Get Started With Key Performance Indicators

Steve Stegelin

With insights, you pair measures with attributes to analyze your records across different criteria. To instead simply summarize a measure's total or amount, such as invoice amounts in Financial Edge NXT or the recently released past due pledges in Raiser's Edge NXT, add it as a key performance indicator (KPI) on a dashboard. With KPIs, you can quickly stay current with a measure and compare it to previous performance!

 
Choose what to measure. Measures are the totals and amounts to analyze with an insight or KPI. To add a KPI to a dashboard, select Edit, move Key Performance Indicator from under New item to the dashboard, and choose which measure to track.

Customize for optimal analysis. To best meet your needs, you can adjust the KPI as necessary.

• Under Filter by, choose which of the dashboard's filters apply to the KPI. To use the Date range filter, select Date and choose which date to use.
• Under Comparison, choose whether to compare the measure with an earlier time period, based on either the Date range filter or the previous fiscal year. If you compare with another time period, choose whether to display an increase as green (good) or red (not so good!).

After you set up the KPI, select Save & Publish to finish adding it to your dashboard.

Set alerts to stay current. To help track a KPI, you can set an alert to be notified — at the email address you use to sign in — when it exceeds or falls below a specific amount. To set an alert for a KPI, select Edit on the dashboard and choose the time period to track in the Date range filter (as well as any other filters to consider). Then, select Alert (the bell) for the KPI, enter the threshold amount to be notified of, and select Set alert.

Michelle Conci

I don't understand the differnece bewtween a measure and a KPI - you seem to be confusing the two and it is not clear to me - would you please better define WITH better context?  Thank you

Steve Stegelin

Hey Michelle, sure thing! In SKY Reporting, "measures" are the totals, averages, etc. you want to analyze. You can pair them with attributes or other measures to design charts or tables as insights, and you can also use them by themselves to quickly analyze their number-crunching as "KPIs". In short, measures are WHAT you want to analyze, while KPIs are HOW you can present them for analysis. I hope that helps. Thanks!

Steve Stegelin

To help clarify any confusion around the SKY Reporting-ese, check out this blog post, inspired by this thread: https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/80/3684  Thanks!