Explore

Using Explore

Explore is where questions get asked. You pick measures and dimensions and it builds the query.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Dashboards:

• Explore — the query screen

Asking a question

Choose what you are measuring, how you want it broken down, the period and any filters. Because the joins are in the layer, a question spanning several datastores needs no more work than one over a single datastore.

Drill down

An aggregate is the start of a question, not the end. Drilling into a figure to see what makes it up is usually where the actual answer is — a total that looks wrong is often one large item rather than a broad shift.

Compare periods

A single number rarely means much. Against last month, or the same month last year, turns it into information. Prefer year-on-year for anything seasonal.

Save what proves useful

A question worth asking twice is worth saving. It also means the next person asks the same question the same way rather than approximating it.

Performance

Aggregating a long history is real work. Narrow the period first, reduce the number of groupings, and check that dates and the columns you filter on are indexed. Results are cached, so a repeated question is faster than the first one — but the first one still has to run.

Reconcile before circulating

Tie a new figure to something known before sending it anywhere. A number that has never been checked is a hypothesis, and the first check should not happen in front of the board.

Who Sees What

A query tool that ignored permissions would be a way to read everything, so BI does not.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Dashboards:

• Explore — access is granted like any other screen

The permission model still applies

Queries run as the user asking. Someone who cannot see a datastore cannot query it, and row-level restrictions apply to results as they do everywhere else.

Aggregates can still disclose

This is the part worth thinking about. A count of one, broken down finely enough, identifies an individual — a single case in a category in a small area is a person, even though no record was shown. Where you report on small populations, think about minimum group sizes before publishing a breakdown.

Who gets Explore

Explore is powerful and open-ended. Analysts and managers who need to ask their own questions should have it; most people are better served by a dashboard answering the questions they actually have. Giving everyone a query tool tends to produce many slightly different versions of the same number.

Sensitive datastores

Where casework classification and clearance apply, they apply here too. Confirm that with a test account before opening BI up — the reassurance is worth the ten minutes.

Exports leave the building

Anything exported is outside the permission model from that moment. Where that matters, restrict export rather than relying on the query controls alone.