Enhance Your Insight with the Builder

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Manipulate data in Insights Builder.
  
• View an example of an insight that can be created with the builder.
  

Manipulate Your Data

The basic requirements of an insight are data sources, measures, and dimensions (how you group the data). Now let’s look at how to further manipulate the data in the selected data model objects using Insights Builder. 

We covered the Join and Aggregate nodes in unit 1.  Now let’s cover the remaining interface node options. 

What else do you need to do with or to that data? Do you need to reduce the results? Do a further calculation? Based on your needs, you can use case, filters, transform, and arithmetic expressions to add more complex filters and data clean-up activities to your query.

As you work with the builder, it’s important to know your available options. View the full list of supported and non-supported features on the Insights Builder Supported Functions page.

Insights Builder Example

Let’s review the steps to create an insight for outdoor gear and apparel retailer Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO) using Insights Builder. Technical marketer Michele Hansley has been asked to find how many units of a specific product have been sold. This data lives in NTO’s order details data model object (DMO). For this example, Michele wants to know the total quantity across orders for each productID. Here is some sample data.

To do this, Michele follows these steps.

1. From the Data Cloud tab Calculated Insights, she clicks New.
   
2. Michele selects Create with Builder and then Calculated Insights.
   
3. From the builder interface, Michele clicks Select Objects.
   
4. She searches for the order details DMO and then clicks Next.
   
5. Next to the order details DMO she clicks the + icon and selects Aggregate.
   
6. Under Measures, she clicks the + button and views her options for metric functions. She chooses + button and selects the radio button next to Quantity, then clicks Next.
   
7. She adds in a name for this measure and then clicks Apply.
   
8. Under Dimensions, she clicks the + button and views her field options. She selects the radio button next to Product ID as the dimension and clicks Next.
   
9. She adds in a name for the dimension and then clicks Apply.
   
10. Once she has added both her measure and dimension, she clicks Apply.
    
11. Then she clicks Save.
    
12. She names the insight Total Quantity Sold by Product, adds a brief description, and then clicks Done.
    

These steps create an insight whose results are the same as an insight that uses this SQL expression.

SELECT ProductID, SUM(Quantity) as Total Quantity
FROM OrderDetails
GROUP by ProductID

But what does the data look like after the insight has been built and is active? The outcome of this insight might look like this.

While this insight might not be used directly in a marketing campaign, Michele plans to use this information to create a campaign that promotes the products that have sold the least. Michele can also use this new insight in the future to build another insight or she can use it in a new segment. 

This is just the beginning of what can be done with insights in Data Cloud! You now have the knowledge to create your own insights using Insights Builder. 

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Use the Visual Insight Builder
  
• External: Salesforce GitHub, Calculated Insights