Create a Snapshot

Once your report is ready, you can enhance your data analysis with a snapshot. Snapshots gather and consolidate your report’s data, enabling you to monitor trends across with visualizations, via widgets on Dashboard views and summary charts in the Data tab of the Reports interface. To put it simply: a report creates a table of information. A snapshot is a request to summarize the table with visual representations, helping you understand and track key insights into your warehouse operations.

Note: Previous versions of snapshots included the ability to specify the frequency at which a snapshot is run. This feature is no longer in ItemPath, and snapshots now run along with reports.

Create a snapshot

The Reports interface has a Snapshots tab,, where you can manage and review the snapshots associated with that report.  To create a snapshot, use the interface at the bottom of the Snapshots tab:

1. Give your snapshot a Name.
2. Next, choose your calculation method: Count, Sum, Average, Minimum, or Maximum.
3. If the function from step 2 is Count, the snapshot will simply count all report rows available. Otherwise, select the specific report column you want to perform the calculation on.
4. Optionally, group your data by one of your report columns. If you group by a date and time value, you can specify the unit (for example: month, week, or day) for your grouping.
   • Note: If you have a large dataset, fine-grained grouping by date and time values can introduce performance issues for ItemPath due to requesting a large number of operations.
5. Optionally, choose a second column to group by. This allows for more granular data consolidation. You can’t group by a date and time value in this second column position.
6. Finally, Save your snapshot.

A report can have many snapshots associated with it. Snapshots load individually in the Data tab, and you can switch between them using the dropdown menu. Using multiple snapshots from the same report can be a convenient way to compare values in a single widget (see create a view for information about chart types, snapshots, and important considerations for combining snapshots).

Snapshot functions

Snapshots support the following functions:

Snapshots generate datasets, which you can think of as values associated with tables or groups within a table. These values can only be viewed via charts on the data tab, or widgets on the 

Access snapshots

Once saved, your snapshot’s data will be available in two key places:

• The Data tab in Reports: You can view the snapshot directly above your report results. You can select either a bar chart or a line chart. A line chart is best for looking at trends over a time series, while a bar chart is helpful for comparing the size of groupings. Look for the dropdown menu at the lower-left of the report display area to select your snapshot.
• Dashboard widgets: Snapshots are the building blocks for powerful visualizations on your Dashboards. To learn how to display your snapshot data in a visual graph or chart, see how to create Dashboard widgets.

Snapshots run when a report or widget using the snapshot loads and ItemPath caches (stores the results) for five minutes. There may be a slight delay between modifying a snapshot and the changes becoming visible in the Data tab.

Edit a snapshot

Snapshots are visible in the Snapshot tab and you can edit any of the settings available during creation. After you make a change, press Save to ensure your new settings will take effect.

Remove a snapshot

To delete a snapshot, use the trash bin icon to remove it from your report. If you remove a snapshot from a report, it will no longer be available for your Dashboard views.

Advanced topics

Snapshot grouping by date and time

A common use case for snapshot grouping is to analyze trends in a report, broken down by regular time intervals. For example, suppose you want to break down transactions by type per week and generate a bar chart to review your warehouse’s performance over time.

You could build a report with the following features:

1. Create a new report using the History theme, titled “Transaction Count Trends (Weekly)”.
2. Add the following columns to the report:
   1. Modified Date
   2. Direction Type (or Direction Type Description)
   3. Optional: Any other columns you’d like to analyze — for this specific report, focusing on weekly transaction counts, additional fields aren’t necessary.
3. Go to the Snapshot tab and set the following values:
   1. Set the snapshot name to “Count of Transactions by Week”.
   2. Set the calculation method to Count.
   3. Group your data by Modified Date.
   4. Specify Week as the unit for the date and time grouping.
   5. Add a secondary grouping by Direction Type.
4. Return to the Data tab, and select the “Count of Transactions by Week” snapshot, and display the results as a bar chart. Currently the Data tab does not support stacking multiple lines generated by Snapshot groupings.

The resulting report now includes a visualization of weekly total transactions performed in your warehouse:

Snapshots and column groupings

ItemPath’s reports support the ability to perform column groupings and calculate aggregate functions (such as averages, counts, or sums) for groups of rows. A column grouping returns a table consisting of all the unique values in a column (or set of columns) from the base table for the theme.

Snapshots also provide you with the ability to perform grouping operations and calculate aggregate functions. Unlike column groupings, snapshots perform their operations on the report rows that result from filter and grouping operations, and groupings introduced by the snapshot.

Snapshot calculations and column groupings

Snapshot groupings allows you to perform calculations that might be impossible to achieve using only the Columns tab in the reports interface. For example, if you had a report generating the count of picks by warehouse (using column groupings), a snapshot lets you generate the average of those counts.

Multiple groups and order

The primary reason to perform a calculation with a snapshot instead of a column grouping is to include the results of that calculation in a chart or widget. Unlike Column Groupings, the grouping statements in a snapshot occur sequentially, which can impact the values in your charts and widgets.

As a general rule, the first grouping you specify is the outer grouping in the resulting chart. If you specify a second grouping, this will separate into different bars within the bar chart:

The value from your calculation (such as the average of a quantity) uses the finest-grained buckets in your chart. For example, the snapshot for the screenshot above generates the weekly count of transactions by order type. The snapshot performs the count per order type, not per week.

Snapshots and Dashboard views

The ItemPath Dashboard loads views containing one or more widgets. Snapshots provide the data displayed in widgets, so carefully defining your reports and snapshots is an important step in building effective views.

Tips and troubleshooting

Snapshots can be a powerful feature, but keep a few things in mind when building your reports:

• Use filters to limit the performance load from snapshots. Ensuring that reports don’t contain massive numbers of rows can make snapshots easier to calculate.
• Limit access to reports that might slow down ItemPath.
• Be careful with fine grained snapshots that group on date and time values. Grouping by minute can introduce many calculations, and impact ItemPath’s performance.