Introduction

Getting started with X-Assist's analytics features

X-Assist has a powerful analytics feature that allows you to visualize your organization's data and build custom dashboards.

Example dashboard

Head over to the tutorial to learn how to build your first dashboard.

pageAnalytics Tutorial

Data lifecycle

The analytics page is powered by a separate data warehouse, where data from various sources is consolidated, transformed and prepared for analytical processing (OLAP).

This data transfer does not happen in real time, and it may take up to several hours before new and updated data becomes visible on the analytics page.

Analytical data flow (ELT pipeline)

The data warehouse respects your selected data retention period and deletes old data daily.

A vital aspect here is the distinction between operational and analytical data.

The operational data used by X-Assist always reflects the current state. Changes to operational data are visible immediately (e.g. on the Travel Monitor page), but the ability to explore historical data is very limited.

In contrast, the data warehouse is not updated in real time, but it keeps the full change history of each record and allows users to view historical data.

For example, this is what happens when a person gets deleted from X-Assist:

• The person and all associated data (user profile, favourites, bookings, etc.) is immediately deleted from the main database of X-Assist.

• As a result, the person is no longer visible in the Travel Monitor or the user list in the IAM.

• However, the data is still kept in the data warehouse until the retention period for the records has expired.

Data model

Analytical data in X-Assist is organized in OLAP cubes, which consist of measures and dimensions.

Measures are the quantitative, numerical data that can be calculated and aggregated. They represent observations about the data such as the number of users or the number of alerts.

Dimensions on the other hand are categorical data (i.e. properties/attributes) that describe the measurements, e.g. country risk level, event category, alert type, etc.