How to construct Questions?

Ask Zia can understand the intent in your questions. It can resolve ambiguity and generate the best possible insights for your questions. The questions you construct can be one of the following types.

Your question can be in a structured language e.g., 

Show me the sales grouped by country for the year 2018

Your question can be in an unstructured fragment phrase e.g.,

India sales in 2019

What is the last year profit?

Your question states explicit information in your data. e.g., Let's say you have  Sales and Region columns in your dataset. The below question will get the total sales for each region.

Get me the sales across the regions

Your question contains implicit information. Ask Zia will identify the terms such as  monthly, yearly, daily, quarterly. e.g., for the below question, Zia will recognize the term Monthly, identified a date column in your data set and plots the sales across months.

Monthly Sales

Your question can contain a value from a column. In this case, West is a value in the column Region . Ask Zia will identify this and excludes the data for the west region. 

Get me sales across regions except west

You can ask for metrics across tables in your dataset. Ask Zia will interpret it based on how you have joined the tables using Lookup column . In this example, the column Sales is from the Sales table and the column Targeted Sales is from Regional Target table. 

sales vs target by region

You can ask a metric from a formula column available in your dataset. 

Your question can contain a typographical error. Ask Zia can interpret questions with incomplete, incorrect words. In this case, the term 'salse' will be matched with sales

Show me the salse by salesperson

What can be achieved in Ask Zia?

Ask Zia supports creating the following types of queries. 

• Ask for a Metric
  
• Apply Summary Functions
  
• Group the Metric Column
  
• Apply Filter Criteria
  
• Sort Data
  

Ask for a Metric

You can ask for a single metric or multiple metrics in a question like sales, my top salesman, what is the most sold product, etc., 

You can ask for a single metric in your question. The following question will get the total profit for last year as a Numeric KPI widget.

What is the last year profit?

You can ask for multiple metrics in a question. The below question gets Total Sales and Total Profit as a pie chart. 

Sales vs profit

Apply Summary Functions

Zoho Analytics provides a wide range of summary functions like Sum, Count, Average, Running Total etc., Ask Zia will try to apply the best possible function over your column. You can choose to change them in your question. 

You can choose the apply the supported summary functions  over a metric column by explicitly specifying them in your question. The below example applies count over the sales column and plots it across months. 

what is the number of orders we have every month?

Ask Zia can also apply advanced summary functions . The below question applies the advanced summary function Running Total over the Sales column and calculates it across the quarters.

show me the running total of sales. 

Group the Metric Column

You can group the metric column using phrases like sales by /group by / categorized by / across / wise ... This following types of groupings are supported. 

Single Metric by a Single Dimension

In this example, the Sales  column is grouped into months by the Date column.

monthly sales

Single Metric by Multiple Dimensions

In this example,  the  Sales  column is grouped by the  Date and the  Region columns. 

what is my sales across the regions every month?

Multiple Metrics by a Single Dimension

In this example,  the  Sales  and the Profit columns are grouped by the  Date column.

Profit and sales across months

Multiple Metrics by Multiple Dimension

In this example,  the  Sales  and the Profit columns are grouped by the  Date  and the  Region  columns. 

Sales and profit across months for each region

Apply Filter Criteria

You can apply single criteria or multiple criteria of filters in a question.  The following are the supported filter criteria.

Plain Text  

You can choose to include or exclude a value in a text column. In below example, we've filtered Sales where the Region is West .

Show me the sales across months where the region is west

Numeric

You can filter a numeric column by a range or by using special criteria such as greater than 10, < 10, most, highest, lowest...  The below question filters the Deal Size  greater than 12k.

Salesperson by win rate and won amount where the deal size >12k

Slice by Range

You can slice data by range using special criteria like Top 10, Bottom 5, Highest, lowest, most, recent.  In this example,  we have filtered top 10 salespersons. 

My top 10 salespersons by win rate

Exact Dates

You can filter data for a specific date such as 2019, March 2018, 12/3/2019...   In this example,  we've filtered the tickets escalated on 17th of March 2018.

Escalated tickets on 17 march 2018

Date ranges

You can filter data for a specific date range. In this example, the  Revenue  for a specific period i.e., from 3rd March 2018 to 3rd September 2018 is filtered.

Show me the revenue by salespersons from 3rd Mar 2018 to 3rd Sept 2018

Relative Dates - You can filter data for a relative period such as This Month, Last Quarter, Today...  In this example,  the Revenue for the period of last 1 year is filtered.

Show me the revenue across months for the last year

Filter Negation -  You can exclude a set of data from the report using the filter negation such as exclude, except, ignore, without ... In this example, we've excluded the west region sales .

Sales across regions except west

Sort Data

You can choose to sort the report either by the metric column or by columns to group the metric. In this example, the report is sorted based on the Y-Axis column  Revenue .

Revenue by Salespersons sort by Revenue

Keywords for Ask Zia 

The following is the list of keywords that Ask Zia can interpret and create appropriate insights.