Reports tell you what happened. Analytics turns that into a number you watch over time, with a target against it.
Four things do the work, and they stack in a fixed order. Learning the order is most of the battle, because people go looking for a way to create a goal on its own and there isn't one. This article is for administrators.
Read that as a chain: a goal belongs to a KPI, and a KPI belongs to a tracker.
Because editing a tracker flows into every KPI and every goal built on it.
That is the point of the structure, not a side effect. Change what "active user" means once, and every dashboard using it updates. The alternative is nine dashboards that each define it slightly differently and quietly disagree with each other.
A tracker is the definition. A KPI is a question you ask of it.
One tracker for hours logged can carry a KPI for this month, another for the year to date, and another comparing this quarter with last. Same definition, three readings. If you find yourself creating a second tracker that measures the same thing over a different period, you wanted a second KPI.
Yes, and this is the part most organizations underuse.
An impact tracker can add up the number questions in your screening question bank, so meals served, students tutored or animals rehomed becomes a real figure you can put in front of a funder.
Only number questions are offered. That is deliberate: adding up a text answer is how an impact figure quietly becomes fiction.
No, and this is worth knowing before you worry about it.
An impact value is stored as the person saw it when they submitted. Change the form next season and last season's numbers stay exactly as they were reported. You can improve your questions without rewriting your own history.
A view is a dashboard you build yourself, and it is where analytics stops being a pile of numbers and starts being something you actually read.
You name it, add the KPI cards you want on it, and arrange the card order. Nothing stops you having several: one for the board, one for the weekly team meeting, one for a single programme. The same KPI can appear on more than one view, because a view is a selection rather than a container.
Views can also be shared. Access is per view, and there are two levels worth knowing: View only, where somebody can read it but not change it, and edit access, where they can change the view and its KPIs. Give a coordinator view-only access to the dashboard for their programme, and they get the numbers without being able to redefine them.
Open the view and use Set as home. From then on that view is what Analytics opens on, instead of you navigating to it every time.
Pick the one you look at most often, not the most impressive one. If you check no-show rate every Monday, that is your home view, even if the funder dashboard took longer to build.
No, and mixing these up is common.
They serve different moments. The home view is for when you have gone to look at your numbers on purpose. Pinned KPIs are for the numbers you want to see whether you went looking or not.
An organization can also pin a KPI to the homepage of chosen administrators, so a figure everyone should be watching reaches them without each person setting it up. A KPI pinned that way by your organization cannot be removed by the individual.
Start from the figures somebody asks you for, not the ones easiest to produce.
Adding more before you have looked at these twice is how analytics becomes wallpaper.
Genuinely not. Plenty of organizations run well on reports alone.
The difference is the question. Reports answer "what happened", which is enough when somebody wants a list. Analytics answers "is this getting better", which needs the same number measured the same way over time. If nobody is asking the second question, skip it. Trackers can read historical data whenever you turn to them, so waiting costs you nothing.