Nova Current - User Guide

Creating a custom metric section

Using the metric report in the Report Center is a quick way to see:

·If you are reaching goals or targets that you want to reach. For example, emails being sent internally.

·If there are issues within your environment that may need investigation. For example, incoming spam email.

The gauge helps you see if you are reaching your target or limit, thus giving you insight into whether you are on course for a goal, or if you need to take action for your limits.

9.Click Gauge.

10. Select your operator and Applied to data field.

11. Add a filter group, if applicable.

12. Select your minimum and maximum ranges. For example, you can set the maximum number to an acceptable limit of spam mail being received.

13.Reverse the colors of the metric if desired.

Once you have finished, click save and close the section.

Custom metric example: How many Teams meetings did we have in the last 30 days?

This metric sections is helpful if your organization hopes to have a certain number of Teams meetings within the month. To see a gauge related to the status of your target:

Custom metric example: How many spam emails are we receiving?

Perhaps you are looking to get a clear metric on how many spam emails are coming in to your tenant, with a limit on what is acceptable. This metric gives a clear image on whether this limit is being reached. To create it:

Creating a custom card section

Nova has a section type called ‘Card'. Using this feature you can include simple sum, count, maximum, minimum or average values which might add useful additional information to your reports.

For example you could show the total count of mailboxes in an organization, or the number of users in a tenant, or the total size of all mailboxes in an organization.

In this section, we will see an example of how this can be done.

9.Select an operator and an Applied to data field.

10. Add a filter group, if applicable. For example, you may want to know how many Microsoft Entra ID users have their ‘country or reigon' parameters set to the United States.

11. Optionally, you can set analytics to 'color code' your card section. More on analytics is below.

Click save, and close the section.

Analytics

The analytics tool is a quick way to see if a statistic in your environment is not as it should regularly be.

For example, you may want to immediately know the amount of spam mail coming into your tenant. You can select an operator relating to the value you want to input, for example you can have:

·greater than

·less than

·equal to

·is not equal to

then input a number. We can then apply the severity of the issue to the number applied. These include:

·OK

·Warning

·Critical

Custom card example: Teams private message count (7 days)

For example, you may want to keep an eye on the amount of Teams chats your users are sending if your environment has just adopted the Teams platform. You may also want to set a target for what you may deem acceptable. This can be achieved with the following steps:

Using text

You may need some overall context for the section(s) in your report for the report to make sense to new viewers. The text feature within the Report Center is a great method to help you expand on any additional information for either your report as a whole or for individual sections.

There are a range of features you can use when creating your text section. These include but are not limited to:

·adding hyperlinks to words or phrases. Add additional links to external information.

·use headers to highlight different sections.

·use numbered lists or bullet points.

There is no character limit, so insert as much information as you need into your text section.

FIltering and sorting

Filtering your charts and tables and dates is easy to do. You are able to search within very specific time frames for a variety of data sources and data source categories.

To filter your data to within certain time frames:

1.Go to your chosen report that you have already created, or begin by building one. Ensure that your report is one in which date is a valid property.

2.Go to Add filter group.

3.In Select field..., select the date property. This could take multiple forms, including Date, Activity Date, Created Date Time. Deleted Date Time, and so on. This depends on which data source you have selected.

4.Then select the parameters of your date filtering.

a.With is newer than, these are dates AFTER your parameters. For example, is newer than 1 year is within the past year up to this point.

b.With is older than, these are dates BEFORE your parameters. For example, is older than one year includes dates before the past year, not including the past year.

You are also able to add another filter so you can include dates within a specific time frame i.e. between 30 and 60 days. This is possible by clicking the plus button and repeating the steps above. Ensure that you have selected AND, rather than OR, if you are filtering between two dates. This can be seen in the image below.

Filtering by QTD/YTD

It is possible to search within Quarter to Date (QTD) and Year to Date (YTD) metrics within the Nova Report Center for date-specific data fields.

The QTD parameter gives you data from the beginning of the current quarter, and ending at the current date.

The YTD parameter gives you data from the beginning of the current year, and ending at the current date.

For example, perhaps you want to see the amount of Microsoft Entra ID users created within the current year within your tenant. To do this:

1.Begin by creating a new report, including title and description if necessary.

2.Choose your data source. For these specific filters, you will need sources that include date data fields. For our example, we are using Microsoft Entra ID Users.

3.For Table fields, choose Display Name and User Created.

4.Under Add filter group, select is during, then YTD.

5.Add sorting and change your offset and limits if required.

Below is an example of what your report should look like.

Sorting

You can sort in ascending and descending order for any data field, even fields that you have not included in your report section. To add a searching parameter:

1.In your report section, click Add sorting.

2.Select the data field you would like to sort by.

3.Choose between ascending (smallest to largest, A-Z) and descending (largest to smallest, Z-A).

Alternatively, you can click on the heading of a table section to sort that specific field.