Visualize+: Query Builder

The query builder within Visualize+ enables a technical user to build a question step by step from building blocks like filters and summaries.

Create a new question

Picking your data

• Click + New in the top right corner > Question
• Click Pick your starting data > select one of the two options:
  • Dbt Customer Analytics (dimensional models; recommended)
  • Dbt Customer Data (raw tables)
• Within Dbt Customer Analytics or Dbt Customer Data, select the table you'd like to query

Adding Filters

Filtering enables you to narrow your data down based on certain criteria. When you add a filter, you can select one or more columns to filter on. Depending on the data type, you'll get different filter types (i.e. calendar for date columns). To add a filter:

• Click Add filters to narrow your answer
• Select the column you want to filter
• Select the filter that you want to apply
  • For multiple select filters, click Add filter to apply
• Click "+" and repeat to add additional filters

When you successfully add a filter, you'll see the filter displayed within the Filter field.

Filter Types

Visualize+ will display different filtering options depending on the data type of the selected column. Filter options include:

• Numeric columns let you add filters to only include rows in your table where this number is between two specific values, or is greater or less than a specific value, or is exactly equal to something.
• Text or category columns let you specify that you only want to include data where this column is or isn't a specific option, whether it contains, starts with, or ends with a substring, or whether the row is empty or not.
• Date columns give you a lot of options to filter by specific date ranges, relative date ranges, and more.
• Structured data columns, typically JSON or XML, can only be filtered by "Is empty" or "Not empty". Some databases, however, support JSON unfolding, which allows you to split up JSON data into separate columns, which you can then filter on.

Summarizing and Grouping

Once you've selected your data in Visualize+, you may want to calculate totals, averages, or count records, and break those numbers down by specific categories. Click here to learn more about summarizing and grouping your data.

Previewing results before saving

Once you've selected your data source, applied filters and summarized and grouped your data, you can click Visualize to see a preview of your question. Visualize+ will show you what it thinks is the best default visualization or chart for your question.

To change the visualization, click Visualization > select a different chart type. The preview will change to the selected chart type.

There are additional visualization settings that you can adjust by clicking on the gear icon next to Visualization.

Click Done to store your selection.

Saving a Question

When you're happy with your question and visualization, click Save. A pop-up will display and ask you to input:

• Name: We recommend using a consistent formula for naming questions i.e. [Department]-[Metric]-[Timeframe/Context].
• Description: We recommend being specific about the data, metric and filters to ensure your team understands exactly what data they're looking at.
• Location: Click "..." to select a collection or dashboard to save your question in > Select this dashboard or Select this collection to save
  • Questions saved to a dashboard are only visible in that dashboard and cannot be used in other dashboards. Once you save a question to a dashboard, you'll need to arrange the card on one of the dashboard tabs and save the dashboard.
  • Questions saved to a collection can be added to multiple dashboards. Moving a question from one collection to another has no impact on dashboards that include the question.