Custom reports give you some valuable insights about the performance of your service desk. You can tailor them to include specific metrics that you’d want to focus on.


Here’s a quick guide to interpreting the data you would see in a custom report.


The Metadata:


You can see the name and the description of the report at the top to give you a basic understanding of what it represents. Right below it, you can check what the report is filtered by. This includes any conditions that might have been used to narrow down the list.





The Chart:


Next comes the chart that represents the data covered these conditions. You might see one of the four chart type in the report - vertical bar charts, horizontal bar charts, line charts and pie charts.


1. Vertical bar charts are generally used to compare changes/assets with specific properties based on certain metrics.


The X-axis represents what the data in the chart is grouped by. It can include properties with specific values, like Priority, Impact, Status, Agent etc. The Y-axis represents the metric shown in the report.




Note that when the number of bars exceeds 15, the data is shown in a horizontal bar chart to make it easy to comprehend.


You can remove unimportant entries from the X-axis by clicking on it in the legend (which is displayed when the X-axis displays a non-date attribute), to focus on specific entries.



2. Horizontal bar charts are pretty similar, the main difference being that the X-axis represents metrics and the Y-axis represents group-by data.





3. Line charts illustrate progress over a period of time, so the X-axis shows dates (when the change/asset was created, assigned, closed etc). The Y-axis works exactly the same way as Vertical bar charts.




4. Pie charts can be used to illustrate numerical proportions.





The Table:


The data covered in the report is also shown in a tabular form in addition to the chart. Although charts are simpler to interpret, the table can include way more data.




The first column shows change IDs/asset names included in the report. You can customize the other columns while creating the report. They can be used to show various details about the changes/assets:


    • Properties (like status, risk, impact etc)

    • Custom fields 

    • Metrics calculated in real time (like the number of associated tickets, problems etc)


The table includes all the data that the report covers, in a paginated format.