With the app, support managers gain visibility into the actual time spent across all your customer service interactions. While the app tracks time automatically, you’ll need to build a few custom metrics and reports in Insights to analyze your team’s time logs. We’ve created a four-part series to walk you through best practices on how to best report on time spent:

This first article in the series walks you through setting up three essential metrics in your Insights account. These metrics are the building blocks that you will use to create reports in our other recipes and an be used in any custom report you want to make later.

Note: If you recently installed the Time Tracking app, the custom fields required to build these metrics might not yet appear in Insights. The fields become available after your ticket data sync with Insights. This sync occurs once an hour for Enterprise and once a day for Professional.

Metric 1: Total time spent

This metric will measure the total time spent on each of your tickets through the Time Tracking app. This metric is used as part of the other two metrics in this recipe, so be sure to follow the instructions carefully.

Skill Level: Basic

Time Required: 10 minutes

Note: Prior to September 21 2018, follow-up tickets inherited the total time spent from the previous ticket, then removed it on the agent's first update. This led to an accurate total time on the ticket, but the correction often appeared as an update with negative time spent. This should not be an issue for new tickets. However, for historic tickets, you might want to exclude follow-up tickets with the recipe Filtering for follow-up tickets.

Instructions

Click Reporting ( ) in the sidebar, then click the Insights tab. Click the GoodData link in the top right corner of the panel.

Add an element by going to the menu on the right side of the screen and clicking Facts , then select [Numeric Field] New value and click Add Selected to add the fact to your metric.

Back in the Metric editor, add ,0) - IFNULL(

Add another element to your metric by clicking Facts , then then select [Numeric Field] Old value and click Add Selected to add the fact to your metric. This fact should be right next to the last one you added.

Back in the metric editor, enter ,0)) / 60 WHERE

Add another element to your metric by clicking Attributes > Numeric Field. Once Numeric Field is selected, add it to your metric by clicking Add Selected.

Back in the metric editor, enter an equals sign (=).

Click Attribute Values. You will see a list of attributes again. After you select the attribute you're using for your metric, you can then select the attribute value as your final element.

Select the Numeric field attribute, then the Total time spent (sec) attribute value. Your attribute value will appear in orange.

Add the element by clicking Add Selected.

Your final Metric should appear as follows: SELECT SUM(IFNULL([Numeric Field] New value,0) - IFNULL([Numeric Field] Old value,0)) / 60 WHERE Numeric Field = Total time spent (sec)

Click Add at the bottom right.

On the next screen, under Metric Format , click on #,##0.00 and change it to #,##0.0 min

Metric 2: Avg time spent per ticket (min)

This metric will measure the average time spent on each individual ticket. This will use the metric we previously created in this recipe, so be sure not to skip around. We’ll use this metric later in some of our reports to get a birds eye view on how long tickets are taking your team to complete.

Skill Level: Basic

Time Required: 5 minutes

Instructions

Click the Reporting ( ) in the sidebar, then click the Insights tab. Click the GoodData link in the top right corner of the panel.

Add an element by going to the menu on the right side of the screen and clicking Metrics > Total time spent (min) and click Add Selected to add the metric to your metric. Note that this is the metric we created earlier in the recipe.

Click in to the metric editor again and enter BY.

Add another element by going to the menu on the right side of the screen and clicking Attributes, then Tickets, then select Ticket Id and click + Add Selected to add the Attribute to your metric

Click in to the metric editor again and enter ).

Your final metric should read SELECT AVG(SELECT Total time spent (min) BY Ticket Id).

Click Add at the bottom right.

On the next screen, under Metric Format , click on #,##0.00 and change it to #,##0.0 min

Metric 3: Avg time spent per update (min)

This metric will measure the average time spent on each update of a ticket. This will use the first metric we created in this recipe, so be sure not to skip around. We’ll use this metric later in some of our reports to get an up close look at your agent activity to help you tighten up efficiency.

Skill Level: Basic

Time Required: 5 minutes

Instructions

Click the Reporting ( ) in the sidebar, then click the Insights tab. Click the GoodData link in the top right corner of the panel.

Add an element by going to the menu on the right side of the screen and clicking Metrics > Total time spent (min) and click Add Selected to add the metric to your metric. Note that this is the metric we created in the first section of the recipe.

Click in to the metric editor again and enter BY.

Add another element by going to the menu on the right side of the screen and clicking Attributes, then Ticket Updates, then select Ticket Updates and click + Add Selected to add the Attribute to your metric

Click in to the metric editor again and enter ).

Your final metric should read SELECT AVG(SELECT Total time spent (min) BY Ticket Updates).

Click Add at the bottom right.

On the next screen, under Metric Format , click on #,##0.00 and change it to #,##0.0 min

Hi Jason! This type of metric captures changes to the values actually stored in the field. It doesn't necessarily show you how long the value was set. (The Time Tracking app populates its fields with durations, which is why this recipe works for the app.)

If you're interested in seeing how long certain values were set, regardless of what the values are, I recommend this recipe: Reporting on the duration of a text field. That recipe introduces the [Text Field] Duration in minutes fact, which captures the amount of time a field had a particular value before the value changed.

The article is designed to report on text fields. There should be a matching fact for numeric fields as well, which behaves the same way.

Thanks for the insight here. I had one other question, is it possible to make a metric that counts the number of times a field was updated when another field was set to a particular setting?

For instance how many times Numerical Field [A] was updated/incremented while the Old Value of Text Field [B] was set to something in particular? I want to specifically look at the Old Value of Text Field [B] as in some cases we are updating both Field [A] and [B] at the same time.

Hi Jason! That type of reporting is tricky, and there isn't a good way to do it in Insights. Generally speaking, the data in Zendesk's API (which populates Insights) is focused on field changes. If a field did not change during an update, there won't be a record of it with that update.

The exception to this is the Historic attributes. Whenever an update includes a field change, Insights logs the values of four system fields (Status, Group, Assignee, Priority) at the start of that update. You can use this to report on those four attributes at the time of other field changes. We have details here: What are the Historic attributes in Insights?

You can also use metrics to find when the two custom fields change, and whether they change in the same updates. To get started there, I recommend our article on Building metrics for the Events model. That will help you find updates based on specific field changes.

I've tried what feels like a hundred times and have even uninstalled and reinstalled the Time Tracking App, but in trying to create the metric "Total time spent (min)" I cannot select a Numeric Field of "Total time spent (sec)". What I see instead is just "Class ID". Please Help!

Hi, I've also asked this in the Explore HC, but I was wondering why I can't seem to find this metric back in Explore. I have successfully created these metrics in Gooddata, but now I can't find them nor re-create them in Explore. Is that correct?

We are currently using Tags to track the different topics of support requests. We would like to have a report that shows the average amount of time we spend on each topic (Tag).

I tried making the following report:

What

Avg Time Spent per Ticket (Min) - SELECT AVG(SELECT Total Time Spent (Min) BY Ticket Id)

How

Ticket Tag

It seems to me that this should get the results that I want. However, that metric seems to be incompatible with the Ticket Tag attribute. When the average time metric is selected, the Ticket Tag attribute is greyed out and says "Attributes that are unavailable may lead to nonsensical results if used to break down the metric(s) in this report. To select an unavailable attribute anyway, hold Shift while clicking its name."

What am I missing here? Is there a good way to get the average amount of time spent on each support topic?

Hi Nathan! Tags are unique in the Insights data model. One ticket can have any number of tags at the same time, and you may need to report on any one of them.

Because of this, tag data is stored in a separate dataset, and the tags dataset is associated with the ticket as a whole. That means you need to take special steps to use tags in reports. We have more details in this recipe: Reporting on ticket tags.

In this case, the time tracking metrics are not connected to tag data. You can't put them in the same chart without a lot of complex intermediate steps. Instead, I recommend using ticket attributes to slice your report.

Do the "support topic" tags correspond with a ticket dropdown field? That would be the simplest solution, since you can add a ticket dropdown field to this type of report without any extra steps.

Prior to September 21 2018, follow-up tickets inherited the total time spent from the previous ticket, then removed it on the agent's first update. This led to an accurate total time on the ticket, but the correction often appeared as an update with negative time spent. This should not be an issue for new tickets. However, for historic tickets, you might want to exclude follow-up tickets with the recipe Filtering for follow-up tickets.

Hi Nathan! That screenshot appears to be a multi-select field, not a dropdown field. Since tickets can have any number of multi-select values at the same time, they run into the same problems that tags do.

This means you'll need to look into those intermediate steps between tags and time tracking data. It should be possible, as long as you get the data relationships right. Ultimately, you'll want to find the total/average/median time spent per ticket, where the ticket also has one of your field's tags.

I'm sorry I don't have a quick answer here. I hope this at least gives you a place to start.

I'm glad you were able to the Time Tracking metrics set up ok! To break this metric down further, you can use Attributes in the HOW section of an Insights report. Specifically, you can use Ticket Group Historic or Ticket Assignee Historic, found in the Ticket System Field History folder:

This will allow you to select a certain agent to report on! I hope this is helpful!

Hi Curtis! Ricky's recommendation here will show you who was assigned at the time of each update, which can be valuable information for tracking your workflows.

Another useful attribute for this type of report is Updater. That will show you who submitted each update. In this type of report, it will show who logged the handle time, regardless of who was assigned at the time.

Explore doesn't function in exactly the same way, but I have asked our knowledge publishers to create the documentation for a similar report in Explore. When they do, that will be available in the Explore Help Center

The location of the Good Data link hasn't changed. However, I took a peek at your account and I see that you are on a new Zendesk trial. That means that you actually have access to Explore, which is our new reporting tool, rather than Insights. You can find lots of good information on getting started in our Explore Help Center.

Hi everyone, thanks a lot for the hints on how to set tickets tracking. I've been trying to get the "Total time spent (sec)" measure but I not able of visualice it on the "Attribute Value" section. Time track app is installed but I don't know if something else is needed. Could any give me a hand on which steps should I follow in order to get "Total time spent (sec)" measure once installed time track app.

Hi Jose! The Total time spent (sec) value is a fact, not an attribute. That means it won't show up under HOW or in Attribute Values. Instead, it needs to be aggregated in a metric.

The recipe in this article should walk you through the steps to create the basic time tracking metrics. Notably, this recipe does not use the Total time spent (sec) value on its own. It looks for changes to that field throughout the life of the ticket, which allows you to report on individual ticket updates.

Try going through this recipe article again, following the screenshots. It's a little tricky to set up, but it should give you the results you need.

If you are using the Time Tracking app, you could also use the Ticket Group (Historic) attribute. We have more information in this article: What are the Historic attributes in Insights? The Ticket Group (Historic) attribute shows what group the ticket is in at the start of each update with a field change (including time tracking updates).

There are a lot of ways to approach this type of reporting. These two options should give you a place to start.