowledge you seek.

Types of Metrics and How to Use Them

For all events

Count of Unique Users - the unique number of users to perform the event

Count of Events - the number of times the event happened

Count of Unique Sessions - the number of sessions the event happened

Count of Unique Property - the number of unique values for custom user or event property (for example, the unique number of accounts or organizations to perform the event)

Example:

Session 1: User A from Account 1 click Add to Cart 3 times

Session 2: User B from Account 1 clicks Add to Cart once

Session 3: User C from Account 2 visits the homepage and bounces

Session 4: User A from Account 2 clicks Add to Cart twice

If your event looks like this:

Then your calculations will return:

Count of Unique Users	2	User A + User B
Count of Events	6	3 + 1 + 2
Count of Unique Sessions	3	Session 1 + S 2 + S 4
Count of Unique Property (Account ID)	2	Account 1 + Account 2

For numeric event properties

If you are sending Custom Events with numeric event properties to Fullstory, then you will have many new ways to analyze them with Dashboards. The aggregation types highlighted below are specifically for these types of event properties, and not the events themselves (that is where you use Users/Events/Sessions as described above).

When you select one of these aggregation types, you will be required to choose the 'Property' that you want to calculate:

 

In this case, above, we have a Custom Event called 'Order Completed' with three numeric properties describing the event (revenue associated with the order, the shipping, and the tax).  By selecting the 'Average of' and 'Revenue,' I can track my Average Order Value in Fullstory.

Not sending any Custom Events to Fullstory?

No problem, you can still use these aggregation types on the Event Properties Fullstory is collecting automatically. A popular one for our customers is to track the median page load time using data captured by Fullstory.

Note: Fullstory captures are always in (ms), so we recommend you choose that as the format.

The configuration above would create a Metric reflecting the median First Contentful Paint time experienced by users who visited our example site's`/cart` page. We can visualize this with a Trend card to track page speed over time:

 

Creating Ratios with Metrics

Many times, when calculating a Metric, we need to perform some operation on it (+ - x / ).  This is helpful if you are tracking something like 'Rage Clicks on the Checkout Page'. If Rage Clicks increase, you may wonder if more frustration is happening, or if there are just more users visiting the page. 

With Ratio Metrics, you can track the number of sessions where someone rage clicks divided by the number of sessions that visit the checkout page. By tracking this percentage, you can more quickly tell if frustration is increasing or traffic is increasing.

 

Formatting numbers

You can edit the format of your metric by clicking on the 'Edit' icon under Configure Visualization and selecting the format dropdown.

The formatting options we currently have are Number, Percentage, Duration, and Currency. 

Selecting a Duration is slightly different than the other format options. With Duration, you can select the appropriate time measurement based on how the data is captured. Fullstory will automatically convert that to display in the best way.  For example, you may have an Event Property for 'Request Time' that is measured in milliseconds. You would need to select 'Milliseconds' in the dropdown. Fullstory will convert it automatically in the display to a value that makes sense - meaning that rather than displaying the average Request Time as 1700ms, we will display it as 1.7 seconds. 

FAQ

If I saved a Segment of users who clicked 'Purchase' can I leave my Metric as 'Any Activity' on my Trends Card?

You can, but there is a better way. To track the number of users who clicked 'Purchase' on a given day, configure your card similar to what is shown below, where your custom Metric is defined as the event you want to track. It is best practice to use a Metric to target the event you want to count and the Segment to filter down the group of users (or sessions) to count from.

 

Note that the Segment here is Everyone, because the Metric handles the core action we want to track on the graph. 

Can I add an existing card to a Dashboard?

Yes - if there is an existing card that you wish to add to your Dashboard, click Add a card > Add from Library at the top right of your Dashboard. Use this when you wish to keep track of a metric or funnel that others on your team are currently tracking.

Can I copy a card from one dashboard to another?

Yes! Click the vertical ellipses at the top of your card and choose "Copy to dashboard..." Fill out the card's title, add an optional description, and save it to the dashboard of your choosing. 

 

Can I duplicate a card on my current dashboard?

Yes - by clicking Duplicate Card, the card is automatically duplicated on the dashboard you are currently configuring. Duplicating cards is helpful when you wish to change or update configuration settings within the specific card.

Additionally, if you need to duplicate an existing Dashboard Metric or Funnel, you can do so and save the duplicate to any Dashboard. Simply open the Metric you wish to duplicate (by clicking edit) from your Dashboard and then click the Duplicate button.

Lastly, follow the prompts in the popup menu that appears.

How do I rearrange Cards on a Dashboard?

To rearrange the placement of Cards on a Dashboard, you have a few options.

First, try our drag & drop abilities with any card on your dashboard. Hover on the card you wish to reposition and look for the hamburger icon that will appear on the top left corner of the card. Simply click and drag the card from this icon to the order of your preference.

Alternatively, click on the vertical ellipses in the upper righthand corner of a card to open up the Rearrange Card side panel (you can also click on the vertical ellipses in the dashboard header).

When the Rearrange Card side panel is open, simply drag and drop the name of the card into the position you would like it to be.

Can I edit a Dashboard Card?

Yes! Click the vertical ellipses at the top of the card to edit the Card. 

Can I delete a Dashboard Card?

No, you cannot delete a Dashboard Card but you can remove it from your dashboard by clicking the vertical ellipses at the top of the Card. This will remove it from the Dashboard but the object will not be deleted from the Library. You can archive the object by directly editing the object and clicking the archive option from there.

Can I duplicate a dashboard?

Yes, you can duplicate a dashboard by clicking on the the horizontal ellipses at the top right of your dashboard and selecting the "Duplicate Dashboard" option. Once the dashboard has been duplicated, all objects included on your dashboard will also be duplicated. 

Can I export my dashboard to a PDF?

Yes! Click the horizontal ellipses at the top of your dashboard and choose "Download PDF" to begin your export. 

Can I track more than one metric on a single Card?

At this time, unfortunately not. However, many of these use cases can be completed by choosing multiple segments or using dimensionality. If you would like to see 2+ metrics on a card, please send us a message and let us know!

Which card types can utilize the Group By dropdown option?

Dimensionality, Retention, Metric Trends and Funnel cards. We don't offer the ability to dimensionalize (ie. group by) Single Metric or Page Flow cards.

If you find that this filter would be beneficial for your use case with Single Metric or Page Flow cards, we'd love to hear more over at our Community.

Is there a limit on the amount of cards I can add to a dashboard?

Yes. By default, 40 cards is the limit. If you'd like this limit to be increased, please reach out to our Support team and we can increase this limit to 100 cards.