Who is this article for?

Users who want to create trending reports

Reporting authorities, roles, and record access controls restrict data visibility.

Enabling Trend Analysis
A Trend Analysis license allows use of the trend output to analyze trends over time. Depending on your organization's contract, Trend Analysis may not be enabled in your subscriber area. Contact your Technical Account Manager for additional information.

Trending is one of the many available BI visualization options. Create a Trend Analysis report by searching for data and selecting Trend Analysis from the Custom Visualization options.

Take the time to carefully set these filters.
Consider what specific parameters are necessary for your analysis, such as date ranges, categories, or keywords. Doing so, we will produce a report that is not only concise but also focused on the data that truly matters.

Trend output groups result by a "Trending Field" and a "Date field" to produce a grid of occurrences over time. This grid is color coded based on the selected trend profile.

Profiles are set up to highlight periods of time where the number of occurrences of a category are outside the norm. Clicking on a cell within the grid opens the Statistical Process Control (SPC) chart for that category ending with the period of the cell.

The SPC chart view shows graphically how the data is performing over time. From here, clicking on a specific data point opens the individual items that the point represents.

Trending Field

The Trending Field drives how the trend output is categorized. Each row of the Trend output grid represents a distinct value in the Trending Field.

For example, the Trending Field could be the Category associated with an Observation, or the Cause Code associated with a Condition Report.

Only the values returned in the report will be displayed in the summary grid.

For example, if the results do not include any Cause Codes in the Management Direction category, then none of those codes will show up in the grid.

The number of rows returned is limited by both the number of rows chosen in the trend profile settings and the overall subscriber setting that limits the maximum number or rows returned from any search.

Depending on context, the available trending fields are the discrete valued fields. In the context of a module, these are the picklist and reference fields. In the context of a cross-module search, Trending Fields are the Distinct Value common fields.

Module developers can optionally exclude certain fields from the list of Trend Fields for a module.

Date Field & Frequency

The Date Field is the other key input to the trend output grid. It drives the columns of the output.

Any date field available in the search results can be the Date Field. Like Trending Fields, module developers can exclude specific fields from the list of Date Fields.

Frequency works in conjunction with the Date Field to build the list of columns in the Trend output. Frequency are Weekly, Monthly, or Quarterly.

For example, if using Date Created and Monthly, one column is shown for each month where the values in the cells are the count of occurrences by the Date they were Created.

Weekly frequencies start on Sunday and end on Saturday.

Quarterly frequencies are the standard four quarters of the year: 
Q1 = Jan. 1 - March 31
Q2 = Apr 1 - Jun 30
Q3 = Jul 1 - Sep 31
Q4 = Oct 1 to Dec 31

Monthly frequencies start on the first day of the month and end of the last day.

Trending Period

The trending period (start and end) determines the range of columns in the Trend grid. Depending on the frequency, one column is shown for each week, month, or quarter within the start and end date range. 

The system will automatically select the periods that fully encompass the start and end date.

For example, using 4/16/2017 as the start date with a monthly frequency, the column that represents 2017-Apr will include all data within that month even if it occurred before 4/16/2017.

To exclude part of a period, use the filters on the left to refine the results.

The width of the trending period range also determines the number of periods shown in the drill down SPC chart.

Ensure the Trending Period includes the needed periods
If the selected trending profile has scoring criteria that will define several periods, such as "The most recent X out of Y points..." the Trending Period must be large enough to include these periods. If the Trending Period is restricted to a duration that doesn't include all needed periods, the scoring criteria are ignored.

Baseline Period

The Baseline Period sets the SPC parameters for the drill down SPC Chart and the scoring calculations associated with the trend profile. By default, the Baseline Period is set to the twenty-four periods prior to the Trending Period.

For example, with a monthly frequency and a Trending Period from 4/1/2017 to 4/30/2018, the Baseline Period would default to 4/1/2015 through 4/30/2017.

This is a key tuning parameter because it drives most of the calculations. As a rule, try to set the Baseline Period to a time when the process was "in control" or "normal".

Once that period is set, check future periods against it to see if the process is occurring at an abnormal rate. Heat Map Trend Profiles do not use a Baseline Period.

Use Date Filters Cautiously
Search results filtered on a date field could inadvertently filter out the range needed to establish the baseline. Ensure search results encompass the complete baseline date range.

Exporting and Notifications

Trend reports can be saved for later use, shared with other users, exported to Excel, and set to run on a schedule with a notification.

Unlike other report outputs, Trend reports have a unique trigger that allows scheduling notifications only when the number of points in one of the most recent cells exceeds a threshold. This type of notification is useful for getting alerted when a cell turns red.

The notification email optionally contains the output of the Excel grid or .PDF as an attachment.