How to Organize Custom Analytics into Reports
Custom Analytics lets you pin charts you’ve built in the chat builder onto a page, then group those pinned cards into named report tabs. Some cards are live — they re-run their saved query whenever you change the page’s date range or hit refresh. Others are snapshots — frozen at the moment you pinned them. This article covers building and managing report tabs, telling live cards apart from snapshots, refreshing a card, and exporting a report tab to PDF.
Report tabs
A report tab is a named group of pinned cards — a way to keep, say, your weekly ops review separate from a one-off investigation, without losing either. Cards you pin land in whichever tab you’re currently on; there’s also a General tab that holds anything pinned outside a named report.
- Create a tab — add a new report tab from the reports area of the Custom Analytics page and give it a name. It starts empty; pin charts into it from the chat builder while that tab is open.
- Rename a tab — rename it in place any time; pinned cards stay put, only the label changes.
- Delete a tab — deleting a tab removes it and the cards pinned to it. Deletion doesn’t touch cards pinned to other tabs.
Switching tabs changes which cards you see; it doesn’t change how any individual card behaves.
Live cards vs. snapshot cards
When you ask the builder a question and get a chart back, pinning it offers one of two buttons depending on how the chart was built:
- Pin to report — The chart is backed by a single underlying query — Pins a live card. It re-runs its saved query against the page’s date range whenever that range changes, and can be refreshed on demand.
- Pin as a snapshot — The chart combines more than one measurement, so there’s no single query behind it — Pins a snapshot. It keeps the numbers exactly as they were the moment you pinned it — it does not re-run and does not react to the page date range.
If a chart can only be pinned as a snapshot, hovering the pin button explains why: it combines more than one measurement, so it keeps the numbers you see now.
Because a follow-up question in the same chat can refer back to an earlier chart (“now break that down by team”), the query behind each chart you’ve already seen travels with the conversation — so edits build on the actual query, not a guess at what the chart showed.
The page date range and live re-runs
The Custom Analytics page has its own date range picker, separate from any dashboard filters elsewhere in Analytics. Every live card on the page listens to that range: change it, and each live card re-executes its saved query for the new period and redraws.
Snapshot cards ignore the page date range entirely — they show the same fixed numbers regardless of what range you select, since they were never given a live query to re-run in the first place.
This is the main thing to check when a pinned card “isn’t updating”: if it was pinned with Pin as a snapshot, that’s expected. If it was pinned with Pin to report, it should move with the date range and can be refreshed manually if it looks stale.
Refreshing a card manually
Each live card carries its own refresh control. Use it to re-run that card’s query immediately — for example, right after new data has landed — without waiting on the page date range to change or navigating away and back. The card’s freshness note (shown under its title) reflects the last time it actually ran.
Refresh is per card: refreshing one live card doesn’t refresh the rest of the tab. Snapshot cards don’t have a refresh control, since there’s no live query behind them to re-run.
Exporting a report to PDF
Use Export PDF to print the report tab you’re currently viewing. It captures the cards on that tab as laid out on the page, scoped to just that report — other tabs aren’t included in the same export. Switch to the tab you want first, then export, so the PDF matches what’s on screen.
Quick reference
- New report tab → create it from the reports area and name it; pin cards into it while it’s active.
- Rename / delete a tab → use the tab’s own controls; deleting a tab deletes its pinned cards.
- Pin to report → live card, follows the page date range, has a manual refresh.
- Pin as a snapshot → frozen at pin time, ignores the page date range, no refresh control.
- Export PDF → prints the current report tab only.