Section 10
Tracking Statistics and Reports

Once an e-mail job has been sent and enough time has gone by to reasonably assume that most recipients have received the message and have had time to open it, data from selected open-up and click-through events can be gathered. There are two ways to generate reports from a delivered job in LISTSERV^® Maestro, clicking on the Delivered Jobs icon or clicking the Tracking Reports icon; both available from the home page or on the left side of most screens:

• Delivered Jobs - Lists all of the e-mail jobs that have been delivered in a tabbed table format. The first tabbed page contains a summary table listing details about each job. The second tabbed page contains access to predefined reports for that job, available only if tracking is switched on for the job in question. Click on the type of report desired and a temporary report is automatically generated based on the selected settings. This temporary report is not automatically saved and added to the list of reports until the link Create a new report with this report template at the bottom of the report is clicked.
• Tracking Reports – Opens the list of reports. Clicking on the Edit link of one of the reports opens a series of pages that guides the user through the process of custom building a report, defining what data the user wants to collect and how to view or download that data.

LISTSERV^® Maestro can generate several different types of reports with either of these methods, or data can be downloaded for use in other statistical analysis programs. For quick reports on delivery tests, click on the Test Reports tab on the Job Details screen (for more information on test reports see Section 7.3 Running Test Reports).

In many cases, it is easier to start from one of the quick reports available from the Delivered Jobs interface, save it, and then make changes using the edit link in reports than to start from scratch.

10.1 Tracking Reports

Editing tracking reports is a more detailed way to generate custom reports. Unlike the "quick reports" available from Delivered Jobs, (or Test Reports for delivery test data) it is possible to combine data from multiple jobs as well as custom design the color of each data source. To create a new report or edit an existing report, click on the Tracking Reports icon. A listing of previously created reports appears, unless no reports have been generated. Click on a report title to execute and view that report. Click on the Edit link to open an existing report, or click the New Report button to create a new report.

Figure 45 Tracking Reports

Clicking the New Report button or the Edit link will open the "Define Report" screen. There are four top buttons and a text box to type in a report title:

• Copy Settings – Copies settings from a previously generated report to the new report.
• Save & Execute – Saves the report and executes the collection of the selected data as well as a graph based on the settings.
• OK – Saves any selections or entered information such as a title.
• Cancel – Cancels any settings or entered information.

Figure 46 Define Report Top Part of Screen

Below the buttons is a table divided into two sections. Click on the tabs to toggle between the sections. "General Settings" defines the time period of the report, the type of report to produce and team collaboration settings. "Data Sources" lists the types of events and the jobs from which those events were generated as data sources for the reports. There is also a link that leads to the data source wizard, a series of screens that leads the user through the process of creating new data sources.

Figure 47 Define Report Screen

• Report Period – Divides the reporting period into evenly distributed time periods.
• Automatic – LISTSERV^® Maestro will determine the time period to fit the registered events. From all the events of all of the jobs and/or URLs that are part of the report, LISTSERV^® Maestro will set the time of the earliest event as the "from" and the time of the latest event as the "to" values of the time period. If two jobs are selected for tracking, LISTSERV^® Maestro will select the delivery time of the first job to go out as the start time, and the time of the last received event (open-up or click-through), in either job as the end time.
• Defined Period – User can determine the time period for the report, and make this relative to any time zone.
• Report Type – Select one of four reports
• Event distribution over time - A simple line graph showing number of responses over time.
• Sum of events - A bar graph that shows the number of recipients that clicked each URL or opened up the e-mail (depending on what choices were made on the "Data Sources" page).
• Recipient details - Displays a table that contains the details (the profile) of each recipient that triggered one of the tracked events that are displayed by the report, optionally with a count of how many times this happened. Only personal or anonymously tracked jobs will generate any output in this type of report. If jobs that were unique or blind tracked are included in the report, they will be ignored. This data is downloadable and can be used in statistical software packages for analysis. Select the encoding for the data before downloading. This type of report is not available for quick reports.
• Event details – Displays a summary of the report type and time period of the report. Allows the user to select encoding and time zone for the data when it is downloaded. Only personal or anonymously tracked jobs will generate any output in this type of report. If jobs that were unique or blind tracked are included in the report, they will be ignored. This data is downloadable and can be used in statistical software packages for analysis.
• Team Collaboration - Grants team members permission to Edit and Execute a report, or only Execute a report.

The bottom button, Delete the Report, will delete the report presently open.

Figure 48 Data Sources

• Data Source Description – Lists the defined data sources available for use in a report. Click on the title of the data source to open the data source wizard and edit the selections. Click on the copy link to make a copy of the data source. Click on the delete link to delete the data source.
• Add Data Source – Opens the data source wizard, a series of screens that leads the user through the process of creating or editing a data source.

10.1.1 Adding a Data Source

Adding a data source is a multi-step process that has to be repeated for each separate variable in the report. In the screen capture above, there are four different variables that will be plotted on the report, so the data source wizard was engaged four times to record each one.

There are five screens to the data source wizard that select the type of event to record, which job or jobs those events are from, which URLs to include from click-through events, the color each data source will be in the report and a summary of the selections.

• Type – Selects the types of events to report on, Open-Up and/or Click-Through.

Figure 49 Data Source Type

Click Next -> to continue.

• Jobs – Selects the e-mail jobs to report on. These can be test jobs, regular jobs, all of them, some of them, or only one of them. Only jobs for which the chosen event type is possible will be listed. For example if only "Open-Up" events was selected on the previous page, then only jobs with open-up tracking enabled will be shown. Check the boxes next to the jobs to include in the data source. Unlike the "quick reports" from Delivered Jobs, it is possible to combine data from different jobs into one report from this screen.

Figure 50 Data Source Jobs

Click Next -> to continue.

• Links – Only available if "Click-through events" is chosen on the first page, specifies which URLs to report on. To select several links at once, hold down the SHIFT or CTRL key while selecting.

Figure 51 Data Source Links

Click Next -> to continue.

• General – Enter a name for the data source in the text box. Choose a name that will be descriptive of the data source when it is viewed in the report. The name of the data source will be the only way beside color to identify what the source is in the report. Select the color of the line or bar or table for the item that is tracked. A different color should be chosen for every different data source for the report.

Figure 52 Data Source Colors

Click Next -> to continue.

• Summary – Presents a summary of the selections made on the previous pages.

Figure 53 Data Source Summary

Click Finish to complete the definition of the data source and return to the Define Report screen. This process must be repeated for every separate variable in the report. After all of the data sources have been defined, click the Save & Execute button. A report will be generated and displayed on the screen based on the general selections and the defined data sources. The statistics can be downloaded from the report display screen. The report can also be edited by clicking the Go to the edit page of this report link.

Figure 54 Sample Report Plain Text Click-Through Response

10.1.2 Downloading Statistics

LISTSERV^®Maestro will allow any data generated from the "Define Report" screen to be downloaded as a text file. This is a comma separated text file that can be imported into various statistical analysis programs. To the right of the download link is a link to download a Microsoft^® Excel Add-In file. Once the add-in file is installed in Excel, downloaded LISTSERV^® Maestro statistical files can be imported and generate a data table and graph with the click of a button.

10.2 Importing Statistics into Microsoft^® Excel

The statistics that can be downloaded from Maestro in CSV format and can easily be imported into Microsoft^® Excel in order to create tables, graphs and other forms of reports. LISTSERV^® Maestro comes with an easy to use Excel Add-In that makes this import process a matter of a few clicks.

10.2.1 Installing the LISTSERV^® Maestro Excel Add-In

The add-in must be installed into Excel before it can be used. This step is done only once on each local computer, before the add-in is used for the first time. Click the Excel Add-In link located on the Tracking Statistics Report screen to download the add-in file to a local drive. The name of the file to download is ImportTrackerStatistics.xla

Figure 55 Excel Add-In for Tracking Statistics

10.2.2 Installing the LISTSERV^® Maestro Add-In into Microsoft^® Excel 2000

Follow the steps described below to install the add-in into Microsoft^® Excel 2000:

• Open up Excel and select the "Add-Ins..." command from the "Tools" menu (it may be necessary to click on the small arrow symbol at the bottom of the menu to make the command visible). A dialog that shows all available add-ins is opened. Click on the Browse... button in that dialog box.

Figure 56 Installing Tracker Add-In

By clicking the Browse... button, a file selection dialog box opens. Navigate to the folder where the downloaded file was saved and then click OK. After clicking OK, the add-ins dialog box reappears. There will now be an entry for the Maestro add-in, which should already have a check mark in front of it (if not, check the box). Click OK to install the add-in.

Figure 57 Browse for Add-In File

A new toolbar button that looks like two footprints will appear in the Excel toolbar. This button will start the LISTSERV^® Maestro data import.

Figure 58 New Excel Tool Bar Button

10.2.3 Using the LISTSERV^® Maestro Microsoft^® Excel Add-In

Download the data to be imported into Excel. The data is downloaded in a compressed ZIP file. Open the ZIP file. There are two files contained inside, a readme.txt file and another file named for the type of data downloaded. Extract the *.txt files and save them to a location on the local drive.

The readme.txt file will contain a summary of the report type and other information. The other file, named for the type of data downloaded, such as distributionReport.txt or uniqueSumReport.txt contains the data that will be imported into Excel. Start Excel and click on the Visualize Tracking Statistics button in the toolbar, it looks like two small footprints, see the diagram above.

The Visualizing Tracker Statistics import dialog box will open. Select the "Import and convert a downloaded tracking data file" option button to create a new workbook and generate a chart based on the downloaded tracking data. Select the "Convert the current worksheet" option button, to create a new chart in the current workbook based on the data of the current worksheet. Click Start to proceed.

Figure 59 Using Tracker Add-In with Excel Dialog Box

After clicking the Start button, a file selection box will open. Navigate to the *.txt file with the tracking data previously downloaded and open this file. Excel will automatically open a new workbook. Once the workbook has been created successfully, save it using the Save Statistic File dialog box. After the file had been saved a message will appear saying the data has been successfully imported and saved as an Excel Workbook. Click OK to close the message.

The new workbook has two sheets. The first sheet shows the imported tracking data in chart form.

Figure 60 Example Excel Graph Event Distribution Over Time

The second sheet contains a value table with the downloaded tracking data.

Figure 61 Example Excel Data Table

It is now possible to use all the usual Microsoft^® Excel features to edit and adjust both the graph and the data table.