Understand Attributes in Report Studio

Attributes are the descriptive elements of your ClickTime data. They provide the context for understanding your metrics, answering the questions of who, what, when, and where within your reports. Think of them as the different lenses through which you can view your numbers.

For example, if you see that your company had sales of $100,000 (a metric), that number alone doesn't tell you much. To make it meaningful, you need attributes like:

• Time Frame: Month, Year, Quarter
• People: Employee, Team
• Products/Services: Department, Task
• Location: Region, Client

Attributes like Month, Year, Department, or Region provide the analytical depth needed to understand your company's performance. Using a Day, Month, Quarter, or Year attribute, for instance, lets you see your sales data summarized at different levels of detail.

In Report Studio, attributes help you:

• Organize your data: Group related time entries or expenses.
• Filter your reports: Focus on specific employees, clients, projects, or date ranges.
• Break down metrics: See how a total value is distributed across different categories.

For example:

• Want to see how much time your team spends on different projects? Group your time entries by the Project, Client, or Task attribute.
• Need to understand individual workload? Filter your data by the Employee attribute to see individual performance metrics.
• Looking at trends over time? Break down your reports by Week, Month, or custom Date ranges.
• Want to analyze billable work separately? Slice your report results by the Billable vs. Non-Billable Tasks attribute.

Attributes are made up of attribute elements, which are the specific values within each attribute. For example:

• The Client attribute might include elements like "Client A," "Client B," and "Client C."
• The Month attribute would include elements like "January," "February," and "March."

While most attributes have a basic identifier (like a client ID) and a description (like the client's name), they can also have additional descriptive information called attribute forms. For example, the Employee attribute might have forms for:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email Address

This information can be useful for displaying more detailed information in your reports.

Just like you can create custom calculations with metrics, you can also create custom attributes by combining or modifying existing ones. For example, you could combine "First Name" and "Last Name" to create a "Full Name" attribute.

In summary, attributes are the foundation for structuring and understanding your ClickTime data in Report Studio. They provide the essential context for your metrics, allowing you to ask and answer meaningful business questions.

Creating a Custom Attribute

You can create new attributes based on the existing data in your reports. These are your custom attributes, allowing you to combine or transform your data in new ways for analysis.

Here's how to create a custom attribute:

1. Open Your Report: Go to the report you want to work with in Report Studio.
2. Access the Custom Attribute Creation: In the Datasets Panel, find the dataset you want to add the custom attribute to. Click the ellipsis icon (three dots) next to the dataset name and choose Create Attribute. (You can also right-click on any of the existing attributes.)
3. Define Your Custom Attribute: In the panel that appears, you'll define how your new attribute is created. You have a few options:
   • Enter it directly: You can type in a formula or combine existing attributes and metrics. As you type, you might see suggestions for available items – click on them to add them to your definition.
   • Use Functions: If you want to perform calculations or transformations (like combining text or extracting a year from a date), you can browse through a list of Functions. Click on a function to see what it does, and double-click to add it to your definition. You'll then need to specify which data (attributes or metrics) the function should use.
   • Use Existing Data: You can also simply select and combine existing Attributes or Metrics from the list provided (often on the left). Double-click an item to add it to your custom attribute definition.
4. Name Your Custom Attribute: Once you've defined how your custom attribute works, give it a clear and descriptive name in the Attribute Name field.
5. (Optional) Add More Detail: You can add more descriptive information (like different ways to display the attribute) by clicking the Plus tab. You'll define these additional forms using the same methods you used for the main attribute definition. These additional forms should be based on the main way your custom attribute is identified.
6. Save Your New Attribute: Click Save to add your custom attribute to the dataset. You can now use it in your visualizations, filters, and reports, just like any other attribute.

In simple terms: You're essentially creating a new label or category for your data by combining or changing the existing labels and numbers in your report.