Managing Advanced Metrics

What does this page cover
Advanced Metrics provides detailed usage insights for your Zoho Creator applications, focusing on how users interact with individual app features such as forms, reports, and pages. It enables admins to go beyond overall activity and analyze engagement at a granular, feature level.

Availability

Advanced Metrics is available in the United States (.com), Europe (.eu), Australia (.au) and India (.in) data centers.
Advanced Metrics will be available only in the Creator 6 version of Zoho Creator.

1. Managing advanced metrics

Advanced Metrics helps Zoho Creator provide visibility into how applications are accessed and used. It builds on high-level usage metrics by correlating them with feature-level behavior inside applications. The usage metrics provided are:

The number of active users
Total interactions
Access frequency
Session activity

In Zoho Creator, Metrics provides a high-level view of application activity, such as the number of active users, total interactions, access frequency, and overall session activity across applications.

Advanced Metrics builds on these insights by correlating overall usage data with feature-level behavior within applications. This enables admins to move beyond understanding how much an application is used and analyze which forms, reports, and pages drive usage, where users drop off, and how engagement varies across users and workflows.

With these insights, admins can identify usage patterns, detect engagement gaps, and make informed decisions to optimize application design, workflows, and feature adoption. Advanced Metrics offers multiple tabs that present usage data from different perspectives, ranging from summary metrics like active users and interactions to deeper insights such as attendance, session duration, and user flow analysis, enabling a complete understanding of how your Creator applications are being used.

2. Use cases

A Procurement Management application oversees a high-volume purchasing workflow used across departments and regions:

Employees submit purchase requests through a form
Requests move through multi-level approvals (manager > department head > finance)
Budget validation and vendor selection are completed through dedicated forms and reports
Approved requests are converted into purchase orders
Finance processes and closes the transaction

Although overall application activity remains high in basic Metrics, procurement cycle times continue to increase and some requests remain pending longer than expected. The admin cannot determine which stage in the workflow is causing delays or whether the issue is process-related or user-related.

Using Advanced Metrics, the admin configures a funnel view to track progression across each stage of the procurement lifecycle. The analysis reveals that while submissions and initial approvals are completed quickly, a significant drop-off and delay occurs during vendor selection and purchase order creation. Frequency insights further show that only a small group of finance users consistently interact with the purchase order module, creating a bottleneck during peak periods.

3. Enabling advanced metrics

You can enable Advanced Metrics from the Metrics tab in you Creator account.

Navigate to Metrics under MANAGE and Enable Metrics. If Metrics is already enabled in your account, you can directly see the Metrics dashboard. 
Once it's enabled, click the Advanced Metrics button on the top right corner of your dashboard.
Note: When Advanced Metrics is enabled, the system integration based on this will be configured automatically.
Click Enable next to the application for which you want to enable Advanced Metrics.
Read and agree to the terms, then click Enable Advanced Metrics. 

Once enabled, your advanced metrics will be visualized in the dashboard from that day.

4. Available tabs in advanced metrics

Advanced Metrics consists of the following tabs:

Home
Activity
Trends
Funnel
Popularity
Frequency
User Analytics

Each tab presents application usage data from a different perspective. 

4.1 Home

The Home tabs provides a high-level summary of application usage and user engagement across your Creator apps. 

KPIs available in Home

Metric	Description
Total hits	Total number of user interactions (hits) in a page, form, or report is recorded in the last 30 days.
Features used	Number of unique features (forms, reports, pages, blueprints or approvals) accessed in the last 30 days.
Attendance (days)	Total number of days users accessed the application.
Active users	Number of users who interacted with the application in the last 30 days.

Additional components in Home

Component	Description
Hits	Weekly breakdown of total interactions (such as form submissions, report views, and page accesses) to highlight overall application usage trends.
Attendance	Number of unique days users accessed the application over the past five weeks, helping measure consistency of usage.
Users with most hits	Lists users with the highest number of interactions.
Users with most attendance (days)	Lists users who accessed the application most frequently.

4.2 Activity

The Activity tabs provides a detailed breakdown of how users interact with individual features within the application.

KPIs available

Metric	Description
Total hits	Total interactions recorded across all features in the last 30 days.
Features used	Number of unique features accessed, with month-over-month comparison.
Attendance (days)	Total days users accessed the application.
Active users	Users who interacted with the application in the last 30 days.
Inactive users	Users with no interactions during the same period.

Feature-based activity

Component	Description
Usage activity (last 60 days)	Total interactions recorded for each feature during the last 60 days.
Timeline chart	Visual representation of interaction trends over time.
Search by user	View feature wise usage for a specific user.
Search by feature	Filter activity data for selected features.

4.3 Trends

The Trends tabs focuses on how feature usage changes over time. 

Trend analysis options

Option	Description
Line graph	Displays the trends based on usage of the application and components over time for selected features. The features can be selected under the Features pane on the left.
Table view	Displays the usage of the application components in a tabular format for comparison based on the selected time period.

You can switch between daily, weekly, and monthly views and change the time period accordingly.

4.4 Funnel

The Funnel tab analyzes how users move through a defined sequence of actions within a Zoho Creator application. It helps identify where users complete actions successfully and where drop-offs occur, enabling admins to pinpoint friction points in key workflows.

Example

In a Service Request Management application, an admin configures a funnel with the following steps:

Added record to a form
Record approved using blueprint stage
Users are taken to a new form for payment details
Complete payment

By analyzing this funnel, the admin can measure completion rates and identify where users abandon the process. If a significant drop-off occurs between form submission and payment, the admin can investigate issues such as form complexity, payment flow, or validation errors and optimize the workflow to improve completion.

Each funnel consists of ordered steps configured from tracked application events.

What qualifies as a step?

A step represents a specific user action captured by Advanced Metrics, such as:

Form record creation, update, or submission
Blueprint stage transition
Report access

Users must complete the steps to progress through the funnel. If a user does not perform the next step, they are counted as a drop-off at the previous stage.

Funnel metrics

Metric	Description
Flow completion rate	Percentage of users who complete all defined steps in the funnel.
Drop-off rate	Percentage of users who exit at each step of the funnel.

Funnel details

Element	Description
Steps	Ordered sequence of actions (for example, form submission > approval > report access).
Flow direction	Visual representation of user movement through steps.

4.5 Popularity

The Popularity tab shows how many users have interacted with each application feature. This helps identify widely used forms, reports, pages, approvals and blueprints making it easier to understand which features have the highest reach across users.

Metric	Description
Users interacted	Number of unique users who accessed a specific feature within the selected time frame.

4.6 Frequency

The Frequency tab groups users based on how often they interact with a feature. This helps distinguish between occasional usage and repeated, high-engagement behavior.

Hit bucket	Description
1–10 interactions	Users with low engagement.
10–100 interactions	Users with moderate engagement.
100+ interactions	Users with high engagement or power users.

For example, using the Frequency tab, admins can identify the users who interact the most with certain forms or reports extensively and gather feedback to further improve those features. It also helps detect users with low interaction levels, indicating areas where additional training, workflow simplification, or better visibility may be required to improve adoption. By comparing interaction frequency across features, admins can determine which features are critical to daily operations and prioritize them for enhancements, performance improvements, or automation.

4.7 User Analytics

The User Analytics tab provides insights into individual user behavior and engagement.

User activity metrics

Metric	Description
Attendance	Number of days a user accessed the application.
Increase in attendance	Percentage increase in attendance compared to the previous period.
Decrease in attendance	Percentage decrease in attendance compared to the previous period.
Last seen	Most recent date and time the user accessed the application.
Session time	Total active time spent by the user in the application.
Session count	Number of sessions initiated by the user. Note: A session starts when a user performs their first action and ends after 15 minutes of inactivity.

5. Points to note

Filters and group-by options can be combined to narrow down analysis. For example, filter data to a specific department and then group results by region to compare performance within that segment.
Metrics and definitions remain consistent across all tabs. For instance, “Hits” represents total tracked interactions in every tab, ensuring uniform interpretation of data.
Date range and comparison behavior varies based on the selected tab.

6. Glossary

Hits - Any action that the user performs within the live mode of an application will be counted as a hit. For example, adding a record to a form, editing a record, triggering a workflow action, clicking a button in a page, report actions etc. will be counted as hits.

Managing Advanced Metrics | Zoho Creator Help