Chapter 6: CRMA Lenses – Diving into Your Data One Click at a Time

Lenses are the investigative journalists of CRM Analytics (CRMA). In this chapter, you will learn what a lens is and how it is a powerful tool to understand, test, debug, and showcase data. You will also be taught how lenses act as the building blocks of analytics dashboards in CRMA.

The ability to build and deploy CRMA lenses is crucial for your ability to create, edit, test, and deploy CRMA dashboards. Lenses are a critical building block of CRMA data analytics.

By the end of this chapter, you will have a good grasp of what lenses are and how they work. You will also be intimately familiar with the lens UI and be skilled in creating, editing, and cloning lenses. Finally, you will understand how lenses are the building blocks of CRMA dashboards and will be competent in using them as such.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Lenses – the investigative journalists of CRMA...

Technical requirements

You will need the following to successfully execute the instructions in this chapter:

• A laptop or desktop with internet access (a tablet or phone is not sufficient)
• The latest version of the Google Chrome browser (Chrome is the preferred browser when working with CRMA)
• A working email address

Ensure that you're logged into your CRMA dev org.

Lenses – the investigative journalists of CRMA

What exactly is a lens? Think of a lens as your data exploration tool in CRM Analytics, combining a data query with a visualization in a simple, powerful, and dynamic interface.

A lens enables you to perform the following tasks:

• Explore the various characteristics of your dataset, including dimensions, measures, field labels, and names.
• Slice and dice data using various measures, dimensions, filters, and formulas.
• Create visualizations and tables that can be clipped to a dashboard.
• Create visualizations and tables that can be shared with other users.

In the next section, you are going to get your hands dirty in CRMA and work with lenses.

Creating, editing, and cloning lenses

Now that you understand what a lens is and what it is used for, you are going to build and edit a lens in CRMA. Before you get started, here is what the lens UI looks like, with a few key components labeled for reference:

Figure 6.1 – The CRMA lens UI

You will now learn how to work with lenses in Chart Mode.

Working with Chart Mode

Open Analytics Studio and follow these steps:

1. Select MyFirstDataset from the All Items list. This will bring you to the lens UI, which will open in the default Chart Mode.
2. On the left-hand side of your screen, use the drop-down list to choose Sum of Amount for Bar Length.
3. Choose OwnerId.Name for Bars.
4. Click on the drop-down arrow next to Sum of Amount and select Sort Descending.
5. On the far right-hand side of your screen, click on the Formatting icon, which looks like a paintbrush.
6. Add a title in the Title box called My First Lens.
7. Save your lens...

Using lenses to create a CRMA analytics dashboard

Lenses can be used to create a dashboard, or added to an existing dashboard, using the Clip function. While we are going to look at dashboard building in detail later in Chapter 8, Building Your First CRMA Dashboard, we will quickly look at how to create a simple dashboard and add the two lenses we created earlier. Follow these steps:

1. Open the My First Lens, My First Table View, and Service Data Analysis lenses.
2. From the CRMA Analytics Studio home page, click on Create and select Dashboard.
3. Select Blank Dashboard.
4. For each lens, go to the lens, click on the Clip to Designer button that has a scissors icon, ensure the lens will be exported as a widget, and click on Clip to Designer.

Go to the blank dashboard, which is called New dashboard by default. Save the dashboard as Lens Clip.

5. Drag the three clipped lenses – which are now on the right-hand side of your dashboard designer as queries ...

Tips and hints

Let me share a few tips and hints when it comes to working with lenses.

First, here are a few keyboard shortcuts:

• S: Save (no need to use the dialog box).
• P: Present (full screen) Mode.
• Esc: Exit Present Mode.
• L: Clip to dashboard designer.
• Ctrl + E (Windows)/Cmd + E (macOS): Open JSON Editor.

Second, you can do some cool stuff with subtotals, totals, and so on in tables and pivot tables using some clever SAQL.

Third, it is important to remember that when you modify field labels and colors in the Fields panel, the changes will be propagated through all the dashboards and lenses. Modify them carefully!

Fourth, the default number of rows in a values table can be changed using the Query Limit setting, or by using the SAQL limit statement.

Last, watch the query limit as it can have a serious impact on query results and make your numbers look incorrect since the default value is 2,000. This limit can also be edited or...

Summary

As you have seen, lenses are the investigative journalists of CRMA. In this chapter, you learned what a lens is, how it is a flexible tool to investigate data, and how lenses are the building blocks of analytics dashboards in CRMA.

Now, you can create, edit, and clone lenses using the familiar lens UI. Finally, you understand how to build dashboards using lenses as building blocks.

The next chapter will teach you how to control who sees what in your lenses and dashboards by utilizing CRMA security tools.

Questions

Here are some questions for you to test your knowledge of this chapter's content:

• What does a lens enable you to do?
• What is the purpose of the Clip command for lenses?
• Name one use of a pivot table.
• How might you use a scatter plot chart? A combo chart? A flat gauge?
• How can you share a lens?
• What is the purpose of Query Mode?
• What are the three uses of a compare table?