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.