Create your first report setup

This tutorial walks through creating a simple Report setup with one report block. The goal is not to use every option, but to create a useful first report and understand where the main controls are.

Content of this page

Before starting, it helps to know the basics from Report setups, queries, and report blocks.

1. Open the Reports area

  1. Open the Data Container where you want to create the report.
  2. Go to the Reports area.
  3. Choose the action to create a new Report setup.

[screenshot: Reports area with the action for creating a new Report setup]

2. Add setup details

In the Details section, enter a clear title and description. Use a title that describes the recurring business question, not only the technical configuration.

Good examples:

  • Weekly content performance
  • Monthly campaign performance
  • Daily referrer overview

The description is useful for explaining why the report exists and who should use it.

3. Decide whether to schedule it now

You can schedule the report immediately or keep scheduling disabled while you are still building the setup. For a first report, it is often simpler to finish the query first, save the setup, check the generated result, and then return to scheduling.

For scheduling details, see Schedule and deliver reports.

4. Add your first query

In the Queries section, add a query. This query will become one block in the generated report.

[screenshot: Queries section with an add-query action and a query card]

Give the query a title that will make sense in the generated report, for example:

  • Top content by key events
  • Referrer performance by source type
  • Campaign performance by campaign

5. Choose the query type

Choose the query type that matches your question.

  • Use Event count when you want to count selected events and optionally group them by time, content, device, visitor type, language, or similar dimensions.
  • Use Referrer performance when the source of traffic matters.
  • Use Campaign performance when campaign values such as campaign, medium, or content matter.

6. Choose what to measure

In the Measure section, choose the events that should appear as metrics in the report block. Use Browse to select known event types.

The order of selected events matters. It controls the order of metric columns in the generated report. If the report is sorted by metrics, the first event also has the highest sort priority.

[screenshot: Measure section with Events included and ordered event rows]

7. Decide whether to narrow the data

Use Include only when this report block should look at only part of your data. For example, you can include only selected content types, selected campaigns, selected referrer sources, selected devices, or selected tags.

If you are unsure, leave filters empty first. Empty filters usually mean “include everything available for this query”. You can come back and narrow the report later.

For more detail, see Narrow report data with Browse and filters.

8. Choose how to break down the result

Use Break down by to decide how the report block should create rows. For example, you might break down by content, time interval, campaign, source type, device type, visitor type, or language.

If you select no breakdown, the block is more like a total. If you select one or more breakdowns, the report creates rows for those dimensions.

9. Limit and sort rows

If the selected breakdowns can produce many rows, use row controls to keep the result readable. You can limit the number of rows and choose whether rows should be sorted by metric values or by breakdown columns.

For a first report, start simple: choose one main breakdown and sort by the metric you care about most.

10. Save and check the result

  1. Finish editing the query.
  2. Save the Report setup.
  3. Generate or open a Report instance to check whether the result answers your question.
  4. If the result is too broad, add Include only filters.
  5. If the result is too detailed, remove breakdowns or limit rows.

After the first result looks useful, you can return to the setup and add a schedule or Integration webhook.

11. Reuse - save efforts

Good Report setups and report blocks are worth reusing. If you have already invested time into a useful report design, Keytiles can help you turn that work into a starting point for the next setup or query.

Check out our Reuse report work article!