Hidden SiteCatalyst Features

(Estimated Time to Read this Post = 4 Minutes)

One of the funny things about SiteCatalyst (you will notice I can’t yet bring myself to call it Adobe SiteCatalyst!) is that there are some really cool features that are hidden. In some cases, it almost seems like someone has gone out of their way to hide them, but I like to look at these “hidden gems” as a sort of rite of passage. In this post I will share some of the ones I have found and hope that maybe you know of others so that all of us can learn! Also, if you haven’t read my old blog post on SiteCatalyst Time Savers, I encourage you to do so!

The Magic Triangle and Checkboxes
If you are like me, it may seem like you spend most of your day adding/removing metrics from reports! This can be a very time consuming process, so you might as well be as efficient as possible. However, I often find that new SiteCatalyst users add extra steps to the process because they don’t know a few easy tricks in the Metrics window. The first trick is that you can change the column that is used for sorting by clicking the [very] little triangle next to each metric. It amazes me how many people add metrics, wait for the report to load and then click on a column to sort and wait for the report to load again! Multiply that by twenty reports and it becomes a real time suck! Instead, simply click the triangle until it turns green (soon to be Adobe red?) and you are done!

But wait! There’s more…You will also notice that there are a bunch of check boxes next to each metric. Those check boxes are used to choose which metrics you want to graph with your report. You don’t have to graph every metric in the report, which may confuse your audience. Also, I find that many clients don’t take advantage of the fact that you can display two graphs per report. To do this, all you need to do is check off one of the boxes on the left and right side. This is helpful if some of your metrics are numbers and them are percentages. It is the closest SiteCatalyst comes to a secondary axis you may be used to in Excel.

Remove Subrelation BreakDowns
If you frequently use eVar Subrelation reports, you may find that after breaking one eVar down by another eVar, you want to go back to the report before it was subrelated. For example, let’s say you have opened aTraffic Driver report and broken it down by Offer Type as shown here:

Now let’s say you change the date range and some other report settings and then decide you want to just see Traffic Driver Type by itself again. Unfortunately, if you use the trusty “Back” button in your browser, you will have to re-do all of those customized settings. However, there are actually two ways to remove this subrelation without losing any work.

The first way to do this is to click on the “Broken Down by:” link shown in red above. Once you click on this, you will see a list of all of your variables and you can choose the bottom-most one labeled “None.” The other way is to click the green magnifying glass icon you used to create the Subrelation and do the same thing as shown here:

Double Your Searching Pleasure
Another thing I have noticed that a lot of SiteCatalyst users don’t know is that you can add search criteria to two different variables if you are using a Subrelation report. To do this, click on the Advanced Search link and then you can use the drop down boxes to choose which variable/search term combination you want:

In this case, I have chosen to filter for all Traffic Driver Types containing “SEO” and can proceed to enter my search criteria for Offer Type…

Inherit Segments
If you use DataWarehouse or ASI, you probably spend a lot of time creating Segments. If so, you may find times where you want to re-use some parts of a segment you have already created. When I first started using SiteCatalyst, I did this by printing out my segments and re-creating them manually. This is both time-consuming and prone to error, so I found the trick to do this more efficiently:

There it is! See how easily you can copy an existing segment? Do you see it? If not, would you believe me if I told you that there are actually two different ways to re-use segments on the above screen?

The first way to do this is to click the icon to the right of the Segment title. This will pop-up a new window which allows you to pick an existing segment you want your new segment to be based upon.

The second way to do this is to use the Segment Library. You can access the library by clicking its name next to the “Components” item. The Library is used to store commonly use segment building blocks. In the example below, I have created a Page View container that looks for Pages where the IP Address Geography is in the United States. By dragging this over to the Library, I can re-use this anytime I am creating a new segment.

Filter Report Suites
If you have Admin rights to your SiteCatalyst implementation and deal with a lot of report suites, the Admin Console quickly becomes one of your best friends. One of the most time consuming Admin Console tasks is finding the report suites you are looking for among all of your report suites. I frequently see people scanning up and down over and over hunting for the report suites they need. Fortunately, there is a much better way that is somewhat hidden – using the “Saved Searches” feature of the Admin Console. Using this feature you can create a filter to find report suites such that even if you add new ones, they will be added to your saved search if they meet the criteria.

Here is a real-life example. When I joined Salesforce.com, we had a lot of report suites and I began creating new report suites. When I created the new report suites, I simply added the phrase “New” to my new report suites titles. Once I did this, I clicked on the “Add” link within the Saved Searches area of the report suite manager and created a “Saved Search” rule like this:

Keep in mind that this is a very basic rule. You can actually add multiple criteria items and can build rules that take into account any of the following report suite criteria:

Lastly, if you are an Admin, be sure to read my past blog post with even more Admin Console Tips.

Final Thoughts
So there you have it. As you can see, none of these items are critical showstoppers, but I have found that knowing them can help speed up your day and give you SiteCatalyst bragging rights! Do you know of others? If so, please share them here as comments!