In this lesson:

Overview of Search & Answers

Before diving right in, let's go over the basics of Search & Answer.

Search

It may seem obvious, but to collect your data and organize it in a way that works best, you have to first choose what information you want to collect. This is done through the Create an Answer Search.

The Insights Search allows you to choose your data source, measures, attributes, values, and filters. As you combine these elements in your search it all comes together to create a visualization or numerical display.

Answers

Answers are the saved results of your search. You can save answers to commonly run searches to be viewed later or you can share answers with others.

To sum up, Creating Answers allows you to customize how and what data you can view and analyze.

Choosing Your Data Source

Insight’s search capability is the heart of the feature’s user interface. You can perform searches using specific keywords to find relevant data. The search bar, located at the top of the interface, is where you enter searches and the magic begins.

As mentioned previously, Insights is broken up by Canopy feature:

Client management
Workflow
Time, and Billing

Before searching, think about:

What you are trying to understand or visualize?
Which data source makes the most sense to search in?

For instance, if you want to see information about the number of tasks completed by various team members, you can determine that using the Workflow worksheet.

To choose which feature worksheet you are completing a search under:

Navigate to the Create Answers Tab,
Then click on the dropdown to the left of the search bar- this will open a pop-up where you can choose which data source you are working in.

Note: Insights in Canopy is designed specifically to work using Worksheets. You will see an “all source types” dropdown in the data source pop-up giving you additional options outside of Worksheets- at this time, there is no data under anything other than Worksheets, so be sure not to change this!

Once you have chosen your data source, you are ready to start searching!

Understanding the Structure of a Search

To search, you’ll type your query into the search bar at the top of the page. You are able to type in words (How many tasks were completed in the last 3 months) or specific keywords (tasks completed last quarter).

You have a lot of options on what data elements you can include in a search query- let’s define each of them:

Measures: Numeric values that you can use in mathematical formulas (e.g., Invoice totals, Team Member pay rates, or number of tasks completed)
Attributes: General characteristics or a trait that is associated with your data. Can be number or text-based (e.g., date, phone numbers, or Task Assignee). You don’t perform any math functions on these, but they will help you categorize and understand your data.
Data Values: anything falling under either Measures or Attributes is a data value
Filters: Used to refine or narrow down your search results from a set of data. Common filters to apply to a search can include a specific month, team member, or billed service. Filters should tie back to the measures and attributes you're using. We’ll dive deeper into this a little later in the course.
Keywords: Pre-configured words in Insights used to simplify your search experience- things like “Hourly”, “Last Year”, or “Average”. More examples of keywords are found as you continue through the course.

When typing out your query in the Search Bar, Insights automatically identifies your data elements by color:

Measures appear in green
Attributes appear in blue
Dates appear in purple
Filters and keywords in gray

Understanding these terms helps you understand how they all work together when you search.

Creating a Search

To begin a search, start by clicking on the Search Bar.

Insights automatically suggest common search terms, which you can choose from, or you can type your own. As you type, Insights also provides additional suggestions that match what you have entered. Insights generate these suggestions based on and ranked by the most common terms you and your colleagues use.

When typing in the search bar, you can select any of the available suggestions just by clicking on them.

We suggest starting your search query with a measure, followed by an attribute- for example, “task count” and then “Client Name”.

It’s possible to use a combination of any number of data values, such as one measure and two or more attributes (e.g., “task count” [measure] “client name” [attribute] “task status” [attribute]).

Next, we can go ahead and add a keyword to help narrow down our data further- for instance, “last quarter” to narrow down our data to the last 3 months.

There are a huge number of Measures and Attributes available to you in Insights- if you’d like to create a search but aren’t sure where to start, a great option is to use the side data panel to construct your search. The side data panel lists every data value available to use in your chosen Canopy Feature.

You can build out a search query by checking the box next to each data value you would like to use

Clicking each field to highlight it blue and then clicking the "info" icon will give you a brief description of the field, as well as any synonyms for the field that can be used in the search bar to get the same results. Exploring through various fields is a great way to learn and get more comfortable with using Insights!

As you build your searches, results are built in real-time. If you need to quickly clear the screen to start a new search, this can be done by clicking the X to the right of the search bar. Doing so causes the data you are looking at to disappear.

Answers in Insights

If we know there is a certain search we’d like to run multiple times, instead of creating the search manually each time, save this as an Answer! Once you’ve created a search that you would like to save, this can be done by clicking the three dots icon at the top right of the generated data and clicking save.

You’ll then enter a name, and a description if needed, and hit Save Answer.

Answers can be found in two places: listed on the Home Page:

As well as on the Answers tab:

Answers can be favorited in Insights to help you quickly find the information that is most important to you. This can be done by hovering over the name of the Answer and clicking on the star that appears to the right. Favorited answers can be navigated to the top of the page.

Your saved Answers are dynamic, which means that any time you access them, the information is up-to-date based on the most recent data in your account.