Analytics Reporting Periods Terminology

The portal dashboard displays some data based on a time range - e.g. it might display the number of assessments performed in the last 12 months. It also might show the data broken down into a number of groups - e.g. to display the assessments performed each month over the last 12 months.

Reporting periods are a way to specify what time frame the data should be returned for and how it should be broken down.

There are three parameters that define a reporting period:

The period_unit is the period of time that is the basic building block for the reporting periods:

The group_size is the number of units of time in each group. Each group covers a range of period_unit * group_size.

For example, with a period_unit of month, a group_size of 1 means we report individual months - January, February, March, etc.

With a period_unit of month, a group_size of 3, means we report three months at a time - e.g. January to March, May to July, September to November, etc.

Thenumber_of_groups is the number of groups of data to return in total.

A reporting period covers a total period of time of period_unit * group_size * number_of_groups.

Each period_unit has an alignment associated with it that is used to determine the start and stop dates of a group. e.g. when creating a group with a period_unit of month, and assuming today is the 2nd July 2020, the group will start on the 1st July and end on the 31st July 2020 (as it is aligned to the end of the current month).

The following table shows the alignment for each unit type:

As a different period_unit will result in a different alignment, it means there is a key difference between a reporting period based on a group size of “3 months” as opposed to “1 quarter”, as shown below:

Similarly, for a reporting period based on a group size of “12 months” as opposed to “1 year”:

When returning the groups that make up a period, they are given a name that is suitable for displaying to a client.

The names are necessarily succinct to be able to fit on the axis of a report.

Regardless of the unit, each group will have a start time of 00:00:00 and an end time of 23:59:59 - e.g. a group for the month of March 2020 runs from 1st March 2020 00:00:00 through to 31st March 2020 23:59:59.

The endpoints supporting reporting allow a timezone to be passed. In that case, the periods are adjusted so they start at 00:00:00 and end at 23:59:59, adjusted for the supplied time zone.

The default timezone is Sydney/Australia.

The following are standard period configurations, accessible via Portal Reporting Periods Endpoint and currently available within the portal analytics: