An Insight into Your New Insights Experience

Data is a hot topic; it’s easy to find resources on gathering, organizing, and using data, but putting that information to use is a different story. Real, practical, actionable data insights are a rare find. With more data available to us than ever before, how do you make sure you’re seeing the right data and using it to make the changes that count?

Our newly rebuilt Insights experience will help you shift your focus from organizing metrics and creating dashboards and instead, allow you to spend more time putting your findings into action. 

An Insights overview

In 2014, Aquia DAM (Widen) released Insights as the most robust digital asset management (DAM) analytics tool available at the time. Since then, customer content storage has exploded and it’s time to yet again set the gold standard for actionable DAM insights. Our goal? Provide you with continuous and relevant information about the operating state of your DAM platform and its assets so you can make data-informed decisions.

To respond to the data needs our customers seek, we’ve organized this project into focused segments that will be released over time. The updated Insights app will include: new data pipeline, asset insights (formerly Quick Insights), portal insights (new!), Insights (reimagined dashboard experience), video insights (expanded from current video metrics), and behavioral insights (click path tracking akin to Google Analytics). We’re also thrilled to announce that each released segment will be accompanied by new Insights API endpoints to give you more control than ever to use your data however you need.

Our planning and execution of this large-scale Insights overhaul is led by long-term user research. We’ve set out to offer a unified analytics tool instead of independent Quick Insights and a separate dashboard experience. The new Insights app will allow for drilling up and down from assets, to Portals, and up to site wide data. Data is most important in context, so we want to make sure that the number of downloads your asset gets, for instance, is contextualized by other information from your DAM system.

A closer look at the updates

Now that you have a better understanding of how we got here, let’s explore the updates and new options you’ll see soon in the Insights app. 

New data pipeline

The first step in providing an updated, modern data analytics experience lies under the hood. While you can’t see it or interact with it like you can a flashy new chart or a well-organized dashboard, ensuring the security and performance of your data is the most important underpinning to this project. This isn’t just a user interface (UI) change; we’ve reorganized, centralized, and rebuilt our backend data pipeline with modern technology to ensure that every interaction counts. 

Working with industry leader Snowflake, all data follows a shared, simple, and secure route from you and your customers’ actions through our data warehouse and to your new Insights experience.

Asset insights (+API endpoints)

Expected release: Q4 2022

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Serving as the single asset-level point of entry for data, the reimagined Quick Insights, known as asset insights, will serve as an expanded way to access data on your individual DAM assets. Your asset-level data will be grouped by the type of engagement — downloads, views, and shares — with the ability to filter and group your data in many different combinations.

Data is most valuable when it has context and connects to other information, so we’ve enriched asset insights with data from Portals as well. Curious about how your asset is performing in a specific portal, for instance? Simply filter to “Daily downloads from portals” and then group the data to see which specific portals have downloads! 

To build upon what Quick Insights has historically offered, asset insights will also easily connect to the rest of your data so you can drill up from data on an asset, explore how it performs in a portal, and then zoom out to your site’s data for a high-level, contextualized view. Think of asset insights as just one of many doors into the same data pool that portal insights, your Insights dashboard, video insights, and behavioral insights will eventually share.

Here are some of the changes you’ll notice when transitioning from Quick Insights to asset insights:

• Simplified structure (Downloads, Views, Shares)
  • “Orders” is now “Shares”
  • Share Views, Site Views, and Social Shares will be retired at the asset level
  • “Collections” is now a breakdown filter under Downloads and Views
  • “Intended Use” is now a group option under Downloads and Views
     
• Filters and groupings (didn’t exist in Quick Insights)
  • New filters and grouping including: Event types (Downloads, Views, Shares), Filters (All, Collections, Orders, Portals), and Groupings (Weekly/Monthly totals, File Format, File Type, Intended use, Location, Collections, Portals) will allow users to combine all data in meaningful ways from the asset insights view.
     
• CSV Export and PNG Download
  • A CSV export allows you to choose to download only the filtered data on your screen, providing you with a streamlined view to analyze 
  • Download a PNG image of your chart to add to presentations or share with stakeholders
     
• API
  • Insights endpoints will be available to gather asset-level data
  • Connect Insights to Domo, Sisense, or any other data tools in your marketing technology (martech) stack

A few other things to know about asset insights

• “Shares” data only stems from sharing an asset via an external email Order at this time. Sharing via Collection is not yet included. This is a conscious decision as we work on a larger scale to consider changes to how sharing works and is categorized across the DAM. As a result, “Shares” has no breakdown filter and minimal group views for this initialV1 launch.
   
• The new data pipeline that provides the information for Assets Insights was activated on September 1, 2022. Therefore, asset insights will only provide data starting from this date. To access data prior to September 1, 2022, users will need to access it in Quick Insights from the Asset Details page.

Portal insights (+API endpoints)

Expected release: 2023 

Portal insights is completely new and will act like asset insights for Standard and Brand Portals. Portals are central to many DAM workflows and are the source for a lot of asset engagement. Users will be able to view portal data as well as see Download metrics for all the assets within a chosen portal. This information will be available within the Portals application in the same spot as the existing “Portal view” analytics data.

Portal insights differs from asset insights in a few ways. While you can see portals-related data in asset insights, that information is restricted to a single asset. Portal insights, on the other hand, will aggregate the total downloads for all the assets within a portal as well as how those assets perform relative to one another in a specified portal. Used together, you’ll be able to view portal data for a single asset by day, week, month, or year, illustrating the value of your portals over time. 

Insights [Dashboard] (+API endpoints)

Expected release: 2023

Through our extensive user research, we’ve learned that the task of creating a dashboard from scratch is time consuming and ends up becoming more of the process than actually interpreting and acting on your analytics. With a focus on generating actionable insights, your dashboard will now come with all of the dashboards and charts that you need — out of the box — so you don’t have to spend time building anything from scratch.

For added flexibility, more granular filters and groupings (like metadata fields) will allow you to focus on the data you need to answer any question. Additionally, Insights API endpoints also mean that you can perform any number of data configurations with other third-party tools your organization uses.

New planned permissions and security settings for Insights will mean that you can control which users see which data rather than having to create an entirely new dashboard for every team, project, or geographic location.

Key changes to expect when moving to the new:

• No more building charts or dashboards from scratch
• Pre-built dashboards offer additional filter and grouping options
• API endpoints to connect your data with other third-party tools
• Permission and security settings for Insights

Events you’ll be able to track using the Insights dashboard:

• Downloads
• Views
• Shares
• Uploads
• Logins
• Searches

Video insights (+API)

Expected release: 2023

Video assets are an integral part of your brand assets and require special metrics for accurate performance tracking. Purpose-built, video-specific analytics will measure video performance and demonstrate the impact of your video content. Understanding user behavior, retention, and play data will also help to optimize current video offerings while effectively planning for future content.

Here are some of the video metrics you’ll be able to access with the new video insights: 

• Video Loads
• Video Plays
• Pauses
• Rewind / Rewatches
• Play Rate 
• Video Plays / Video Loads
• Average View Duration
• Total watch time / Total # (re)plays
• Average Percentage Viewed
• Audience Retention
• Total Watch Time

Behavioral insights (+API)

Expected release: 2024

We’re excited to be planning brand new behavioral analytics through click-path tracking within Channel Portals. This will behave like Google Analytics behavioral data to understand the path users take in the DAM site that leads to certain actions like downloading an asset in Channel Portals, for example. 

As an important addition to the new portal insights, this click-path tracking will allow you to understand how your users interact with portals to see which actions they take prior to and after accomplishing certain actions.

What's next?

The new asset insights will be coming to your DAM site soon. Keep an eye out for an in-app message to know when it’s live. We also encourage you to keep tabs on our product roadmap and leave your comments for in-progress projects. All of the functionality described in this article will be added to our roadmap, along with screenshots. 

If you’re already an Acquia DAM customer but not part of the community yet, don’t miss out. Our DAM community gets you in touch with other admins and is full of even more helpful information. Join today!

And if you’re not an Acquia DAM customer but curious about our DAM platform, get in touch with our advisor team to learn more.  

Note: This article was originally published on Widen.com.