Criteria Sets

Criteria Sets allow you to define the specific information that is included in or excluded from a Report.

This article will cover what Criteria Sets are, where you’ll find them and how you can use them to power your Reports.

What are Criteria Sets?

A Criteria Set dictates the data that is included in your report. 

Standard Reports (with the blue toolbox icon) each come with one or more preset Criteria Sets that can't be edited or deleted. However, you can add your own Criteria Sets to Standard and Custom Reports.

TIP:  You can copy existing Standard Criteria Sets, edit and update them to save you creating a new Criteria Set completely from scratch.

Criteria Sets that also have a blue toolbox icon next to them are Standard Criteria Sets.

For example, the Ticket Sales Analysis Report has these Standard Criteria Sets assigned to it:

How can Criteria Sets be used?

Criteria Sets allow you to narrow down the data included in your Report. Each Report can have multiple Criteria Sets. This means that the same Report can output different results depending on which Criteria Set is chosen.

You might choose to look for sales which happened over a specific date range, Events taking place at one of your venues, or customers who have certain Tags. 

• For example, if you want to run a Ticket Sales Analysis, which displays ticket sales information, you could use a Criteria Set to:
  • Select your data based on Date Transaction Confirmed, to find the volume of tickets sold within the selected date range. This will give you Ticket Sales data based on any Ticket bought within the selected date range, irrespective of when the Event occurs.
  
  
  or
  
  
  • Select data based on Instance Start Date, to find out how many tickets you've sold for Events which happen during the selected timeframe. This will give you sales data for Instances that occur within the selected timeframe, regardless of when the orders were made.
  Both options use the same Report but by using different Criteria Sets to filter the information they show different results.

How to Use a Criteria Set in Reports

You’ll find your custom and Standard Reports in Insights & Mailings > Reports > Reports Explorer.

• Every Report will have at least one Standard Criteria Set. Clicking the green plus sign next to each Report name will show the available Criteria Sets.

• Each Criteria Set is represented by a row underneath the name of the Report, with a green play icon and the name of the Criteria Set:

• Pressing the green play icon will allow you to make a selection within that specific Criteria Set and use it to run that Report.
• Most Criteria Sets require you to choose specific parameters within the criteria to filter the data on (Event name, date range etc).

TIP:  If you are regularly using the same Criteria Set for a specific Report you can copy the Criteria Set to include those parameters, so you don't have to select them each time.

• Once you have chosen your Criteria Set and set the parameters, you can choose the file type you want to export to and run your Report.

This video shows how to run a Standard Report with a Standard Criteria Set which requires inputting information into the date parameters.

Standard Criteria Sets

Each Standard Report comes with one or multiple Standard Criteria Sets.

Criteria Sets that have a blue toolbox icon next to them are Standard Criteria Sets.

• In this table we outline some of the common Standard Criteria Sets and what parameters you’ll need to set when using them.

  Criteria Set	Description	How to set the Parameters
  By Event Instance	This allows you to filter the data by selecting  specific Instance(s).	Click the pencil to edit the parameter. Select the Event Instance/s and use the > button to move them into the Selected Event Instances list.
  By Event	This allows you to filter the data by selecting  specific Event(s).	Click the pencil to edit the parameter. Select the Event/s and use the > button to move them into the Selected Events list.
  By Instance Start Date	Choose all Instances that occur within the selected date range.	Choose the date range from the drop down list.
  By Date Confirmed	Search for Transactions and Orders which were confirmed within the selected date range.	Choose the date range from the drop down list.
  By Tag	Filter results by choosing to exclude or include certain Customer Tags.	Choose the Tag you wish to filter by from the drop down. You can add as many multiples as you need.
  By Contact Preference	You can choose to filter Customer results based on Contact Preference results.	Choose to filter the report based on answers to contact preferences.
  By First Instance	You can choose to include all Events where the First Instance is within the selected date range.	Choose the first Instance Start date from the drop down, or set a date range using the calendar.

REMINDER: A Transaction Confirmed checkbox is automatically included when you add Metrics relating to transactions, it will default to being checked to look for confirmed orders. If you uncheck the box it will only search for unconfirmed Orders. You can find unconfirmed transactions in the Open Transaction tray in the Sales Interface.

Date Range Parameters in Criteria Sets

When using any date criteria, you will see a range of options available such as Last month or Yesterday, but there is also an option for Relative Date Ranges which allows you to set more flexible start and end dates.

Relative Date Ranges allow you to set dates based on the number of days in the past or in the future relative to specific points in time.

These points can each be set to one of a range of options, either fixed points or customisable dates.

• First recorded date: the first date which has data within Spektrix. This will be the date of the first sale in your system, or the earliest sale imported from your old system.

• End of time: the latest date which has any data in your system. This will update in real time, so will change over time.

• Days ago: a number of days in the past.

• Today: this will update dynamically based on that days date.

• Days in the future: a number of days in the future.

Both the days ago and days in the future options allow you to specify the number of days.

TIP:  There’s also help text underneath the chosen date period (for all options) which shows the date range in question, which for non-relative date ranges will be the exact date range.

How to Create a new Criteria Set

• In the Report Explorer, expand a Report by pressing the + icon. 
• Click on the New Criteria Set button. 

You can do this on both Standard and Custom Reports.

• When you select the New Criteria Set button, you’ll be prompted to enter a name for your new Criteria Set.

TIP: We recommend that you use a clear naming convention when creating multiple Criteria Sets so that it's clear what each Criteria Set does.

Metrics

Next, you’ll need to choose the data that you want to use in your Criteria Set. We call these groups of data, Metrics. 

Metrics are pieces of information about certain items in Spektrix. For example, Customer Name, Accounting Date, Tags, Sales Channel etc.

Similar Metrics are collected together into groups called Wrappers. For example, anything relating to tickets might be grouped into the Tickets heading, while membership information is under the Memberships heading.

Here's an example of the available Metrics when looking at the Tickets group of an Accounting Dates Audit Report.

By expanding the Tickets wrapper, you can see the Accounting Date metric. 

TIP: We recommend always unchecking the Only show commonly used criteria check box to see the full range of Wrappers and Metrics available.

The Metrics available will depend on which type of Report you're running. For example, the Event Sales Report will only show Metrics relating to Event Instances and Seat Status because it is a Sales Report.

TIP: For more information on why certain Metrics are only available in certain Reports, please refer to our articles on theDifferences Between Report Types and Reporting Outputs.

Adding Metrics to a Criteria Set

To select a Metric, drag it into the Drop criteria here box for use in the Criteria Set. 

REMINDER: If you are reporting on Instances, make sure to check the status of the Included in Metrics check box within your Event set up. Any Instances that have been excluded from Metrics won’t be included by default.

• Here's what a Criteria Set looks like with the Sales Channel Metric chosen:

  

  You'll see that the metric is now displayed under the heading Tickets with. 

Watch this video to see how to create a new Criteria Set from start to finish:

Once you've created a new Criteria Set, it will be available for use again with that Report in the future.

Using multiple Metrics with the AND, OR rules

Some Criteria Sets will only need a single Metric, however, you may sometimes wish to create more complex Criteria Sets using multiple Metrics. 

You can do this using the AND or OR rules:

• AND - is used when you want to use two Metrics and have the results meet both conditions.
• OR - is used to combine two Metrics and have the results meet either of these conditions.

To narrow the scope of your Criteria Set, use the AND rule. The AND rule only allows you to select Metrics from the same group.

Here's an example of multiple Metrics that have been grouped using the AND rule:

This Criteria Set is filtering by:

• Tickets with a Sales Channel which does include Web AND a date transaction confirmed of yesterday AND where the transaction was confirmed.

REMINDER: When using the AND rule, you can only combine Metrics from the same group.

Alternatively, you can broaden the scope of the Criteria Set by using the OR rule. The OR rule allows you to select and use Metrics from different groups.

To use the OR rule, drag a Metric from the list of options underneath the OR section.

Here's an example of multiple Metrics that have been grouped using the OR rule:

This Criteria Set will filter the results by:

• Tickets where the date transaction confirmed is yesterday AND where the transaction has been confirmed
• OR Reservations where the date transaction confirmed is yesterday AND where the transaction has been confirmed

REMINDER:  Because a seat can't be both ‘sold’ and ‘reserved’ at the same time, you can't use the AND logic to select ‘sold’ and ‘reserved’ seats. By using the OR logic, you're asking the system to look for both sales and reservations, and include all of them in the Criteria Set.

Watch this video to see the how to create a new Criteria Set using the AND rule:

Using Attributes in Criteria Sets

You can also use some custom Attributes you have on your system to build Criteria Sets. 

For example, if you wanted to see sales for comedy performances, you could use a custom Event Attribute of Genre on your system. Then create a Criteria Set on a Sales Report to return information on all tickets that were sold for an event where the Event Attribute of Genre is set to Comedy.

It's also possible to search for multiple values for a single Attribute in one Criteria Set. For example, if you wanted to know ticket sales for comedy and drama productions you could select the Event Attribute Genre to Comedy OR Drama.

How to Create a new Criteria Set using Attributes

• Find the Report you want to run and create a new Criteria Set.
• Name your new Criteria Set.
• Open the Wrapper which contains the Metric you’re looking for.
• Find your Attribute Metric and drag it into the Drop criteria here… box.
• This will open the Attribute selector where you can see a drop down of all Attribute values.
• You can use the is exactly or is not exactly conditions to search for results that match or do not match your Attribute Criteria.
• Click Add and this Attribute and value will be added.
• Add as many Attribute values as you want.

TIP:  Adding the same attribute more than once will always search for any of the values provided for that attribute. For example, Genre Is Exactly Comedy and Genre Is Exactly Musical will return Musicals orComedies.

• You can use the all of, some of or none of conditions to include or exclude results that match or do not match your Attribute Criteria.
• Click Save and your Criteria Set will be created.
• To run your Report, select the green play button alongside your new Criteria Set. 
• If required, click on the blue pencil to edit the Attribute value(s).
• Run your Report.

Leaving Metric Parameters blank

When you create a new Criteria Set, you’ll need to specify the parameters which filter the information. Whether you want to add these conditions when you create the Criteria Set will depend on if you want to use the same conditions again in the future.

By leaving the fields blank, each time you run the Report in future you’ll be given the option to select the parameters again. 

Leaving the fields blank means you can build a flexible, reusable Criteria Set that allows you to find different information each time. It also means you won’t need to build an entirely new Criteria Set to get only slightly different information.

• In this example, leaving the Metrics blank means you can choose which Sales Channel and Date Transaction Confirmed you want to look for each time:

  
  
  
  Alternatively, if you want to build a Criteria Set which will always look for the same information, just make sure you set the parameters when you create your Criteria Set.

Reports with Templates

As well as being Standard or Custom, Reports in Spektrix will either be presented with or without a Template, this is also called formatted or unformatted. 

Templates apply styling to a Report and often have calculations built into them which will format the data to be displayed in a certain way.

All of the Spektrix Standard Reports, and some of the Custom Reports that we might have built for you, will have PDF or Excel templates attached.

If you create a new Criteria Set for a formatted Report and output the Report using the template, you'll need to make sure the information contained matches up to the output of the Report and to the template. You can instead output the data into an unformatted Excel to be able to see the full data.

For example, a Ticket Sales Analysis Report is associated with a PDF template that will only display data on Tickets. If you use a Criteria Set which pulls Donations data into this Report and output using this template, the data will not display.

Further reading

To continue learning about Reports in Spektrix, take a look at the following articles:

• Reports in Spektrix
• The Differences Between Report Types
• Reporting Outputs

You can find more articles on running and configuring Reports in the Reporting section of the Support Centre.